Linux Ware Weekly #6 (Music Managers)
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From: Whirled.Peas on 29 Mar 2010 07:15 The Linux Ware Weekly #6 Welcome to the Linux Ware Weekly, a series of posts intended to introduce Linux users to software they may find useful for completing their various tasks. Each week I plan to bring you a list of applications that are suited to a certain task. I don't guarantee that the lists will be exhaustive by any stretch. In fact I can guarantee that I will probably overlook several applications since there are so many different programs written for Linux and forks upon forks of the popular ones. Last week we looked at front end clients for MPD as a lightweight alternative to managing your music in a server / client sort of relationship. This week we will be looking at larger music managers. There are many. Unless you are very new to Linux, you are probably quite familiar with the “popular” clients Amarok Rhythmbox Listen Banshee Exaile Songbird You'll find good information about these clients at this link: http:// www.linuxlinks.com/article/20080622143124178/Audio.html That being said, I don't want to devote space to these clients as they are very well reviewed at various websites. Rather, my intention here is to discuss several music managers that are perhaps more obscure. I've got eleven clients (including four for the terminal user set) that are somewhat off the beaten path. GUI Music Managers: gmusicbrowser Homepage: http://gmusicbrowser.org/ Screenshot: http://gmusicbrowser.org/screenshots.html As the name suggests, gmusicbrowser is designed for Gnome, but does not require lots of Gnome dependencies if you want to run it on some other window manager or desktop environment. It is designed with large music collections in mind (In excess of 10,000 songs). It plays mp3, ogg, mpc, flac, and ape files. (Requires gstreamer for mpc and ape). This project is in active development. Decibel Homepage: http://decibel.silent-blade.org/ Screenshot: http://decibel.silent-blade.org/index.php?n=Main.Screenshots From the home page: “Decibel Audio Player is a GTK+ open-source (GPL license) audio player designed for GNU/Linux, which aims at being very straightforward to use by mean of a very clean and user friendly interface. It is especially targeted at Gnome and follows as closely as possible the Gnome HIG. It aims also at being a real audio player and, as such, it does not include features that are not meant to be part of an audio player. These features (e.g., tagging, burning) generally have a really better support in dedicated applications. If you're looking for an audio player than can also make coffee, then you should stay away from Decibel and give a try to other players (e.g., Amarok, Exaile).” Goggles Music Manager Homepage: http://code.google.com/p/gogglesmm/ & http://freshmeat.net/ projects/gogglesmm Screenshot: http://picasaweb.google.com/s.jansen/GogglesMusicManager08# Goggles Music Manager was originally developed for Arch Linux but has quickly expanded to many other distros and is growing in popularity. It supports ogg, flac, mp3, mp4, asf and musepack files. It also allows for gapless playback. Consonance Homepage: https://sites.google.com/site/consonancemanager/ Screenshot: https://sites.google.com/site/consonancemanager/screenshots Consonance is another music manager originally developed for Arch Linux. It is available as a tar.gz archived source package . It is very lightweight. It supports mp3, ogg, flac, modplug, wav and Audio CDs. It has a very attractive tree style browser layout. The project is currently inactive, but the player is available and usable. Khövsgöl Homepage: http://emblemparade.net/projects/khovsgol/ Screenshot: http://emblemparade.net/projects/khovsgol/screenshot1.png Khövsgöl is a music manager that sort of straddles the ground between the heavy-weight programs and the front ends for MPD. It can front for MPD and it can stand on it own and be used to manage music as can the other programs listed here. From the home page: “Khövsgöl is designed to be sensible and straightforward to use. It lets you quickly access what you want to hear, while also helping you browse through your music collection when you're feeling indecisive.” Aqualung Homepage: http://aqualung.factorial.hu/ Screenshot: http://aqualung.factorial.hu/screenshots.html From the project page on Freshmeat: “Aqualung is an advanced music player originally targeted at the GNU/Linux operating system, and also running on FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and Microsoft Windows. It plays audio CDs, Internet radio streams, and podcasts as well as sound files in just about any audio format, and has the feature of inserting no gaps between adjacent tracks.” aTunes Homepage: http://www.atunes.org/ Screenshot: http://www.atunes.org/?page_id=5 From the home page: “aTunes is a full-featured audio player and manager, developed in Java programming language, so it can be executed on different platforms: Windows, Linux and Unix-like systems, … Currently plays mp3, ogg, wma, wav, flac, mp4 and radio streaming, allowing users to easily edit tags, organize music and rip Audio CDs.” Terminal Music Managers: EMMS Homepage: http://www.gnu.org/software/emms/index.html Screenshot: http://www.gnu.org/software/emms/screenshots.html Ok, this one is sort of cheating because it is an Emacs application, but I thought the collection browser looked pretty sharp. From the project page: “GNU EMMS, the Emacs Multimedia System, is an Emacs interface to command line multimedia players, featuring playlists, streams support, and easy extensibility.” cmus Homepage: http://cmus.sourceforge.net/ Screenshot: http://cmus.sourceforge.net/pics/cmus-1.4.0-sorted-view.png From the project page: “cmus is a small, fast, and powerful text mode music player for Linux and *BSD. It supports almost all common file formats, SHOUTcast/Icecast streaming, and multiple output plugins. cmus features multiple media library views, a playqueue, a directory browser, powerful filters, and vi-style search and keybindings. It also features gapless playback, ReplayGain, Unicode support, and customizable color schemes.” cmus is in active development, being updated as recently as 21 Feb, 2010. PyTone Homepage: http://www.luga.de/pytone/ Screenshot: http://www.luga.de/pytone/#screenshot From the project page: “PyTone is a music jukebox written in Python with a curses-based GUI. While providing advanced features like crossfading and multiple players, special emphasis is put on ease of use, making PyTone an ideal jukebox system for use at parties.” vitunes Homepage: http://www.vitunes.org/ Screenshot: http://www.vitunes.org/screenshots/default.png From the project page: “vitunes is a curses-based music player and playlist manager whose goals are a minimalistic appearance, strong vi- like bindings, and quick playlist creation/management. It does not strive to be a full-blown media player, but rather a full-blown media indexer and playlist manager. It uses MPlayer to support a wide range of media formats. It also makes use of TagLib for metadata extraction from many common formats.” -- If you try, you can envision peas on earth.
From: Wheel on 29 Mar 2010 21:54
Whirled.Peas wrote: > The Linux Ware Weekly #6 > > Welcome to the Linux Ware Weekly... > > This week we will be looking at larger music managers. You're work has found success. So far I'm a minty-baby, Mint-Man to follow, then... "Me and Torvy?... We chew the fat on a regular basis." "Billy-Boy?... We go back a long way, I can't just ditch him." :) Seven and on awaits... Anon, thanks. |