When comparing yarock vs cmus, the Slant community recommends cmus for most people. In the question“What are the best audio players for UNIX-like systems?” cmus is ranked 5th while yarock is ranked 14th. The most important reason people chose cmus is:
CLI makes Cmus clean, fast and minimalist.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Easy to switch between different collections
Yarock's database supports multiple music collections, which can be switched between easily.
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.
Pro Multiple views
Yarock offers multiple views when browsing one's music collection, including artist, album, or track.
Pro CLI only
CLI makes Cmus clean, fast and minimalist.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
Pro No mouse required
cmus does not require a mouse as it runs in the terminal
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.
Cons
Con Doesn't support playlist files
Con No working packages
Almost impossible to get it to install and work.
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.
Con Lacks music fingerprinting ability
This application does not have any music fingerprinting abilities such as musicbrainz, which limits the apps usefulness.
Con UI may be confusing
First-time users may find the UI un-intuitive.
Con No album art
cmus does not display album art
Con CLI only
No graphical interface is available for cmus. Everything is done through CLI (command line interface).
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.