Cross Platform YouTube Music Player - MusicTube!

For the good or worse, by using online video sharing services such as the extremely popular YouTube for instance, we can watch or listen to thousands or millions of songs without having to pay a penny :). Although I don't use it that often (because I have a limited-bandwidth internet connection, damn!) but if you use it quite often then would it be nice if we could have a dedicated application that lets us listen/search & manage all the music files on YouTube from our desktop with ease?.

In that case, I'm pretty sure there are quite a few already but I came across this one called "MusicTube" and it's awesome!. It's a cross-platform application written in the Qt GUI toolkit and supports MS Windows, Mac OSX and Ubuntu at the moment.

Although it's not fully Open-Source + not entirely free either (you'll have to buy it after the trial period) ... but it's a pretty cool utility which could be worth trying, for some. 

Main features...

*. As said, the UI is designed using the Qt toolkit and looks quite simple and easy to use. Although I'm using the Windows version rather than the Ubuntu one because it gave me a dependency error (concerning Qt of course) while trying to install it in Ubuntu 11.04.

*. Search (with automatic suggestions) and manage playlists (with Shuffle or Repeat functions). 

*. Display album art, artist name, etc.

*. Even supports video!. 

*. Although it's still kinda really new (somewhat in a beta stage) but still things like the seek bar, etc worked really well (with speed I might add). 

*. Automatic Lyrics support.

*. Change volume levels.

*. Copy the currently playing file's link. 

*. Only play "Live" performance or switch to "Cover" mode which only plays the remixed ones.

*. Shows different versions of the same song.

Well, that's about it for the features. Although it would've been nice if there was a feature to download the files (perhaps it's in the premium version). But other than that, I'm really impressed with its performance concerning the fact that it's relatively new and all that. 

Anyhow, if interested, you can get it from this official MusicTube page. It's supposed to work in Ubuntu 10.04 and up but as said before, it gave me errors while trying to install it under 11.04 Natty Narwhal. Other than that, if you want to keep listening to millions of songs (both video and audio) all the time for free (well, you gotta pay for the app) by using the YouTube online video sharing service ... then MusicTube is a pretty cool tool, me thinks :D. Enjoy!

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How to Install Potamus (music player) in Ubuntu Linux?

Potamus is a very, very simple music player designed for the GNU/Linux geeks :). Although "it says" that Potamus is an extremely fast (loading) player although while I was using it, well, it loaded fast but not that impressive because I've seen others that loads faster than Potamus even after having a lot more features in them.

Remember, Potamus in no way can replace your current music players such as Banshee, Rhythmbox, BMP, etc because with it you don't have a menu, no options whatsoever + you can't even add a folder or create and manage more than one playlist either.

But I guess that's exactly its purpose, to be as simple as possible. But again, if you want to manage a lot of music files... then THIS IS NOT FOR YOU.

Main features...

*. The GUI is written in GTK+ toolkit.

*. Can play MP3, OGG Vorbis, WAV, FLAC.

*. Gap-less playback and 24-bit audio output support.

*. Supports either OSS or ALSA sound servers OR JACK out-put if you prefer enhanced, minimized latency while playback but can "create" a bit unstable environment, sometimes.

This message lets you use "Jackd" sound server with Potamus, but as you can see in the message itself, it can be unstable sometimes. So in doubt, just choose "No" (story of my life :P)...

*. Few audio channels related features. 

Well, that's about it actually. There are no album-art, Last.fm or advanced audio file data fetching (like MP3 tag editing, etc) to talk about.

But if you want a very simple looking GUI and only gonna need to be able to access very little (say 15-30) music files at a time and can cope with the fact that the only way you can add a music file is by just drag-n-drop (yikes!)... well, then just give it a try.

But please don't throw angry comments at poor me ... 'cause I did give you a "warning" ;-). Anyhow, you can install Potamus music player in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, 10.10 and 10.04 by using the below command in your Terminal window.

sudo apt-get install potamus

That's about it!.

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Muine: A Fast and Simple Music Player for GNU/Linux!

Muine is a highly simplified music player for GNU/Linux OS platform (I'm using Ubuntu 11.04 for this review). It's written in the GTK+ toolkit thus aimed at the Gnome desktop but thanks to the compatibility between GTK/Qt, etc... you can use it in KDE as well.

