
Mpd + ncmpc - perfect combo for iTunes replacement - Tuan Anh Tran - tuananh
http://tuananh.us/articles/mpd-and-ncmpc-perfect-combo-for-itunes-replacement/
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technomancy
I wrote my own mpd client with dmenu and a few lines of shell:

[https://github.com/technomancy/dotfiles/blob/master/bin/musi...](https://github.com/technomancy/dotfiles/blob/master/bin/music-
choose)

This lets you just type just enough letters to uniquely identify the album you
want to play, then hit enter to queue it up. Yay Unix!

~~~
dbro
Nice. I did too: <https://github.com/dbro/muss> . It's a shell script that
coordinates mpc and dmenu. It's got two modes of operation, one for
interactive browsing and another for a simple command line search. Some
examples:

>muss elvis [queues up all songs that have "elvis" in the artist, album, or
track name]

>muss elv pres not jailhouse

>muss lion rich -a -r ["Hello, is it me you're looking for?"]

-a means append to existing playlist, -r means randomize the playlist

>muss

when no arguments are provided, it opens up a very fast search/filter/browse
interface using dmenu

Inspiration for this project were plait and the then-new instant search on
Google.

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_delirium
I used to use MPD on Linux and really liked it, and just recently realized
that it's possible to use on OSX as well. I somewhat prefer the ncmpcpp client
to ncmpc, but ncmpc is fine too.

On that note, I also like that I can switch interfaces (even CLI to GUI)
without having to switch to a completely different piece of music-library-
management software, thanks to the client/server design. I even use different
clients for different things; for example, the simple CLI client 'mpc' is good
for using in scripts.

~~~
lclarkmichalek
ncmpcpp is an awesome player, though sometimes I do wish that I could have a
full featured GUI brower like amarok plug into the mpd backend. Are there any
good Qt based interfaces?

~~~
thebrokencube
I'm a huge fan of Sonata ( <http://sonata.berlios.de/> ). While it isn't a Qt
based interface, I've used it a bunch over the last couple of years and it
functions great as a simple GUI frontend for mpd. Anyways, just my 2cents.

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p4bl0
I've been using MPD (+ mpc, ncmpcpp, ario) for a long time now (several
years). There is one thing that I miss from my iTunes usage: the party mix. It
was an awesome tool (at least back in iTunes v4 to v6) and I was really always
in there.

Basically what I want is to be able to tell my player "randomly select songs
in this playlist/folder/…" and then that it shows me at some place the last 5
or 10 songs played and the next 20 to play, and let me remove songs I don't
wanna listen to right now from this "songs-to-play" list, and then refill the
list up to 20 songs. This way I can repeat the operation a few times and know
that I have at least an hour of aweome music to come.

I know I could script that up for MPD, even with just MPC and Bash (and Zenity
for the cozyness), but I'm a lazy guy and I can almost reproduce the behavior
with the shuffle command of MPD. You know, the worst ennemy of "great" is
"good enough".

~~~
molecularbutter
I agree, I'll sound like a freakshow but I actually like iTunes for playlists
and its ability to share music libraries easily on a LAN.

~~~
pyre

      its ability to share music libraries *only with other
      iTunes users* easily on a LAN
    

Fixed that for you.

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Arcanum-XIII
The killer feature of itunes for me is the library management — I drag & drop
the mp3's, if they're tagged correctly it will handle them at ease, auto
organizing the directory and files and copying them at the right place. If
some other tool can do this, even CLI ones, I would gladly hear about them !

~~~
klausa
My iTunes does that just fine.

~~~
Arcanum-XIII
Yes, but library sharing with non iTunes/Apple box is no easy pie. Backup and
transfer too are a pain in the ass - but well it is not like it happen
everyday. And that without even speaking of his weight, which seem to grow
with each minor version for no good reason. So while it is (for me) a good
tool to organise and browse my library, it's limitation can be irritating,
more often than not.

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RexRollman
Love MPD/ncmpc (it is probably my favorite music player outside of
Foobar2000). I use it on my Arch Linux box and it runs like a champ. I also
use plain old mpc as well, with some shortcuts defined in my .ratpoisonrc

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devin
This is fantastic. Thank you for posting it. I plan to use MPD as an
alternative to iTunes for the foreseeable future. The number of people
clamoring for an alternative to iTunes seems to be growing. I hope Apple gets
the message, I'm sick of needing three music players to handle my library.

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spatten
Is there an non-iTunes equivalent to iTunes' Genius? Most of my music
listening tends to be of the "I feel like listening to song X and a bunch more
like it" and Genius is perfect for that.

If I could get that in a console app, I'd switch in a minute.

~~~
guard-of-terra
amarok did that since forever using last.fm similarity data, but it isn't
console app (scriptable via dbus but meh)

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chanux
I am using MoC (Music on Console - <http://moc.daper.net>) and really liking
it (I'm on Linux). Thought of sharing so the people might like to see another
possible option get to see it.

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otto
I've used MoC, Mpd + ncmpc, and I am currently using cmus
(<http://cmus.sourceforge.net/>).

Currently cmus has been my favorite. Just another option.

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tizoc
I have been happy with cmus[1] for years, both in Linux and OSX.

[1] <http://cmus.sourceforge.net/>

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1010110101
Short of writing your own scripts to control mplayer, mpd+ncmpc is the most
simple and most reliable (most difficult to crash) open source UNIX-friendly
music player solution I've ever used. And over the years I've systematically
tried every player I could find inside the package/ports repositories and
outside of them.

These days I just use scripts and mplayer. But for a ready-made solution, MPD
fills the "simple and reliable" niche completely, in my opinion. On those two
criteria it is without parallel.

On Windows, foobar2000 was great but the source was never available.

