What are the best audio players for UNIX-like systems?

Question

Music & AudioLinuxMultimediaUnixMusic PlayerUnix-likemusic players

What are the best audio players for UNIX-like systems?

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1.9K

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Jan 15, 2024

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68 Options Considered

Best audio players for UNIX-like systems	Price	Platforms	License
80 Audacious	Free	Windows, Linux, BSD	-
75 DeaDBeeF	Free	Windows, Linux, Mac, BSD	-
-- QMPlay2	-	-	-
70 Tauon Music Box	Free	Linux	-
68 cmus	Free	-	-

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score 158 · Answer 1

Audacious

Top Pro

Streamlined player not weighed down by unnecessary options

Audacious is a classic music player at heart that has not felt the need to weigh itself down with an assortment of unnecessary options. Advanced functionality can be attained through plugins available from within the program. See More

Top Con

No manual sorting fields

There is no option to add one's own categories to the sorting fields. See More

HonestKisshoten's Experience

Audacious is a rock-solid music player. The feature that compelled me to try Audacious is the plethora of Effects included. The Crossfade and Silence Removal are my favorites. As a bonus, Audacious also has the Winamp Classic Interface, which takes me back to the 90s! See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, BSD

Top Pro

Tons of plugins

Top Con

Updates are not very frequent

CaringAusrine's Experience

no problem en todas mis maquinas See More

Top Pro

Lightweight

My audacious uses only 18.5 MB of RAM. It has a Winamp visualization style that's very minimized and convenient. See More

Top Con

No bit perfect output past 24bit

Audiophiles require this, and while most users might not notice a difference, audiophiles will appreciate the improved audio quality. See More

Rafael Social User's Experience

I began to use it when I left Windows as an Winamp alternative, but definitively, is better than Winamp. See More

Top Pro

Support for Winamp themes

Audacious can switch from its GTK interface to one that matches the looks of the famous Winamp player. What's even better is that this interface supports any Winamp themes, which allows for more options. See More

Top Con

Buggy

For example when using Visual Studio Code and Audacious you get flicked out to the gnome login screen. See More

AuthenticSosamshin's Experience

it works See More

Top Pro

Folder oriented player, but able to play any music container and highly configurable

Lets you play, delete and even change metadata of your music files. See More

DiligentOceanus's Experience

simple and it delivers See More

Top Pro

The easiest player for multiple types of files

It plays dts, aac multichannel, etc. See More

SmartAello's Experience

gui bad See More

Top Pro

Compatibility with most media formats

It's able to reproduce most of media formats without external plugins. See More

PoisedTantalus's Experience

Audacious was the first player I installed, I was happy enough with it but was looking for something that could give me a better overview over my collection (300GB of music). However even after looking around and testing some other players audacious is still the best option I have without slowing down my system. See More

RespectfulDecima's Experience

bit perfect audio capable. excellent alsa output plugin. not based on gstreamer sound server. cover grid missing. sorting and updating library not friendly. See More

Ubed Shaikh's Experience

Lightweight but very powerful has best plug-ins for Music lovers, My favourite part of Audacious is the winamp style themes & Extra stereo plug-in which is best for surround sound systems. See More

ImaginativeWatatsumi's Experience

Best audio quality.Lightweight. Very good customization See More

ThoughtfulNinhursag's Experience

Simple to use See More

See All

score 171 · Answer 2

DeaDBeeF

Top Pro

A lot of plugins

DeadBeef has a lot of different plugins users can use to customize the interface, controls, and options. See More

Top Con

shuffle mode doesn't play an entire huge playlist (over 25 days)

CaffeinatedBirdu's Experience

DeadBeef is one of the rare music player read audio files with cue sheet embedded! See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac, BSD

Top Pro

Lightweight

DeadBeef uses few system resources, making it great for low end systems and for those requiring a media player that uses as few resources as possible. See More

Top Con

GTK-App

So there is basically no integration into non-GTK desktops. See More

IntuitiveStribog's Experience

Deadbeef is an excellent player that's totally customizable. Has an awesome equalizer and good visualizations, shows album art. You can copy the config file and take your customized GUI with you to other machines. See More

Top Pro

Extremely customizable

DeaDBeef has support for title formatting scripting, like foobar2000, which allows you to customize group patterns, the converter output, the window titles, etc. to your needs. DeaDBeeF also has a Design Mode, which allows you to add new widgets to the interface and move/delete existing ones. See More

Top Con

Terrible GUI

stop reinventing (ugly) guis. play music and get out of my way. See More

grin's Experience

Apart from that one of the smallest player this was basically the one supporting well some of the sound formats I'm playing (like sids). See More

Top Pro

Uses GTK2 or GTK3

Users are able to choose a GTK2 or GTK3 build of the application to use within DeaDBeeF. See More

Top Con

Fails when opening a CUE file

Doesn't work even after 30 minutes of tweaking. Not as good as Audacious. See More

SplendidGlooscap's Experience

Best player. Highly customizable. Bit perfect. See More

Top Pro

ALSA plugin allows bit-perfect pipeline to DAC

Top Con

Ubuntu's sound menu buttons don't work

DeaDBeeF shows up in the sound menu; however, clicking the next/previous buttons doesn't do anything. See More

SplendidSamas's Experience

After spending a good half hour tweaking it, setting up columns and preferences, I navigated to a folder with a FLAC rip and tried opening the cue file... it works with VLC, audacious, QMMP... but nothing doing with DeadBeef. See More