As said, this is a very simplified player that has a playback engine of its own. But I don't think it actually has the capacity to be as powerful as to replace others such as Rhythmbox or Banshee for instance since because of the simplicity, the GUI lacks few things such as a playback progress bar for example (yikes!).

Main features...

*. It supports the playback of OGG, MP3, WAV, AAC and FLAC file types.

*. Displays album-art (covers) if found.

*. Although not the most easiest thing to do using it but you can build playlists.

Although while loading a folder that contained like 40-50 audio files, it did take sometime though...

*. Search for files and albums easily.

*. Audio volume gain support.

*. Supports plugins thus you can expand its features such as system tray support, export playlist to XML, etc. 

You can install Muine in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal by using the below command.

sudo apt-get install muine

And for other GNU/Linux distributions support, please visit this Muine home page for more.

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RhythmCat: Simple and a Lightweight Music Player for GNU/Linux!

RhythmCat is a music player that's written using Python as the programming language and GTK for the GUI design and comes with a minimalistic of appearance.

It doesn't have a huge list of features but comes with more than enough of 'em to let you easily manage a lot of audio files with ease + as mentioned in the title, it requires little system resources when comparing with some other ones as well.

It use the Gstreamer multimedia framework and if you have installed the proprietary codec pack in Ubuntu (I'm using it for testing this), then just download and install the player which is gonna take like below 0.7 MB concerning file size!.

Don't be fooled by the word "simple" because RhythmCat comes with a decent amount of useful features.  

Main features...

*. Excellent playlist support - Add multiple ones easily, export/import existing ones, removing, renaming and re-scanning (RhythmCat calls it "refreshing), etc.

*. Import music files by using either folders or individually.

*. Built in plug-in support so you can expand its features easily.

*. Has the ability to play file types such as Vorbis (also known as OGG), MP3, WMA, WAV, FLAC... as said it's based on Gstreamer so the list should be quite long :).

*. Excellent Equalizer with built in presets and save your own ones manually.

*. Play/Pause/Stop/Next... you know the usual "buttons".

*. Repeat or play files randomly.

*. "Mini mode": once activated the player switches itself into a very minimal looking GUI, may not always be useful but pretty cool.

*. System tray support (minimizing, etc).

*. Has 3 main themes.

*. Album-art display (but I don't think it's implemented actually because it just displayed the default art-work image all the time!). 

*. And a "settings" window that lets you configure few advanced options of the player itself.

You can install RhythmCat in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal by downloading the latest build for Ubuntu/Debian or other GNU/Linux distributions from this downloading page.

Although you can't search for files within it's main window, etc ... so may not be the best of its kind if you want to manage or find music quite easily as with Banshee, Rhythmbox, etc.

But if you want something that a lot faster and light on your system resources then RhythmCat is a pretty excellent one without a doubt!.

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Foobnix (a music player) for Android is Released!

If you haven't heard then Foobnix is an excellent, cross-platform music player that can be used on GNU/Linux, MS Windows and Mac OSX in the past. But the latest news is that now the developer has released it for Android too!.

So if you're using Android and would like to have a powerful local and online music player (it's famous for that) that has a simple GUI and loads fast... then you should check out the Foobnix in this Android market page.

Although it has been like 2/3 weeks since its official Android release, but it's a bit new thus there could be bugs but from the user ratings... I think it's already a "hit"! nonetheless.

Main features...

*. It's completely free and not free like with filled with Ads ... no ads... nothing, nada, free as in freedom :D.

*. Last.fm and VK integration, so you can easily share and listen to music all day long.

*. Playlist support with play similar songs, search for files (+ including tags), etc or find songs using online source by genre, artists, name...

*. Fetch album art/covers from Last.fm.

*. Create and delete music folders.

*. Separate download manager.

*. Lyrics support.

*. Super fast updates (bug fixes and new features).

As said it's totally free of charge and requires you to have A Android version of 1.6 or higher to use it. You can learn more about recent updates and news from this official Foobnix android page as well.

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PyMusic - A Python Written, Fast Loading Music Player for GNU/Linux

If you're sick and tired of all these music players nowadays slowing down your old GNU/Linux PC or Laptop and just want a fast loading, simple music player that requires very little system resources, then the Python written, PyMusic player could be the one to look for.

But please be aware of the fact that it's currently on alpha stage thus you might encounter bugs which happened to me as well. For instance when you run it for the first time it asks for your music collection folder. But while I was using it for some reason it could not "remember" my music folder thus I always had to manually put the folder location every time I launched it! which is obviously frustrating.

