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I'm looking to get rid of rhythmbox as my primary music player. Preferably something that allows multiple folders for the music library and has support for the new sound indicator.

Mostly I want more playback options that Rhythmbox lacks like a related suffle or mood shuffle type of thing. Also, auto rating based on listening habits would be nice (like Rhythmbox used to have).

I have tried Exaile and Banshee. But I couldn't add more than one folder to my library.

Let me know what you all have experienced with various different players. Even some good rhythmbox plugins to add these types of features would be great.

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11 Answers 11

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You can get around the one folder restriction by using symbolic links.
Say your music folder is ~/Music and you want to import ~/OtherMusic, you can put a symbolic link for ~/OtherMusic inside the ~/Music folder.

In a terminal: ln -s ~/OtherMusic ~/Music

You might need to restart your music player for it to notice the sym-link.

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  • very nice. I hadn't thought of this. I'll give this a shot, and see how it works out.
    – gregghz
    Oct 14, 2010 at 21:31
  • That works well enough, but Banshee only recognizes files by extension ... and a lot of my mp3s doesn't have the .mp3 extension ... so it doesn't see those. Exaile doesn't have sound indicator support.
    – gregghz
    Oct 14, 2010 at 22:43
  • exaile has the same extension problem (this isn't a problem in rhythmbox). Perhaps I'll need to be fixing that ...
    – gregghz
    Oct 14, 2010 at 22:46
  • (I got that file extension problem fixed)
    – gregghz
    Oct 15, 2010 at 0:06
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Check this little gem out, http://exaile.org/ its goal is to be like amarok but runs natively in GTK.

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  • I do like exaile. However, it doesn't have support for the sound indicator (at least not anywhere I could find)
    – gregghz
    Oct 14, 2010 at 22:42
  • looks like support for he sound indicator is an up and coming feature...
    – TheXed
    Oct 14, 2010 at 22:50
  • Interesting. It may be that exaile will become my default. I like that it's written in python so I can contribute to the project. With that, I think I'll start looking in to creating a plugin for exaile to support the sound indicator ....
    – gregghz
    Oct 15, 2010 at 0:05
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I would suggest to check out banshee media player

http://banshee.fm/

see in the page the tab features...

and it has ubuntu one integration too via plugins search in synaptic :

banshee-extension-ubuntuonemusicstore

and it has a lot of plug-ins search in synaptic banshee

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  • +1, the only problem I have with it is that it seems pretty CPU hungry :( Oct 20, 2010 at 8:16
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I would suggest Audacious.

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Amarok used to be really good for features. Give it a shot.

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  • I had considered amarok. I've liked it a lot in the past, how is it in Gnome?
    – gregghz
    Oct 14, 2010 at 22:40
  • Like any other Qt application to be honest. It works but it'll never quite look right.
    – Oli
    Oct 15, 2010 at 7:53
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Exaile has a collection manager. You should be able to add as many media locations as you need for it to manage your collections.

Exaile Collection Manager

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  • ah, good to know! I think I passively knew this, but didn't remember it >.< However, it still lacks sound indicator support .. This isn't absolutely critical, but it's very nice to have.
    – gregghz
    Oct 14, 2010 at 22:47
  • +1 for Exaile. The best after Amarok 1.4. But since Amarok1.4 is gone now :(
    – Ignacio
    Oct 15, 2010 at 22:17
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I've found that this Rhythmbox plugin works allowing "related shuffle" type of playback. Install it, enable it, and add a sing to the Play Queue. Start the Play Queue song and it checks for related artists in Last FM and queues up one song from your library that is similar. It is rudimentary, but it is the only one I've found that works.

http://mail.gnome.org/archives/rhythmbox-devel/2007-November/msg00047.html

The download link is in that message.

Tested as working on Rhythmbox 0.13.1

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I would suggest to check out DeadBeef and Clementine (Amarok Fork).

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  • All the way! (They are also lighter.)
    – user47206
    Mar 13, 2012 at 23:49
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After trying most of the alternative options over the last 4 or 5 releases of Ubuntu, my favorite alternative to Rhythmbox is Clementine. It has most of the same features that Rhythmbox has and runs with fairly low CPU usage on my 2.2 GHz system, compared to Banshee or Exaile. About the only thing it doesn't allow me to do is cross-scrobble from Libre.fm to Last.fm (admittedly, doing this in Rhythmbox is a setting hack).

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Have you tried Quodlibet? It's available in package quodlibet: sudo apt-get install quodlibet

You can add music folders with Music -> Open folder... (Ctrl+O). It may take a while to scan a whole directory hierarchy, especially if you have a large collection; you won't see new music until the scan is finished.

The basic interface is rather "barebones", but it has a lot of plugins to enrich it (select menu Music -> Plugins)

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  • I was unable to add music to the library at all? When the library would reload, it looked like it was doing something, but once it was finished, no songs showed up. On reload they showed up. However, they don't all seem to be there.
    – gregghz
    Oct 14, 2010 at 21:07
  • Ah, I see. I went in to preferences and set the library to be my music folder. In any case, I think this might be a little too bare bones for me, although it has promise.
    – gregghz
    Oct 14, 2010 at 21:37
  • (Merged info provided in comments into answer text.) Oct 14, 2010 at 22:19
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Use the Songbbird

Download

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  • umm... songbird?
    – RolandiXor
    Jan 9, 2011 at 2:16

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