Top Pro

Supports single-album CUE files

Top Con

Not as many options as other players

When it comes to options DeaDBeef may not have as many as other more prominent music playing applications. See More

CommunicativeYuqiang's Experience

You can configure it (album art, music control, playlist, ...) and aarange as you want these features. It plays almost all (mp3, flac, ogg, wma, wav, m4a, ...) Many plugins. The developer is very reactive when you enter a bug See More

Top Pro

Smooth and easy

Top Con

Clunky

I've seen people showing lyrics - but I can't figure out how to make that work. It's very difficult to use the 'design' function (unlike Guayadeque) to re-arrange and design the interface beyond something like a music list and artwork... See More

__'s Experience

The out of the box experience is great but if you want to make full use of it you should customize it. See More

Top Pro

Offers a ReplayGain scanner out-of-the-box

See All

score 16 · Answer 3

QMPlay2

Top Pro

Feature rich and simple to use

YT search, download, and convert, lyrics, Internet radio, great movie player. See More

WonderfulHuitzilopochtli's Experience

Simple to use and it fixes things automagically, love the youtube search and download that will convert to an mp3 is you want just the audio. Internet radio with the builtin video player is the bomb. Lyrics support is another huge plus. I keep trying them all and yes some of the other have a few features that are done better but QMPlay2 is the Swiss Army Knife of MM players. Flawless with Arch and PCLinuxOS, I am pretty sure I tried it with Fedora 35 and Ubuntu. See More

Top Pro

The interface can be easily customised

You can customise and reorganize your interface with the simple drag and drop method which allows you to place your play button, settings bar, and different equalizers. See More

Top Pro

It is easy to crate and export playlists

See All

score 30 · Answer 4

Tauon Music Box

Top Pro

Lightweight and works well on RPi4

Top Con

Does not support playlist files

TrustworthyTitias's Experience

only plays first track of album See More

Specs

Platforms:Linux

Top Pro

Can change the views to be discreet

Top Con

Packaging

Only available through the AUR, flatpak, SlackBuilds (unofficial) and NixPkgs (unofficial). See More

HealthyChaxiraxi's Experience

Bit of a pain to get installed, but once there works well. See More

Top Pro

Has subsonic / airsonic support built right in

Top Con

Can't make app always on top

Top Pro

Easily able to edit gstreamer command

If you want to get your BT Headphones working. See More

See All

score 72 · Answer 5

cmus

Top Pro

CLI only

CLI makes Cmus clean, fast and minimalist. See More

Top Con

No album art

cmus does not display album art See More

craig brown's Experience

fast, reliable, doesn't mess with the filesystem See More

Top Pro

Does not use a lot of memory

Cmus only uses about 15 MB. This is a very small and light media player, which is ideal for people with low end hardware. See More

Top Con

CLI only

No graphical interface is available for cmus. Everything is done through CLI (command line interface). See More

SplendidGlooscap's Experience

Command Line! See More

Top Pro

Works very well with tags from MusicBrainz database

cmus will factor in additional data from the MusicBrainz database while sorting. For example sort orders for arist or album, and the original release date for an album (in the case of a re-release). See More

Top Con

Difficult to use

Cmus uses odd keyboard shortcuts such as "C" to pause, "E" to add songs to queue, and "4" to edit the queue. See More

CoherentGibil's Experience

Straight away trying to play a wavepack file, it complained - as do many other Linux players, unlike Deadbeef, Guayadeque, or Quodlibet. So 'lightweight' doesn't mean 'full featured', just a lighter replacement from the simpler GUI players I guess... See More

Top Pro

Good library structure

A lot of music players may act more like playlist viewers rather than a music library. cmus sorts by Artist > Year > Album. See More

Top Con

Can't play wavepack files

Top Pro

Fast

A lot of music players will be slow when starting if they have huge libraries, but CMus starts fast no matter the library size. See More

Top Pro

Customizable keybindings for a personal experience

You can add keybindings for just about anything - including seeking (forward/backwards 1 minute, for example) which isn't supported by all music players. See More

Top Pro

No mouse required

cmus does not require a mouse as it runs in the terminal See More

Top Pro

Open source extensions and scripts

On GitHub you can find the official WIKI where there are a dozen extensions and scripts from color themes to a lyrics viewer and the ability to play YouTube songs. See More

See All

score 208 · Answer 6

Clementine

Top Con

Slow development

Very little development work has been going on for a while as of mid-2017. Nobody is responding to bug reports. See More

Top Pro

Tag editing

Clementine features competent tag managing for all music files, be it album art or just simple text entries. See More

DaringGlaucus's Experience

Great for listening to my personal collection and for streaming online radio. No flaws in my usage See More

Specs

License:GPL-3.0-or-later

Release Date:2016-19-04

Development:Open Source

Top Con

Resource exhaustive

Clementine uses up to two orders of magnitude more CPU than VLC and takes up about 180 MB of memory, plus additional memory for spawned processes (tag-readers), while VLC uses 80 MB with no other processes. See More

Top Pro

Intuitive and fast to set up

Clementine is easy to get up and running with lyrics, equalizer, online info, etc., within minutes after installation. See More

UnbiasedMithras's Experience

by far the best, a little slow starting on my laptop, but overall the best See More