But as said before this is still in its very early stages thus things like these should be expected but just because I had this issue doesn't mean that you'll encounter by it either. 

Update (4/12/2012): As you can see from the below comment (by the developer), the development of "pymusic" is officially stopped. But that doesn't mean that you cannot use it if it works on your distribution though :).

Main features...

*. It uses the Gstreamer multimedia framework and can handle MP3 and OGG files only it seems at the moment.

*. Very simple GUI and no menus either!.

*. Add multiple folders.

*. Arrange your songs via "Artist Name" or "Song names".

*. A big "missing" feature is the "progress bar" which lets you go to a preferred location in a file manually. So basically you just can't jump into the time-frame that you want which is a MUST!. As said this is still in alpha stage but this must have been there (or may be it's another bug :/...).

That's about it for features. There are no ".deb" packages at the moment but you can install PyMusic in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal (might work on the 10.10 and 10.04... not sure though) by simply downloading the archive from here.

Then extract the content and open your Terminal and change directory to that extracted folder and enter the below command.

sudo make install

To launch it in Unity just search for "pymusic" or press "Alt" + "F2" keys on your keyboard and use the same command in the box.

The current version in 0.2.5 but you can check out whether the maintainer/developers has new updates, etc from his launchpad page in the future.

As said I won't be using it because of the issues and the "missing progress bar" (hope it's not a simplistic features like with Gnome :/) I had but one thing for sure I'll keep a close eye on this little app because after considering its speed ... when a stable release it available I'll most definitely be trying it again!.

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How to Install Gimmix Music Player in Ubuntu Linux?

If you love the now a bit forgotten yet easy to use and simple music players written in C and GTK+2 toolkit that has a GUI similar to the Winamp (what is that? ;-) ), then you'll love Gimmix. If you want a fast loading, effective and fully featured application, then this is pretty awesome.

Don't be fooled by its simplicity since as mentioned it has built in features that most other similar application come with nonetheless.

Few of the main features...

*. Elegant and simple GUI. 

*. Has a Library browser.

*. Search for files within the Library.

*. Amazon album cover art support.

*. ID3 Tag editing (version 2) ability.

*. Automatic lyrics fetching.

*. Switch between compact and full views.

*. Sys tray icon + notification ability (those pop-ups which display currently playing file duration, etc)... are just a few to mention.

Although I don't think it's in active development these days but seriously the application itself downloading size is about 192Kb and it is well known for its ability to use less system resources (RAM) which is very important for dudes like me who has old GNU/Linux Laptop or PCs :).

If you use Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, 10.10 or 10.04 versions then you can install Gimmix 0.5.7.1 by using the below command in your Terminal.

sudo apt-get install gimmix

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How To Install Rhythmbox in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal?

Anyone who uses Gnome desktop these days surely have heard about Rhythmbox even if your distribution does not come with it. For instance, in the past it was actually Rhythmbox which used to be the default audio handling application in Ubuntu. But then Banshee came around and impressed Canonical which ultimately replaced Rhythmbox.

Although in the recent past Banshee and Canonical had a little, something going on (in a bad way :) ), I even thought that Ubuntu will completely remove Banshee from their official support... but they've decided to stick to it and as a result Banshee is the default music player in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal.

Rhythmbox is a GTK written GUI which uses the Gstreamer front-end and according to its developers themselves, it tries to "follow" the work of iTunes. Although almost all knows about it and the features... yet let me give you a simple list of its features nonetheless.

*. Music browser which is pretty easy to use and lets you manage a large collection of music libraries with ease.

*. Playlist support (embedded).

*. Plays MP3, AAC, Vorbis, WMA, Flac... basically, anything that Gstreamer multimedia framework supports, Rhythmbox can play.

*. Internet radio support (Last.fm, etc) + live streaming.

*. Few built in audio visualizations.

*. Transfer music to and from iPod, MTP, and USB storage media players.

*. Rip/Play and burn Audio CDs.

*. Podcast downloading.

*. Preview and free download (legal) music files from sources like Jamendo and Magnatune.

These just a few to mention. Since it support plugins, you can expand its features by simply adding plugins as well. If you use Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal and want to know how to install Rhythmbox, then open your Terminal and enter the below command. Enjoy!.

sudo apt-get install rhythmbox

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How to Install Gnome Music Player Client (GTK2+ written) in Ubuntu?

