Linux MP3 Music Library Managers
Looking for a good MP3 music manager is reoccurring task for me, because so far none has really convinced me, yet. After switching to a new distro recently, it was time to reevaluate the choices. Below is a list of library managers/players available through the Arch package manager.
I installed them all, tried to import my music library1) and tested a few common tasks. The list below is not an in depth feature comparison. It's just the features/non-features that caught my attention.
All tested players have an iTunes-like artist/album/song browser. I was most interested in their last.fm integration but also had a look at other features. My album cover images are stored as a file named folder.jpg, so I checked if the tools would find and display that correctly.
Amarok
- KDE based
- Most feature rich player
- Automatically rates songs based on your behavior
- Great context browser showing Wikipedia info, last.fm related songs and artists, additional albums by the same artist, lyrics…
- “smart” playlists
- Last.fm scrobbling, neighbor and tag radio, love/tagging for radio only
- Radio station browser, podcast support
- Album cover support with cover manager to download from Amazon
- Plugin system with browser/downloader
- Customizable notification window
Banshee
- GTK+ based player
- Ripping and burning support
- Video player
- Last.fm scrobbling and neighbor/recommended radio support, no love/tagging
- “jump to playing song” didn't work for me
- Notifications
BMPx
- GTK+ based
- Somewhat slow loading
- No way to play from all songs!?
- Album covers didn't work for me
- Full last.fm support with scrobbling, radio (including friends), play similar and love/tagging
- Internet radio station browser
- Podcast support
- Notifications
- No “smart” playlists
Exaile
- Written in Python/GTK+
- Aims to be a GTK+ Amarok clone (but has less features, yet)
- Internet radio and podcast bookmarks – no radio browser
- Plugin support (with browser/downloader)
- Last.fm scrobbling built in – no radio, suggestion or love/tagging support
- Album cover support with automatic (Amazon based) collector
- Customizable notification window
gmusicbrowser
- Written in Perl/GTK2
- Layout can be configured in many different ways
- Last.fm scrobbling only
- Lyric support didn't work for me
- Considers all files for playing, allows you to set filters – nice!
- Manual song ratings
- Album cover support, manual Google cover search
- No podcast or internet radio support
Goggles Music Manager
- Uses the FOX GUI library – simple but fast
- Couldn't get album cover support working
- Gapless playback and volume normalization
- No last.fm support
- Not much more
Listen
- Written in Python/GTK+
- Freezes when trying to import my library
- I previously used an older version which was quite nice, can't say much about the current one
Quod Libet
- Written in Python/GTL+
- Different interface layouts
- Internet radio station bookmarking
- Plugin support – but none available in Arch
- No last.fm support (maybe plugin somewhere?)
- Cover art didn't work
Rhythmbox
- A Gnome project
- Last.fm scrobbling and neighbor radio support, send love for radio songs only
- Podcast support, radio station bookmarks
- smart playlists
- Album cover support
- Plugin support
Summary
None of the players is perfect. So far Amarok seems to have the biggest feature set and currently is my default player. What I like most is the automatic song rating based on my listening behavior. When I skip a song it gets a lower score than when I listen to it in full. KDE isn't my desktop environment of choice2) so it feels a bit foreign and I'd love to replace Amarok with a GTK based player someday.
Exaile and Rhythmbox made the best impression inteface/feeling wise so far. The best last.fm integration by far is to be found in BMPx – unfortunately it is missing other important features.
Do you know of any other Linux software I missed? What desktop MP3 player do you use? Let me know in the comments, please.