Top Con

Doesn't allow gapless playback

Top Pro

Sensible UI

A fork of the 1.X line of Amarok, Clementine favours usability over design trends. See More

octodi's Experience

Less resource hungry compared to other GUI based applications and also supports background play. Clementine's Smart Playlist is also very useful comprising options like, 50 random tracks, All tracks, Dynamic random mix, Ever played, Favourite tracks, Last played, Least favourite tracks, Most played, Never played and Newest tracks. See More

Top Con

Bit perfect output no longer configurable

Audiophiles want to play their expensive HD albums. See More

Top Pro

Very good folder organization

Organizes your music folder based on the tags of your library. See More

ReceptiveApoLaki's Experience

clear interface, quick search of big libraries (excelent database handling), fades, in and out. drawback is that the taskbar sometimes gets messed up. Already years this bug is bothering me. See More

Top Con

Too bloated by default with things like LastFM that can't be removed

When you install it, you get ton of internet radios and services plugins, that you can't remove, only turn off. There is also useless stuff like artist info that doesn't work and stuff. See More

Top Pro

Remote app for Android

There is a very good remote app for Android. The app lets you do a lot: from the usual volume controls to checking the lyrics on your phone. You can even download the songs from Clementine onto your phone. See More

HappyWhiro's Experience

Tried Clementine once, which was enough. Tried editing the Tags for each MP3 file in library, and it messed everything up, then crashed. See More

Top Con

Not customizable

It doesn't allow you to modify its interface by dragging toolbars around etc. See More

Top Pro

Supports a lot of online services

Clementine includes support for services such as Ampache, Google Play Music, Spotify, and many internet radio stations such as Jamendo and Icecast. It's also possible to search all available sources (local and online) at once, as well as mixed content playlists. See More

PatientKyrbas's Experience

Very good player with lot of options and customizations. See More

Top Con

Horrible user interface and confusing layout

Top Pro

Built-in equalizer for custom sound

There is a built-in equalizer with many presets from genre-specific rock, pop, and party, to experiences such as large hall and live. You can also tweak it yourself and name your own preset. See More

ExceptionalNjirana's Experience

Hands down the very best ! See More

Top Con

Ugly

Top Pro

Creates playlists based on past music you listened to

Clementine gathers the user's listening data to use for smart playlists. Clementine uses your listening history to play music similar to the music you play most - which typically is music you will like but maybe haven't discovered yet. See More

stalliondrift's Experience

Doesn't work with ALSA, despite the trillion of options to supposedly make it use ALSA plus the "Party" setting of the equalizer sounds like I'm using cheap speakers for 2 dollars instead of the $300 speakers I have at the moment. See More

Top Con

Goes crazy with CPU and RAM

Takes its toll on your system's CPU and RAM. See More

Top Pro

Built-in format conversion

Users can format any of their music files to a different format with Clementine's built-in format conversion tool. See More

TirelessHuehuecoyotl's Experience

Lets you also add mp4 video files and play the aac from those. See More

Top Con

Default settings aren't great

Although this is subjective, you might have to do some tweaking before you like it. See More

Top Pro

Can display song lyrics

Fetches lyrics from several lyric providers. See More

EmpatheticSatet's Experience

repeats tracks constantly, known bug on web , no response, no fix See More

Top Con

Ugly ressource hog with no features and buggy without hotfix

And yet Nr. 1 recommended because of nerds being accustomed. See More

Top Pro

Looks good and is really responsive

Unlike some other players in this list, Clementine doesn't seem to go unresponsive in the Ubuntu 16.04 system and looks really good with options for Visualization too. See More

Top Con

Slow to start in Gnome/Cinnamon

It takes about the same time to start as an IDE or Photoshop. See More

Top Pro

Decent library management

Clementine allows the user to move and organize audio files easily. Some examples include the following: It's easy to find a specific album song (find artist, select album, select song). It's easy to add songs to a playlist and queue the songs. It's easy to rename files from their metadata (artist, album, song number, etc). It's easy to add cover images. There are options to find duplicates, untagged songs, etc. See More

Top Con

Not a lot of documentation

Clementine does not offer a lot of documentation, which can make discovering its features a bit difficult. See More

Top Con

Buggy

Clementine is probably the most fully featured music player for Linux, however it has its own issues. It crashes and experiences occasional memory leaks that can slow down your system. See More

Top Con

Database regularly messes up

Top Con

Sometimes messes up taskbar

Top Con

Last.fm support is broken

Top Con

Cannot choose which tag profile to use

I use Tag2 (ID3:2.4) which doesn't seem to be the default tag used and I can't see a way to choose this. See More

Top Con

No way to search on filename

See All

score 20 · Answer 7

Sayonara

Top Pro

Light, lighter, lightest...