GNU/Linux is getting heavier by each day. Although you could easily install any GNU/Linux distribution with a low-end (by today's standards) Laptop/PC not that long ago, yet these days, if you don't have at least 512MB or 1GB of RAM, then you might be better off with a "lightweight" destribution.

Even though sometimes it feels like the more system resources an application consumes, better the features it offers, which is a false assumption and is something that is rarely proven. But now and then, we're sometimes confronted by "little" apps that keep reminding us that, there's still the possibility of creating something that consumes less system resources yet has the ability to give a lot of features by default.

Forgive me for dragging you along this far into the post but I just wanted to give you one of the most popular reasons for the existence of an amazing music player that's written in GTK2 tool-kit called Gnome music player client (GMPC).

When loaded with thousands of audio files into the libraries where few other "popular" music players consume some decent amount of RAM from your GNU/Linux Laptop/PC, but GMPC does the same "task/s" yet it needs few times lesser amounts of system resources, which is quite impressive!.

And remember, as I said before, GMPC is a fully featured music player, not something that has very little options thus resulting in a such a phenomenon :).

Main features...

*. Playlist support.

*. Manage huge music libraries with as little PC resources as possible.

*. Supports a huge list of plugins such as alarm, album view, AWN applet, dynamic playlist, last.fm, libnotify, lirc, Wikipedia data fetching, etc.

*. Few built in "views".

*. Edit audio "tags".

*. last.fm support (including album/artist, etc information fetching).

*. Search for your favorite music with ease.

*. Not just for GNU/Linux actually, it's a cross-platform application that can also be run in MS Windows, Solaris and Mac OSX as well.

If you want to install Gnome Music Player Client in Ubuntu 11.04 (should work for 10.10/10.04), then simply open your Terminal and issue the below command.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gmpc-trunk/ppa

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install gmpc

sudo apt-get install gmpc-last-fm

As said before, GMPC comes with a huge list of packages by default. So other than installing one by one, just enter the below command which should install all the available packages.

sudo apt-get install gmpc-plugins

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Meet BeatBox! - Another Cool Music Player from the Elementary Project!

If Elementary OS designers can keep working like this... I think in the future they have an opportunity to built a little empire of their own without a doubt. Currently they have a file manager, a gorgeous theme, mail client, application menu interface, etc ... and now the latest is the long awaited music player called Beatbox!.

It somewhere around last year, DanRabbit create a mockup showing the initial ideas about a new music player and few days ago they've released it (still in its very early stages 0.1 version), finally. And according to them, this will be the default audio player in their next Elementary OS release as well (obviously).

And to be honest, it's not so different from Banshee or any other player that we've seen so far concerning the interface... but since we all know for a fact that GNU/Linux developers (especially Gnome team and Canonical) loves Mac OSX's idea of simplicity... which elementary also seems to closely follow, the Beatbox player is by default is designed to be simple. Minimal distractions.

The original "Mock-up" from Danrabbit.

Last.fm support to playing mp3, Ogg vorbis, WAV, Flac, etc to managing large collections of audio files, Beatbox seems pretty impressive even at this early stage. Does it support Unity?, of course. But this is written using the Vala programming language thus you'll have to make sure it's installed it first.

If your Ubuntu distribution has outdated Vala libraries, then you'll have to update it to a recent version.

To do that, first enter the below command.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:vala-team
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install valac
valac --version

If the version indicates 0.12 (or higher) then you're good to go. If your Vala version is below that, then use the below command.

sudo apt-get install vala-0.12

So if you want to install Beatbox in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, then open your Terminal window and issue the below command.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:sgringwe/beatbox
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install beatbox

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Banshee 2.0.1 is Released - How To Install it in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal?

Nobody wants an introduction about what is Banshee is all about. In fact due to few recent issues with Canonical , Banshee is now actually a world famous :P. Anyhow, although I first thought that Canonical would just kick Banshee out of their distro, but for the obvious reason of getting too much negative "heat" from the community, still with Natty Narwhal, Banshee is the default music player.

From last.fm integration, fetching album/artist, etc information via internet to purchasing mp3 files directly from Amazon + syncing your music between Android or iPhone, etc... this is a pretty darn good music player nonetheless.

By using the official PPA channel, we can easily install Banshee in Ubuntu (should also work for 10.10/10.04 ... besides the 11.04 as well).

