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Apple has a very slick tool, called "Remote.app" that allows you to control music playback on a PC running iTunes, see.

It lets you quickly select and queue songs for playback, and adjust the volume among other things. What's the best linux-compatible alternative? I'm not married to a particular music player on my PC - Banshee, Rhythmbox, whatever, I'm open.

My ideal vision is laying on the couch queuing up songs without having to turn on a monitor. Wow.. putting it like that makes me feel lazy.

Anyway...VNC is cumbersome...surely there's a better way?

3 Answers 3

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You can do it with mpd.

You have to set up the daemon such that it allows ssh connection (basically comment the line bind to adress: 127.0.0.1 in the config file /etc/mpd/), then it will play in the background. You can then control it from any client (i.e. from any device which can connect to your PC) there is a list there:

http://mpd.wikia.com/wiki/Clients

Some of them are particuliarly designed for Iphone. Some are php clients also, which can be fun.

This is what I'm using at home and it works perfectly!

3
  • Thanks, I'll give it a try. Can you recommend a client? I don't mind tinkering, but the simpler the initial set-up the better.
    – Sk606
    Dec 28, 2010 at 19:52
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    Hi, I don't use mpd with a smartphone so I don't know which client is good or not. On my laptop I use gmpc, I like it because he is the only one which let me editing my playlists. Ario and sonata are also nice. Anyway, the hard part in the configuration is the mpd.conf file which doesn't depend on which client you use. All client I used were straigthforward to set up.
    – Noz
    Dec 29, 2010 at 3:59
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    Edit to my previous comment, you might want to try ncmpd, it is a command line player. mpc is also fun to create bash scripts to queue, play, stop songs.
    – Noz
    Dec 29, 2010 at 7:33
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If you have an iPhone/iPod touch that you want to use you can install Songbird - although it is not under developement for Linux you can still get an unsupported version.

https://wiki.songbirdnest.com/Developer/Articles/Builds/Contributed_Builds#Linux

iTunes has an app for songbird that you can use to do exactly the same as it's remote - I've tried it and it works fine on Linux.

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I think you should take a look on this list: http://www.techdrivein.com/2011/08/5-android-apps-for-remotely-controlling.html

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