Is power package: lot of options and plugins, but when it plays as light as a feather on system resources. Gets out of your way if it plays (in the background) and you do what you need to do. See More

Top Con

Playlist centric, no simple "click-and-play"

Playing of local files needs serious getting used to. No simple click and play, straight forward, basic shuffle play of all files in your library. Needs creation of playlist first, seems overly laborious and unnecessary. $USER needs real time to figure out how to do what you want: play music. So play around with 4 buttons lower left buttons. See More

FriendlyObrigwabibikwa's Experience

I think it is one of the most complete and consumes few resources. See More

Specs

License:GPLv3

Release Date:2011

Development :Open Source

Top Pro

Great UI

The UI is familiar and powerful, with plenty of options to make it your own. See More

Top Con

Playlist driven play back

If you install Sayonara, hook it up with your music directory, and want to have it play by clicking a music file and let you surprise yourself with its shuffle... it won't. It will play that double clicked song, but then just plain stop untill you double click that next one. To have it just play through your collection, you first have to make a playlist, and only then let Sayonara play that (randomly). No deal breaker, but certainly an non-intuitive hassle preventing "click that in my library, play and don't bother me no more". See More

Eric Waters's Experience

This is an attractive music player with all the library management you need. I have been in love since the first time I used it! In addition to being great for your local library needs, Sayonara has plenty of streaming options integrated into it, including the delightful Soma.fm, which is great. This is my first install when I do a new distro install (which is sadly often. I might have a problem...) See More

Top Pro

Many plugins standard

Has many plugins out of the box, e.g. internet "radio"streams, equaliser, sprectrum analyser, bookmarks, audio converter, broadcast, playlists, lyrics for the song you're playing, and more. It's the full music enjoyment experience. If you like minimalistic, Sayonara can do that too. See More

Top Con

Dynamic playback

Sayonara works with a dynamic mode shuffle method, that quite often eliminates any surprises and comes with "the same" suggestions when your collection is smaller. It can be switched off though (bottom left switches, under your playlist) if you don't like it. All the options will require you to "look into it" though, since it is somewhat confusing... See More

Top Pro

Looks really cool, and does have cover art

It is so flexible it respects your local theme, or can be set to a theme, very slick, independent dark mode. And yes, it does show your cover art! See More

Top Con

Slow development

As of writing, there hasn't been a stable update in more than a year. It's a small team, so this is to be expected, but it would be nice if it updated at leas annually. See More

Top Pro

Does conky...

If you are one of those who like to close your player to panel and see what it plays in your conky? Sayonara can do that over dbus, whether you like just artist and title, a progress bar, or even the cover art in your conky. See More

Top Con

Closed Forum

The Forum has some serious issues - you can't search without loging in, but you can't sign up for a login either, making it almost useless. Help is hard to come by. See More

Top Pro

Lots of Streaming options

If your local library just isn't enough, Sayonara integrates lots of streaming options including soma.fm, SoundCloud, internet radio, and podcasts. See More

Top Con

Troubles on Manjaro GNOME

The UI doesn't... work on Manjaro GNOME without adding your own custom CSS, which would be palatable if there was any documentation for it. There isn't, that I can find, so I have no idea what UI elements are called what, so, sadness. See More

Top Pro

Sorts by the users options

Has everything you may need onboard. See More

See All

score 28 · Answer 8

Exaile

Top Pro

A lot of built-in plugins

Exaile comes pre-loaded with a lot of plugins so users can customize the application how they see fit. See More

Top Con

Can't handle CUE files

Top Pro

Can handle large libraries

Exaile utilizes a SQLite database to store information. As such, it can handle large music libraries. See More

Top Pro

Smart Playlists

Has the ability to configure dynamic playlists based on various criteria. See More

Top Pro

Trimmed down interface

Exaile excels for being a simple-to-use music player that is not filled with a lot of guff. See More

Top Pro

Equalizer

Exaile has a built-in equalizer. See More

See All

score 49 · Answer 9

Quod Libet

Top Pro

Great for organizing and editing large collections

Quod Libet gives the user the necessary tools to edit and organize their library from within the app. There is support for tags as well to help you quickly find the music to fit your mood. To help you sort through large libraries, you can use the filters which help filter by genera or other search perimeters. See More

Top Con

(not) customizable

If you get a player, you want to make it yours. QL has a lot of stuff preconfigured, which you can't make as you want it. So base is great, but never makes it to be come yours. See More

ExcitedNidaba's Experience

Does a pretty bad job of reading audio tags that nothing else struggles with - making parts of my collection into an unsorted mess. See More

Top Pro

Lots of plugins available

Quod Libet offers many plugins including Last FM sync, lyrics support, and iOS sync. See More

Top Con

Doesn't support playlist files

MightyEurytus's Experience

Quod Libet is great as a general-purpose music player, but really shines for its library editing capabilities. When you're downloading lots of mysterious albums or songs that aren't always properly tagged, it makes it easier than any other music player, or even metadata manager, to incorporate them into your library effectively. Plus the myriad views are cool too. See More

Top Pro

Powerful search syntax

Quod Libet has powerful search syntax options, which are very useful for creating smartlists or querying a big music collection. See More

Top Con

The GUI could have more eye-candy

There aren't any icons within the GUI, just text. This makes it feel more like a library management tool than an audio player. A little polish would go a long way here. See More

DiplomaticHunBatz's Experience

Excellent music player but the cover browser hangs on scroll See More

Top Pro

Easy to use

Despite very good library management capability, Quod Libet is easy to use. The base music player doesn't have too many features, making it a breeze to use. However, if you want to go deeper you can install plugins. These plugins can sometimes add complexity, but it's up to you what you do or don't want. See More

Top Con

Rhythmbox clone

Can't find many differences with Rhythmbox. See More

Top Pro

Integrates with IoT / home audio

Sonos, Squeezebox, ... See More

Top Con

GTK app

It will need a bit more of resources in a non qt environment. See More

Top Pro

Built-in Soundcloud support

Top Con

Plugins could be better integrated

Lyrics are not downloaded automatically in Quod Libet, while simply viewing lyrics could be made a lot more accessible. There is also little information pulled from last.fm - scrubbing works, as well as there being no artist info or suggestions for similar artists. See More

