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5 Great Alternative Linux Music Players

makeuseof.com — Amarok, Rhythmbox and Banshee are a few of the popular music players in Linux. They are great in features and have received plenty of good reviews. But what is unknown to many is that there are a lot of other music players for Linux which are also great in features, but are hidden in some corners of the world.

Who dugg this? Made popular Aug 21, 2008

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  • picpak, on 08/21/2008, -1/+26They forgot Exaile:
    http://exaile.org/
    It's like Listen, only it's still developed.
  • Giga, on 08/21/2008, -2/+17While it can play just about anything, the UI is horrid. Especially for music.
  • Zaetha, on 08/21/2008, -1/+13I love Audacious. It's a little buggy, and you need to install your own equalizer presets (at least in Ubuntu). But once configured, is smooth as butter. It's my default alarm clock, using a playlist to wake me up.
  • adarkmethod, on 08/21/2008, -0/+101. I'll pretty much bet money your internet lost connection, probably not Ubuntu's fault, but MAYBE

    2. talk to your mouse company, I've had 3 different three button mice, all worked fine. not Ubuntu's fault they're ***** stupid

    3. there's no magical "install vmware tools" button.... anywhere...at all, so this is just stupid

    4. did you install your graphics driver? Windows would require it too if you had installed windows yourself

    5.Right Click > Save as its been that way for some time now, on all platforms

    6. Exe is a WINDOWS FORMAT, way to be completely ignorant, you're looking for a .deb file in Ubuntu, again, Adobe's fault not ubuntu, they've chosen to only offer the pain in the ass install, and will not allow it to be distributed as a .deb file, which would work just like an .exe file, plenty of people have created them for personal use tho, so again, stop blaming Linux because Adobe chose to make things hard.

    7. You're completely correct, the default theme is absolutely hideous, we're trying to talk them into changing it, there are plenty of amazing themes available from gnome-look.org they take about 30 seconds to install using the Appearance manager found under System > Preferences > Appearance
  • Heywoodj, on 08/20/2008, -3/+13Dugg for Song bird I loved it but it was soooo buggy a year and a half ago.
    I might check it out again just to play with but I really don't see anything replacing Amarok anytime soon.
    But more choices=more innovation
    Nice list.
  • Azerael, on 08/21/2008, -0/+9Anger problems; you have them.
  • HorseloverFat8, on 08/21/2008, -1/+9I've used many music players in Linux but have always gone back to Amarok.
  • inactive, on 08/21/2008, -0/+6xmms :-D
  • watcht, on 08/21/2008, -1/+7No sonata or gmpc/mpd alternatives?
  • Leonto, on 08/21/2008, -0/+3nice player
  • Dragon3000, on 08/21/2008, -1/+5What are you, 10 yrs old?!? Actually I take it back, a 10 yr/o can probably figure out Linux better than you AND me put together!!!
  • TehDoctor, on 08/21/2008, -1/+5Amarok is indeed nice. It's sad to see that most of the players on this list were GTK. I'd like to see some Qt players, competition to Amarok (as much as I like it, competition is good). Even with all the themes out there, I find GTK incredibly unappealing, especially compared to Qt 4.


    I guess it doesn't matter that much, though, since I'm using moc now, anywway.
  • beermad, on 08/21/2008, -0/+4Audacious is an excellent, lightweight player. OK, it hasn't got the library management functionality or looks of Amarok (which I use for my music collection) but for listening to more dynamic content (podcasts, radio timeshifts, streams, etc.) it's perfect. Just select the file you want to hear and play it.
  • fuzzlog, on 08/21/2008, -0/+4Maybe you should just stick to your xbox.
  • TheMachine1, on 08/21/2008, -4/+8Why not VLC?
  • Dhekke, on 08/21/2008, -2/+5And still no player with a decent "jump to file" support. If only someone would make a decent Winamp-like player, I'd have one less grudge with linux
  • dew209, on 08/21/2008, -0/+3I've been using it for a few weeks now. Works quite nicely:)
  • Jaymoon, on 08/21/2008, -0/+3I've always switched back to Exaile every time I feel adventurous to try something new.

    It's a pretty lite program interface-wise, which is a plus. I absolutely cannot stand media players that have the "ipod method of sorting". Which to me means that you can only find your music based on Artist/Album/Song. I have my music organized the way I want it. So 95% of the time, I prefer the good old folder method. Exaile has the folder browsing and library searching, so I'm covered either way.

    The downsides, for such a lite program, it sure uses a lot of memory... for me, it's typically 100-200mb at any given time with no plugins enabled. Also the startup time is not the greatest because of the initial library scan each time, even though I have only around 10,000 songs or so.
  • adarkmethod, on 08/21/2008, -1/+4Banshee is where its at kids, especially now that it plays video. It has problems running in ubuntu 8.04, but if you kick it old school with 7.10 its smooth sailing, everything works great, it looks awesome if you make your theme awesome, and it handles most a/v needs
  • diggerpleez, on 08/21/2008, -0/+3On my taskbar... right where it always is.
  • insanebrain, on 08/21/2008, -0/+3Audacious is what you want.
  • diggerpleez, on 08/21/2008, -0/+3Trying songbird right now... my first impression is that it is pretty bad ass. However, I do wish that it would dock on the taskbar like amarok so that don't need to leave the window open.
  • Jaymoon, on 08/21/2008, -0/+3Why would you need a full media player such as elisa to play music?

