When comparing Musique vs Sayonara, the Slant community recommends Sayonara for most people. In the question“What are the best audio players for Linux?” Sayonara is ranked 9th while Musique is ranked 10th. The most important reason people chose Sayonara is:
Has everything you may need onboard.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Can handle very large local music libraries
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.
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.
Pro Sorts by the users options
Has everything you may need onboard.
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.
Pro Closes to panel while playing...
It closes to the icon (tray) on your panel, while it keeps playing. Clicking the icon you can open it again, or pause/ stop/ play it there. Great to get it out of your way when you're working with cool sounds in the background.
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!
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.
Cons
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.
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.
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).
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...
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".