Top Pro

Folder view

Quod Libet has multiple viewing modes, including Folder (File System) hierarchy view. The only other program to have a good folder view would be Sayonara. See More

Top Con

Uses quite a bit of memory

Quod Libet can use up to 130 MB. See More

Top Pro

Customizable looks

There are a few controls that allow the user to change how the player looks. See More

Top Pro

Fast & Small

Fully functional and takes up little space on the hard drive. See More

See All

score 42 · Answer 10

Strawberry Music Player

Top Pro

Alive Clementine fork

Top Con

No song ratings

Rijnhard Hessel's Experience

Bitperfect Tidal on linux, bypassing pulseaudio. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac

Top Pro

Advanced audio output and device configuration for bit-perfect playback on Linux

Top Con

No Spotify support

WonderfulLelantos's Experience

Strawberry is the emacs of music players, I can't possibly recommend this enough for experienced users looking for something to fill that void that the slow death of Clementine left in all of our systems. See More

Top Pro

Free

Top Con

No internet radios

Diego Cardinali's Experience

Fast and well maintained See More

Top Pro

Scrobbler with support for Last.fm, Libre.fm and ListenBrainz

Top Con

No smart playlists

SpontaneousPhilotes's Experience

Very nice and smooth, especially since it's almost the same as Clementine. The latter no longer seems to be updated. See More

Top Pro

Open source

Top Con

No podcast support

PopularIoke's Experience

Better choice than Elisa for KDE users IMHO. See More

Top Pro

Possibility to convert songs to many different music file formats

Top Pro

Streaming support for Tidal

Top Pro

Smart playlist feature

Top Pro

In-program tag editing

Top Pro

Ability to play through sftp

See All

score 23 · Answer 11

Musique

Top Pro

Can handle very large local music libraries

Top Con

No differentation between Album Artist / Track Artist

Albums are sorted via "Album Artist" but each deviating "Track Artist" creates a new album handle. Very bad when you have album tracks where the filename consists of the typical "Artist #1 feat. Artist #2" setting as each of these files creates another album entry. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, MacOS, Linux

Price:Free

Top Pro

Minimal UI

The UI for Musique is pretty minimal. By not throwing every option in the book into the application, the developers are able to keep the interface clear of any clutter. See More

Top Con

Doesn't resume from last close

Musique won't resume from the last time the app was closed. If you had a great music queue all set up, unfortunately it won't stay there if you close the app. See More

Top Pro

Consistent queue simplifies what's playing next

There is a queue on the right side of the player, which shows you what is coming up next. This makes it easy to add a new song or remove a song before it plays to be sure that you/your guests stay in the groove. You can also slowly transition to different genres, not to mention plan ahead and adapt as you need to. See More

Top Con

Linux controls don't work

The Linux next/previous buttons don't do anything - you will need to open Musique in order to do anything with it (other than change the volume). See More

See All

score 72 · Answer 12

Lollypop

Top Pro

Super intuitive way of organizing and browsing albums and artists

You can view all the albums you have in one long list. Clicking on one of them will bring a popup at the bottom of the screen where you will see a list of all the songs on that album. See More

Top Con

GTK App

Its a GTK app so integration in other desktops is terrible it also uses GNOMEs ClientSideDecorations so it will break many window managers. See More

ExcitedNidaba's Experience

Very intelligent, reads tags perfectly. For just one example, if you list multiple artists with ";" it displays songs as having multiple artists the same way Spotify would. See More

Top Pro

Works fast and reliably

Top Con

No equalizer

Lollypop still does not have an equalizer. See More

VersatileErlik's Experience

Clean light, easy to use and works very well. See More

Top Pro

Super flexible layout

The latest version has a good full-screen layout and is very responsive. Goes very smoothly from full screen to minimal player (also being a GTK+ app). See More

Top Con

Good party mode

Top Pro

Integrates with the MPRIS sound menu

This applies for most players in the "Linux world", but not for all. Therefore I consider it worth mentioning. See More

Top Con

No In-App Volume Control (0.9.242)

It has no in-app volume control, it has to be managed through system 'Sound control/Applications' See More

Top Pro

Huge development

There is constant improvements, librem and gnome3 is possibly the future. See More

Top Con

Requires a well organized music collection

Lollypop will be a pain to use if music is badly tagged. The setup is a one time thing, but it can be a pain to organize a large library. See More

Top Pro

Cloud music

Lollypop allow you to play music from the web (iTunes charts and search from Spotify). See More

Top Pro

Integrates well with many desktop environments

One example being the conditional use of client side decorations (a.k.a. header bars) depending on the currently active desktop environment. See More

Top Pro

Good party mode

Top Pro

Clean, light and works very well.

