Top 10 Linux MP3 Players
Written by BinnyVA on March 14, 2008 – 11:11 am -
There are no shortage of audio players in Linux. It has everything from command line MP3 players(mpg123) to RAM eating GUI players(like Amarok). With easily available codecs, linux supports almost all available formats.
This is the final post on a series about MP3 Players in linux. This series focuses on dedicated audio players - not video players that can handle audio as well(like mplayer). Without further ado, presenting the top 10 Linux MP3 players…
1. Amarok
amaroK is currently the player of my choice - it rocks. Everything I ever wanted in a MP3 Player and more. It is the clear winner in this field. In my opinion, there is nothing that beats amarok even if you look at Windows and Mac MP3 players as well.
More Information on Amarok MP3 Player
2. XMMS
A Winamp clone. Simple and user friendly, it is very popular on linux. It does not have a large feature set - but I am going to give it second place due to its popularity.
Official Sites for XMMS Player
3. RhythmBox
Rhythmbox Music Player is a music player and library for tagged files, that support various music formats. It was inspired by Apple’s iTunes. Although it is designed to work well under the GNOME Desktop, I had no issues with it in KDE.
RhythmBox - Gnome Music Player
Official Sites
4. Exaile
Exaile is a music player aiming to be similar to KDE’s Amarok, but for GTK+ and written in Python. It incorporates many of the cool things from Amarok (and other media players)
Exaile - Music Player for Gtk+
Official Sites
5. Audacious
Audacious is not among the ’star media-players’ in Linux - so many people never try it out. But those who have tried it out like it. For the sake of the article, I installed it - and I liked it. I even considered switching from amaroK to Audacious.
Official Sites
6. Banshee
Banshee is an MP3 players for Gnome. You can import, organize, play, and share your music using Banshee’s simple, powerful interface.
Banshee - Music Management and Playback for GNOME
Banshee Official Sites
7. SongBird
SongBird is an MP3 player built on the XUL framework. It’s a desktop media player mashed-up with the Web.
SongBird - The Firefox of MP3 Players
Official Sites
8. Juk
An audio jukebox that supports collections of MP3, Ogg Vorbis and FLAC files. It is a part of the kdemultimedia package.
9. mpg123/mpg321
mpg123 is a fast, free, minimalist, console MPEG audio player software program for UNIX and Linux operating systems.
mpg123/mpg321 - The Command Line MP3 Players
Official Sites
10. Other MP3 Players and Media Software…
Instead of putting the last MP3 Player here, I am going to list the MP3 software that did not make it to the list…
- Beep Media Player
- X-platform Music Multiplexing System 2 - XMMS2
- SnackAmp
- Decibel Audio Player
- Aqualung
- Cactus Jukebox
So, which is your favorite MP3 Player? Leave a comment…
Update: I reviewed two more players…
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Tags: Audio, Gnome, KDE, list, mp3, music, player, review, software, top10
Posted in Applications, Audio, Gnome, KDE |
March 14th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
This post has been dugg!
http://digg.com/linux_unix/Top_10_Linux_MP3_Players
March 14th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
Thanks, This is a beautiful list of mp3 players.
Thanks,
Nikesh
March 14th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
Excellent Post. Stumbled too. I was never able to play music till now. Thanks
March 14th, 2008 at 7:34 pm
How about:
Listen (also very Amarokish but for Gnome)
JaJuk
March 14th, 2008 at 8:39 pm
@Shankar Ganesh, @Ashish Mohta, @Nikesh Jauhari
Thanks!
@Gijs
Thanks for the suggestions - I have not heard about those. I will try them out and add it to this list.
March 14th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
Amarok is great when it doesn’t crash. Of course, it always crashes, so for me, Amarok kinda sucks. Great features, awesome interface, horrible stability.
I also have used Rhythmbox. Its interface is a little clumsy.
Hate to say it, but I haven’t found an mp3 player on Linux that’s as stable and easy to use as Winamp.
March 14th, 2008 at 9:31 pm
cplay is my personal favorite, although it is more of a wrapper to mpg123
March 14th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
mpd = all of them
March 14th, 2008 at 10:11 pm
Thanks for this nice list!
But no matter how many players I try, I always switch back to Quod Libet. It’s very lightweight and yet has powerful library search, folder browsing capabilities, alarm, lullaby and much more stuff via plugins.