So, open your Terminal and enter the below command.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:banshee-team/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install banshee banshee-community-extensions

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Foobnix, A Powerful Music Player for GNU/Linux!

IF you want an excellent music player + also an audio converter at the same time, then Foobnix is the one to go for!. The GUI looks a bit different than the default "layout" of most the other music players for GNU/Linux but the default albums on the "left" and the playlist to the "right", it kinda makes sense, don't you think? ;).

Main features...

*. Manage large collections of music + inbuilt search box.

*. Not to worry, you can change between "views" easily.

*. Around 3000 online radio stations support by default.

*. It has a download manager of its own, so you can download songs directly from the internet sources.

*. Record live radios.

*. As mentioned before, you can convert between almost all the popular audio codecs such as wav, mp3, wma, ac3, m4a, etc.

*. A powerful built in Equalizer.

*. Playback support - MP3, MP4, AAC, CD Audio, WMA, Vorbis, FLAC, WavPack, WAV, AIFF, Musepack, Speex, AU, SND and more!.

*. Lyrics and album art/cover fetching support.

*. Assign keyboard shortcuts... are just a few to name.

I'm pretty sure, by the time you read few of these main features of Foobnix player, you should be wanting to get your hands on it already :P. If you use Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal /10.10/10.4 then you can easily install Foobnix media player by entering below command in your Terminal.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:foobnix-player/foobnix
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install foobnix

This is actually a cross-platform player. So even Microsoft Windows and Mac OSX users can download and install it!. 

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Install YouAmp Music Player In Ubuntu (Using a PPA Channel)

YouAmp is another fully featured music player for GNU/Linux distributions. Although if you already use Banshee or something similar, then most probably you don't need this actually, but still as I say always, for a change ;-) this will come pretty handy.

YouAmp comes with almost all the modern features demanded by the users nowadays and since it's written in GTK+, it integrates with Gnome easily as well.

Some of the main features...

*. Fully supports managing large albums.

*. Tag editing (you know, editing album, year, artist, etc information right into the audio files themselves).

*. Gain audio volume (according to the developer it has feature called "smart gain", meaning that depending on the characteristics of the file that's being playing, YouAmp will make automatic adjustments without distorting the overall audio output quality).

*. last.fm integration.

*. Zero gaps between playback (no delays while playing between files).

*. Uses the Gstreamer framework. So any audio file Gstreamer "understands", yep, YouAmp plays them.

*. Drag-n-drop support.

*. The GUI is pretty straight forward, easy to understand.

If you've installed Ubuntu then you can easily install YouAmp by using a PPA channel. To do that, as usual, open your Terminal and issue the below command.

    sudo add-apt-repository ppa:rojtberg/youamp

    sudo apt-get update

    sudo apt-get install youamp

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Install Cmus in Ubuntu, A Fully Featured Music Player (runs in Console)

Although GNU/Linux won't make it any easier to let you play easily proprietary codecs or anything "proprietary" in general (Ubuntu does make it easier actually). But when set-up properly... boy... these days there are countless applications that can even give you a bit of a headache because of the huge set of choices that are presented!.

A bit of a hacker attitude ;-)

So in that sense, you actually don't need to install Cmus music player. Because it runs in the Console thus have a bit of an ugly looking interface. But for all those who would like to have a music player that looks pretty cool in a way (you know... running in command line... kinda give you the notion of you being a bit of a hacker at all that, like in movies) too.

But make no mistakes boys and gals... it is certainly one of the most powerful ones out there too. For instance, there is actually no audio codec that the Cmus cannot play, it seems.

*. Ogg Vorbis, MP3, FLAC, Musepack, WavPack, WAV, AAC, MP4, and everything supported by ffmpeg (WMA, APE, MKA, TTA, SHN, …) project.

*. Gain audio (you know, a software amplifier).

*. Playlist support and live filtering.

*. Can keep the last played position of a file/s.

*. Director browser.

*. Change colors.

*. Very stable and loads faster than light :P... seriously it is fast.

If you have installed Ubuntu 10.04/10.10 or the 11.04 Natty Narwhal, then you can install Cmus (version 2.3.0) player by issuing the below command in Terminal.

    sudo add-apt-repository ppa:jmuc/cmus

    sudo apt-get update

    sudo apt-get install cmus

Enjoy!.

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