The only one that can play a lot of files without to stop. See More

Top Pro

Queue option lets you change what's playing on the fly

You can add songs to a queue, and then re-order or remove songs as you please. It works similarly to a temporary playlist. See More

Top Pro

Online radio integration

The newest version features a nice interface for adding, browsing, and playing online radio stations. This gives you access to more music than you would normally have, which can help expand your music library for free. See More

See All

score 49 · Answer 13

VLC

Top Pro

Free, open source, and cross-platform

VLC is licensed under the CC-SA v3.0+ and available on Windows, OSX, and Linux with source code available here. See More

Top Con

Not really meant to be a music player

VLC is made to be a video player. Therefore, it won't carry out actions such as managing your music library. See More

ResponsiveChalchiuhtotolin's Experience

NICE! See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS, ChromeOS, AppleTV

Top Pro

Simple to setup and use

VLC is an incredibly robust application but very simple on the surface. It makes playing music simple, yet still manages to give the user all the tools he/she wants in a music player. See More

Top Con

Lacks libraries and advanced music player features

VLC is a media player first and foremost. There is no library management (aside from playlists), limited usage of tags, and no rating system. VLC is best at playing a file directly from a folder, but falls behind when it comes to helping you manage or find good songs in your music library. See More

Top Pro

Very versatile and easy to use

Top Con

Absence of personalization

VLC Player has only one basic interface in white or black, and overall personalization opportunities are quite narrow. Unfortunately, you're pretty much stuck to the default look. See More

Top Pro

Doesn't require additional codecs

Everything VLC needs to play media files is contained within which means no outside codecs are needed. This makes it one of the most hassle-free music players as it can play virtually anything as soon as it's installed. See More

Top Con

Contains some insignificant but irritating flaws

Despite all keyboard shortcuts, the width of the picture can't be controlled by trackpad. Besides that, the VLC start-up window doesn’t open at the same place or the same width at which it was previously closed. See More

Top Pro

Tons of advanced settings

Besides basic configurations, video player has an extensive amount of adjustable settings. See More

Top Pro

Doesn't manage your music library for you

You organize your music into folders any way you want. Want to play an album? Drag and drop. No tags, no confusion, no fluff. Easy. See More

Top Pro

Can be almost completely keyboard-driven

VLC includes keyboard shortcuts for most actions. The video player can be controlled with simple and customizable keyboard commands. See More

Top Pro

Surprisingly Lightest on Resources

Yes. Lightest. Even better than the ones known to be light. Both when playing music, only a single song or when playing a video. Either in terms of Ram and Cpu. Compared with almost all, including the ones from Windows like mpc-hc .. or light ones from Linux like Alsa Player, Audacious, SmPlayer . See More

Top Pro

Can play every format video available (as of 2017)

Top Pro

Includes Blu-Ray playback support

Blu-Ray playback support was added on July 13th, 2014. It allows playing back DRM-free Blu-Rays with the help of libbluray, libaacs and libbdplus. See More

Top Pro

Supports a GUI interface and an ncurses terminal interface

Top Pro

Can easily stream music across your home network from any device on the network

Using sftp/ssh music (and videos) can be streamed from any server on the network to any device running VLC. VLC can also be used as a webcam for streaming and snapshots. Amazing all in one package See More

Top Pro

Large amount of extensions

VLC has a large amount of extensions. See More

See All

score 13 · Answer 14

yarock

Top Con

Doesn't support playlist files

Top Pro

Easy to switch between different collections

Yarock's database supports multiple music collections, which can be switched between easily. See More

Specs

Top Con

No working packages

Almost impossible to get it to install and work. See More

Top Pro

Does not meddle with your tunes

If you have spent your precious time crafting your music collection the way you like it and don't want any 'jumped up alarm clocks' renaming and altering your tags, Yarock is a good choice for you. See More

Top Con

No ability for mass tag correction

In yarock, album covers can't be added to the files, meaning there's a lack of music fingerprint technology. See More

Top Pro

Multiple views

Yarock offers multiple views when browsing one's music collection, including artist, album, or track. See More

Top Con

Lacks music fingerprinting ability

This application does not have any music fingerprinting abilities such as musicbrainz, which limits the apps usefulness. See More

Top Con

UI may be confusing

First-time users may find the UI un-intuitive. See More

See All

score 26 · Answer 15

qmmp

Top Pro

Offers some skinning options

Qmmp allows the user to drastically change its look via skins. It can use Winamp and Xmms skins, as well as a list of 12 skins made specifically for qmmp that can be found here. See More

Top Con

Interface is not particularly intuitive

FriendlyAntaeus's Experience

Fast and complete of features. Good developer support. See More

Top Pro

Small single-window interface

Unlike more popular players that draw a huge window taking up the entire screen, with tons of knobs and menus popping out in new windows, qmmp gives you a single tiny window (that looks pretty much the same as Winamp used to look) with the basic controls and the playlist. The rest is available through a menu. See More

PioneeringBrizo's Experience

Surprisingly, this is the only player I've tried that splits long files such as audiobooks or concerts into chapters which populate the playlist, instead of only showing hash marks in the seek bar or ignoring chapters entirely. This feature, along with a lightweight interface and extensible plugins makes qmmp a great audio player. See More

Top Pro

Lightweight and supports almost all formats

HappyWhiro's Experience

As with all music players on Linux, it has a few bugs. BUT, it has far less bugs than all the others, making it the most reliable. See More

Top Pro

Plugin based

You can extend it with plugins. See More

DignifiedArebati's Experience

Simply Awesome Musiq Player See More

Top Pro

Qt-App

No matter what OS or desktop you use Qmmp will integrate well See More

wolfsnase's Experience

Has very few dependencies. Easy to use, with a clean and simple interface. Reminds me a bit of the long gone xmms. See More

Top Pro

Clean and simple interface

Top Pro

Depends on libaries

It depends on libaries instead of big fat toolkits like gstreamer. See More

Top Pro

integrated file browser

Top Pro

Supports cue sheets

See All

score 40 · Answer 16

Music Player Daemon

Top Pro

Multiple frontends available

MPD is a music player server that requires a separate client for user interaction. There are many frontends available, with the most popular being ncmpcpp. See More