March 15th, 2008 at 1:06 am
eww KDE user, get OUT
March 15th, 2008 at 1:19 am
WTF??? Where is VLC???
Light fast, plays practically anything…
March 15th, 2008 at 7:14 am
Don’t forget Kaffiene. It is a simple media player that can be used to create playlists quite easily. You can even put music videos into the playlists if you please.
March 15th, 2008 at 9:47 am
amorak doesnt retrieve mp3 from a smb:// share — rythmbox does….
March 15th, 2008 at 10:35 am
@James, the top of this post says that this is a list of audio players only, not audio/video players.
Also, +1 for mpd!
March 15th, 2008 at 11:48 am
[...] read more | digg story [...]
March 15th, 2008 at 8:08 pm
I’m surprised Listen isn’t listed, it’s a fantastic Gtk player. Definitely worth trying out if you like amaroK.
March 15th, 2008 at 8:35 pm
mpg321/mpg123 here.
However, I can’t say anything bad about amarok. ^_^
March 16th, 2008 at 10:08 pm
Great list, but you left out my number one. VLC player will do just about everything most of the above listed will do and more. It is easy to be unimpressed by it’s simple and tiny GUI, but it also plays videos in just about any format and will even make videos of your desktop just like the Istanbul application. The only thing it won’t do is surf the web like Songbird. It even plays .flv’s.
March 16th, 2008 at 10:43 pm
so.. where’s mpd? I use mpd exclusively on my server and on my laptop with its beautiful client sonata (sonata.berlios.de). mpd plays everything including streams and consumes not half the memory that all these heavy players need.
March 17th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
Wow amazing how far the linux desktop has come in the last 10 years.
March 19th, 2008 at 8:07 am
[...] 10 de los reproductores MP3 sonido para Linux Esta en ingles pero bastante util: Top 10 Linux MP3 Players There are no shortage of audio players in Linux. It has everything from command line MP3 [...]
March 20th, 2008 at 2:42 am
“..I even considered switching from amaroK to Audacious…”
Just don’t do it
If I have enough RAM available and my system it’s not overloaded, I use Amarok, if it’s, I use Audacious, but I want audio + video, of course that I use the SUPER VLC.
March 21st, 2008 at 1:16 pm
Using at work VCL, and Banshee at home - the best players I think =)
But thanks for the list, may be will try out some other =)
March 22nd, 2008 at 11:27 pm
[...] expected my MP3 player series will end with the last post - but the comments pointed to some other players. Two players stood out - so I decided that I will [...]
March 24th, 2008 at 4:28 am
Great list! Personally, I use Exaile and I must say I’m very satisfied!
March 24th, 2008 at 11:39 pm
Noticed quod libet is missing from your list. It really is a handy player for lightweight environments.
March 28th, 2008 at 7:56 am
Another interesting audio program is Mixxx, which has some interesting features not included in the mainstream players such as speed control and reverse. The program itself has a very basic UI and supports (.aiff, .mp3, .ogg, & .wav).
March 28th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
I just know now that there are so many alternative…I used Exaile.
March 30th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
10 MP3 mänijat Linuxi all…
Erinevaid võimalusi Linuxi all MP3sid kuulata…
April 6th, 2008 at 1:43 am
[...] am taking a break from the regular MP3 Players Series for a special announcement. The first stable version of Frees has been released. Frees is a GUI [...]
April 11th, 2008 at 4:05 pm
another vote for mpd here…
April 14th, 2008 at 11:49 pm
[...] If you are a casual desktop linux user with zero geek genes, stay away from this player. There are many other simpler players for [...]
May 2nd, 2008 at 11:40 pm
[...] second reason is that now that my series on Linux MP3 Players are over, I am going to take a small break from desktop posts and write on more [...]
May 3rd, 2008 at 9:32 pm
[...] Linux Mp3 Player you’re not on the right page. For a good list of choices, have a look at Binny’s Top 10 Linux MP3 Players. there you’ll find the right player for you. Back to my player. Why in the world i’m using a [...]
May 3rd, 2008 at 9:58 pm
Hey, great list. In the command line mp3 player category it could be include mp3bluster. I’m using it on my laptop and I just love it.