When comparing Music Player Daemon vs Harmony, the Slant community recommends Music Player Daemon for most people. In the question“What are the best audio players for UNIX-like systems?” Music Player Daemon is ranked 16th while Harmony is ranked 44th. The most important reason people chose Music Player Daemon is:
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.
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Pros
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.
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.
Pro Easy to use with various outputs
Pro Plugins
Has support for plugins allowing functionality to be extended such as adding a new audio source.
Pro Themes
Has several themes to choose from to suite everyones individual tastes.
Pro System integration
Integrates with the operating system with support for tray icons and hooking into the audio system.
Cons
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.
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.
Con Poor tagging support
Does not support enough tag types.
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.