Top Con

Not a music player, only a music server

You know how you need your browser (Firefox, Chrome, etc.) to access web pages? The browser is what YOU touch, see, and interface with, but in order for it to give you anything it must connect to a server that "serves" appropriate content. mpd is the server in this analogy, NOT the thing you actually use. The front-ends that are available for mpd, now those are music players. See More

SmartAello's Experience

cmus bad mpd good cope See More

Top Pro

Features provide a good music experience

While mostly bare-bones, Music Player Daemon does include a few features which help make it perform well. Buffer support ensures that your music continues to play without interruption even when your system is under an extremely heavy (but temporary) load, gapless playback starts loading a song just before it's needed so that it's ready to play the instant the last song ends. Meanwhile, crossfading allows your songs to blend into one another for continuous playback. See More

Top Con

May not conform to how you organise your library

MPD expects you to have all your music in a single folder (music_directory) and use symbolic links to retrieve other resources. See More

Top Pro

Easy to use with various outputs

Top Con

Poor tagging support

Does not support enough tag types. See More

Top Con

Requires a refresh every time you add music

MPD won't automatically refresh it's library - if you add music to your music folder, you will have to manually tell MPD to refresh or else it won't add the new music. See More

See All

score 34 · Answer 17

Guayadeque

Top Pro

Starts fast

Most other players start rather slowly. This one is written in C++, and the end result is excellent speed. See More

Top Con

Development seems to stall since 2016

HealthyNjirana's Experience

Runs way faster than anything else I've used on Linux, and has crashed only a few times over several years. Easily handles large music collections. See More

Top Pro

Doesn't use much memory

Once installed, Guyadeque only uses about 15 MBs. See More

Top Con

Sidebar lists multiple artists as one artist

A song with multiple artists labeled like "Artist 1; Artist 2; Artist 3" will not be displayed under all three artists, but rather under an artist labeled as "Artist 1; Artist 2; Artist 3." This makes actions as simple as queuing up an album with multiple artists a huge pain. See More

wolfsnase's Experience

I've used this music player for years with a large music collection (around 3k titles). While two other music players with a comparable feature set constantly crashed on that collection, Guayadeque never crashed. The interface could be polished up a bit, but well, it's clean and easy to use. Starts up fast. Scanning and updating the collection works pretty well and fast. The only problem I have with this music player is that untagged mp3 files don't show up in the collection. Development seems to stall since 2016. See More

Top Pro

Well-implemented auto playlist

After music has finished playing, Guadayeque will play a similar type of music. See More

Top Con

Songs with differing artists in an album are displayed as separate albums

Suppose Album 1 by Album Artist A has a lot of songs by Artist A, with one song that features Artist B. Album 1 will get fractured across different artists in the sidebar. See More

ResponsiveTefnut's Experience

I tried many other highly rated music players and have been impressed how polished this player is. This player has the best balance of customization, lightness and features I have seen. See More

Top Pro

Handles large music databases very well

Top Con

Interface is too busy

There's a lot shown on each of Guayeque's screens, and the more important buttons (play/pause and skip buttons) are small and hidden in the top left corner. Most users use music players in the background, meaning they will be switching back and forth with whatever else they're doing. As such, having larger buttons in a more prime location would be preferable. See More

UnderstandingVenus's Experience

Works well for me See More

Top Pro

Smart play

It automatically make a playlist song-by-song you hear from your music file. It finds similar songs. So, as you listen to a song an endless playlist with similar songs is about to happen.. See More

Top Con

Sometimes freezes and crashes

This can happen if you change some settings i.e. add or remove tabs etc. See More

InventiveHaukim's Experience

Just found this player and already I think it's an underrated gem. Plays many different file types other more well known Linux players cannot, for example, aiff files.. Also, very creative similar song automatic Playlist creator right out of the box. See More

Top Pro

Lots of niceties / options / integration

Last.fm shows your profile in the software and also displays info about the artist. Lyrics are downloaded automatically when you want to see them. Cross-fading between songs keeps music constantly coming, which is very important when using music to block out ambient sounds. VU (volume unit) Meters give you something to look at while the music is playing. See More

SharpHercules's Experience

It's my go to music player. Excellent! See More

Top Pro

Clean appearance

Guayadeque has a clean yet customizable appearance. See More

See All

score 26 · Answer 18

MOC - Music On Console

Top Pro

Works as a daemon

MOC can be run (and later controlled) totally in the background. See More

Top Con

No cue

No cue sheet support. See More

TruthfulWerethekau's Experience

Very lightweight and easy to use. Can also be controlled with commands without using the interface (you can add custom shortcuts to the window manager and change songs without switching focus). See More

Top Pro

Works in console only

There's no need for X server when using MOC. See More

ReliableNulgupjisin's Experience

Simply the best. Or - simply and the best. See More

Top Pro

Playlists

MOC handles playlists and it can play custom playlists ad-hoc. Also, after it has finished, it can resume playing the original playlist. See More

ReasonableKhnum's Experience

Very little load! See More

Top Pro

Lightweight

MOC uses a very little resources See More

See All

score 42 · Answer 19

gmusicbrowser

Top Pro

Great with large libraries

This program uses a tagging system to help you find the music you're looking for, and can even help find duplicates. It will also automatically sync with a folder, meaning you don't have to manually initiate a scan. See More