    All you need is something that sits in the tray and plays music. Anything more is not necessary.
  • BlkGuyAtThePrty, on 08/21/2008, -0/+2also, elisa != multitask friendly.
  • worminater, on 08/21/2008, -1/+3ncmpc FTW
  • Giga, on 08/21/2008, -1/+3It looks terrible. And is total overkill if all you want to do is play music.
  • adarkmethod, on 08/21/2008, -0/+2unless you're talking about something random... banshee does that http://picasaweb.google.com/darkmethod/Screens/pho ...
  • KayIslandDrunk, on 08/21/2008, -0/+2I've been on the hunt for a new one for a long time. I just don't have the time to download every single player I find and test it out. Something like this would have been perfect if it went into a little more detail and scored each player.
  • dattaway, on 08/21/2008, -0/+2Don't forget mpg321 from the command line. Issue a killall -2 mpg321 (that's the signal for Control-C) which will skip to the next selection.
  • KayIslandDrunk, on 08/21/2008, -0/+2They've really fixed a lot of their earlier problems. Songbird is now my primary music player on all my boxes, linux or otherwise.
  • durand101, on 08/22/2008, -0/+2Sonata's brilliant but amarok rocks too much to make me switch
  • subxero37, on 08/21/2008, -0/+2Are any Linux players capable of using Winamp DSP/Effect plugins? I have a plugin simply called Enhancer that seriously boosts the sound quality for me, and being able to use that would make any Linux player look good.
  • hugolp, on 08/21/2008, -0/+2Try Elisa http://elisa.fluendo.com Youll forget all the others.
  • JeffMaster, on 08/21/2008, -0/+2I LOVE Amarok, way more than itunes or windows media player - I wish it was available on Mac and Windows!
  • minhaaj, on 08/21/2008, -0/+1Songbird it is. I have tried most mplayers in ubuntu hardy and almost all were buggy or lacked some features. Audacity is good for editing audios what i do for my broadcasting, but Songbird would really pwn winamp someday
  • Megatog615, on 08/24/2008, -0/+1I will switch to Songbird immediately if it has an equalizer.
  • BlkGuyAtThePrty, on 08/21/2008, -0/+1i can't tell it where my music/videos/photos are
    also, it seems clunky compared to xbmc linux
  • solidcube, on 08/21/2008, -2/+3No offense but who cares? What linux user is unable to find a media player that is to his liking?

    I use whatever is minimal and works. xmms is great. VLC is great. Amarok and Banshee are just too damn heavy.

    Also, mplayer from the commandline.
  • neko, on 08/22/2008, -0/+1I'm a fan of MPD. It does things in a nice unixy way. Have a daemon that does the actual -playing-, and then provice any number of interfaces for it - pure commandline stuff you can put in a cron job, stuff that sits in the notification area out of your way, or big metadata-searching playlist-mangling displays.
  • hugolp, on 08/21/2008, -0/+1You can. Just add a folder. Also you can drag a drop any folder into Elisa and it will add it automatically. Press F to quit fullscreen to drag and drop. (F again will turn fullscreen on again).

    I recomend you to try version 0.5. The 0.3 version in the Ubuntu respositories (I am guessing thats the one you tried) is quite old. There is a ppa in launchpad where you can get deb packets of version 0.5.
  • WoollyMittens, on 08/21/2008, -0/+1I use Rythmbox on my eeepc, because it seemed to be the only one able to handle podcasts, but does anyone know how I can keep it from downloading all new podcasts every time?
  • trpnblies7, on 08/21/2008, -0/+1Despite its few bugs, Audacious is the best for people who want just a music player and not a full-on media center. Hopefully the next version will get rid of the kinks it currently has.
  • MrTea, on 08/21/2008, -0/+1and you can use it as a ladspa host and do whatever you want to the audio
  • durand101, on 08/22/2008, -0/+1Elisa is great for a full blown media centre but it's not a music player...
  • EnderMB, on 08/22/2008, -0/+1Already have, and I think it tries too hard to look nice. The font's look poor, the menu's make little sense when compared to their Mac/Windows counterparts and it runs slower for me than WMP does on Windows.
  • dooooo, on 08/22/2008, -0/+1BMPx ?
  • solidcube, on 08/21/2008, -0/+1What do you need outside of the basic functionality?

    Banshee is all right for a setup that is almost like itunes. But like I said, I manage my stuff myself and I don't need an artificially intelligent actuary to keep my music organized. This is not complex stuff.
  • johnnydough, on 08/21/2008, -0/+1You can use "alltray" to give any application systray support. I use it on start up so that gpodder is always running in my tray.

    http://alltray.sourceforge.net/

    I can confirm it's in both Ubuntu's and OpenSuse's repos.
  • Heywoodj, on 08/22/2008, -0/+1Coming to Windows soon.
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