Music Software that DOESN'T Suck?

[Joe Fleming]

Amen, brother! I hate the whole iTunes mentality. I organize my music in
directories like any sane person should (and even like iTunes does
anyway). I don't like my music player taking a minute to load up because
it has to scan all my music for new stuff and load the existing library.
I just want it to play the damn music!

Back in the day, XMMS was where it was at; a nice simple winamp clone
that was fast and got the job done. It also has some command line
options you can use to advance tracks, pause/play, add tracks to the
queue, start a new queue, etc. XMMS2 split things into a client and
server, which is a cool idea, but it complicates the matter of just
having a simple music player. Audacious is a pretty decent xmms clone
that adds a lot of nice plugins (Scrobbling my plays is a definite
requirement for me, and it's there).

If you're in to the whole music manager thing, Exaile isn't too bad, but
it's anything but a light piece of software and, at least for me, locks
up a lot. Rhythmbox is crap as far as I'm concerned; most of the plugins
don't work right, it's ugly and it's slow. Amarok was pretty cool when I
used it a while back, but unless your using KDE, you have to install a
ton of crap to run it. Songbird I haven't used since it was version 0.2;
cool concept and great for streaming and downloading music, but I don't
need my music player to also be a web browser all the time.

Anyway, sorry to keep running on here, but the state of music software
annoys the hell out of me. At least we have a choice, unlike those poor
souls running OSX..... i hate iTunes SO much! As for you, check out
Audacious. If you want a simple player that is quick, has a decent
feature set and some command line bindings, that's your guy.

-Joe

Andrew "Tuna" Harris wrote:
> I'm looking for some music software that doesn't suck. My experience
> with Amarok was excellent, but there are certain things that I have
> developed a strong distaste for, a few of which Amarok more than readily
> picks up on. We went our separate ways, peacefully but still longing for
> something... I know not about Amarok but I have not found what my heart
> seeks in this world.
> 
> But here's what I'm sick of.
> 
> * Integration with a specific desktop environment
> 
> If Amarok had a nice GUI that didn't require mad things like kdelibs, I
> would happily readopt it. Maybe something like FLTK or just plain QT
> without this KDE integration nonsense. Same with Rhythmbox, and its
> GNOME nonsense. I shouldn't have to compile and install GConf as well if
> it's only going to be used for like one or two apps!
> 
> * C#/Mono apps for Linux
> 
> I don't even understand this. Call me a purist, but when you think, "GUI
> application for Linux to organize and play music", what possesses you to
> think "Ah! C# with Mono!" Don't get me wrong, Mono is a wonderful thing.
> It can be very useful for getting .NET stuff to work on Linux with
> little to no modification. But what exactly makes Mono C# the language
> of choice for... anything, really?
> 
> * Inability to Control Things without using the GUI
> 
> Here's something that should, in one way or another, be built into every
> GUI app, ever. I had this trouble with XChat. I just hate it when I
> absolute MUST have the GUI to do things, the seemingly simplest of
> tasks. It's like bringing twelve lead-plated life rafts on a cruise.
> There is seemingly no situation in which you would ever need them, yet
> the fax said you have to bring them.
> 
> Pretty much, I need something that doesn't suck, is written in a
> somewhat respectable language, and demand a crapload of dependencies
> that I won't need in a week or when I get tired of the software.
> 
> Right now I'm using Songbird, and I started hating it about five minutes
> into using it.
> 
> inb4 letmegooglethatforyou.com. I have googled, and I found this:
> http://mpd.wikia.com/
> 
> Anyone use it before? What do you think?
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> -tuna
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