Top Con

It won't install on Linux Mint 21

EagerAli-zu's Experience

It uses GTK2. I'm using Wayland Gnome with desktop scaling. The icons don't scale correctly. See More

Top Pro

Cool AutoTagger

The smartest auto tagger out there. It has an intelligent regular expression system to tag the files based on the filename contents. If the name contains something like Band -Album - Track -Title www.download.mp3, the system lets you filter the metadata fields. See More

Top Con

Held back by performance issues

Can be very slow, uses a lot of resources, and has a decent amount of lag when going between songs. See More

ThoroughHunCame's Experience

it is with vlc one of the bit-perfect player See More

Top Pro

Large assortment of layouts

You can pretty much emulate your favorite media player layout inside of gmusicbrowser as it has a large assortment of pre-made layouts as well as an insurmountable amount of options for custom layouts. See More

Top Con

Doesn't support media keys

LuckyPapNiginGara's Experience

I have a large music collection - 100s of ripped CDs. I have used gmusicbrowser for a while and like it quite a lot. I can find artists and albums fairly easily. I'm very satisfied with this app. See More

Top Pro

Remembers playing/pause status even after restart

With most other options, you have to start the player, wait a few seconds, then click Play. Gmusicbrowser spares you the wait and plays music automatically upon startup (if you were playing music when you closed it previously). See More

Top Con

Unusual keyboard shortcuts

Space does not pause, for instance. This would have been useful, as hitting the space bar is easier than finding the play/pause button - most music players use the space bar in this fashion. See More

Top Pro

Intelligent auto playlists

Automatically generated playlists with the criteria you decide. Great for big collections. See More

Top Con

Some plugins are outdated

Several plugins works on older versions of libraries no longer available for recent distros. See More

Top Con

Poor library management

Initial load may have issue skipping parts of ones library, re-scanning may not resolved the issue. It also may tax ones CPU quite a lot, during these load attempts. See More

Top Con

No WMA support

For those with older libraries that may still have unconverted WMA files, this can be a non-starter. See More

Top Con

Large assortment of features and layouts may be confusing

Some people may find all of gmusicbrowsers layout and options daunting to figure out. See More

See All

score 7 · Answer 20

MPV

Top Pro

Integrates with streaming services

When used with youtube-dl. See More

Top Con

Not meant to be an audio player at all

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Mac, Linux, BSD, Android

Top Pro

Minimal interface

Click to open files and get Video with sound (and passthrough of codecs like DTS, etc.) for a perfect cinema experience. Works okay for many files. Default window is not much more than a title bar - and if you drag/resize the window it resizes the video and leaves no empty areas. There is no visible control or display unless you use mouse/keyboard over the window. This is the best player to use unless you're going for a media center (then use MPV based Plex Media Player to display and play the Plex Server library). See More

Top Pro

Fast

Top Pro

Detailed configuration possible

Top Pro

Extremely responsive

Top Pro

Caches livestreams

Intelligently caches livestreams and enables jumping within the cached stream. See More

Top Pro

Up to date

Always up to date, rapid development. See More

See All

68 Options Considered

My Recommendation for Audacious

My Recommendation for Audacious

Streamlined player not weighed down by unnecessary options

No manual sorting fields

Tons of plugins

Updates are not very frequent

Lightweight

No bit perfect output past 24bit

Support for Winamp themes

Buggy

Folder oriented player, but able to play any music container and highly configurable

The easiest player for multiple types of files

Compatibility with most media formats

My Recommendation for DeaDBeeF

My Recommendation for DeaDBeeF

A lot of plugins

shuffle mode doesn't play an entire huge playlist (over 25 days)

Lightweight

GTK-App

Extremely customizable

Terrible GUI

Uses GTK2 or GTK3

Fails when opening a CUE file

ALSA plugin allows bit-perfect pipeline to DAC

Ubuntu's sound menu buttons don't work

Supports single-album CUE files

Not as many options as other players

Smooth and easy

Clunky

Offers a ReplayGain scanner out-of-the-box

My Recommendation for QMPlay2

My Recommendation for QMPlay2

Feature rich and simple to use

The interface can be easily customised

It is easy to crate and export playlists

My Recommendation for Tauon Music Box

My Recommendation for Tauon Music Box

Lightweight and works well on RPi4

Does not support playlist files

Can change the views to be discreet

Packaging

Has subsonic / airsonic support built right in

Can't make app always on top

Easily able to edit gstreamer command

My Recommendation for cmus

My Recommendation for cmus

CLI only

No album art

Does not use a lot of memory

CLI only

Works very well with tags from MusicBrainz database

Difficult to use

Good library structure

Can't play wavepack files

Fast

Customizable keybindings for a personal experience

No mouse required

Open source extensions and scripts

My Recommendation for Clementine

My Recommendation for Clementine

Slow development

Tag editing

Resource exhaustive

Intuitive and fast to set up

Doesn't allow gapless playback

Sensible UI

Bit perfect output no longer configurable

Very good folder organization

Too bloated by default with things like LastFM that can't be removed

Remote app for Android

Not customizable

Supports a lot of online services

Horrible user interface and confusing layout

Built-in equalizer for custom sound

Ugly

Creates playlists based on past music you listened to

Goes crazy with CPU and RAM

Built-in format conversion

Default settings aren't great