When comparing Nuvola Player vs Sayonara, the Slant community recommends Sayonara for most people. In the question“What are the best audio players for UNIX-like systems?” Sayonara is ranked 7th while Nuvola Player is ranked 42nd. The most important reason people chose Sayonara is:
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!
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Mpris v2 support
Nuvola supports Mpris v2 which means that there's sound menu support in most modern Linux desktop environments.
Pro Creates a native-like front-end for music streaming webapps
Nuvola Player permits the use of music streaming webapps like Amazon Cloud Player, Google Play Music, and Spotify with an interface that aims to work as much like a native desktop application as possible. It currently supports 15 music streaming services.
Pro Can be run from the command-line
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 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 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 Sorts by the users options
Has everything you may need onboard.
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 Strong focus on online
Streams are nice. But what about what I want and have? Strong focus on online listening. And if that is what you want exclusively, this is bloat. Better go with something really focused, functional and SMALL.
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".
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...