Hello,

I hope that you can help me to choose the right player. I am also interested in any existing plug-in or programs that you consider I could use, or any ideas you might have.

What is what I want to do?

At my work the music is considered important and it should fit the "mood" (that mood mostly depends on the time of the day and day of the week), follow some criteria... but we don't have a dedicated DJ or something like that and often everyone is too busy to take care when care is needed. We have tried lots of methods including "mood" tags, premade playlists, full random... they simply don't work for us, but after testing it for some months I'm quite happy with my last idea.

With Foobar2000, I've created several personal tags that work as vectors (party, violence, quality...) and also carefully tagged some less used standard ID3 tags, thanks to that I can create a new playlist at a glance with a relatively complex search, it works quite well for me but in it's current state it's too complicated for my workmates, I would like to automate the whole thing as much as possible, and give it a simple interface.

I don't want to write yet another player, it should be a plug-in or a program that interacts with an existing player. Since not everyone here believes in the idea yet I can't choose a player that wouldn't allow them to play music as they did until now.

So, what player I am looking for?

MUST
- Either accept plug-ins (Better if Python is possible) or allow external control of the playlist / queue.
- Playlist driven (That means, allows searching the library without that affecting which song will play next. Like Foobar2000 or Amarok, not like Quod Libet or iTunes)
- Replaygain support
- MP3, OGG and FLAC support
- Have a simple interface, even better if I can remove somehow unused elements.
- Allow dropping files form a folder (Some workmates work like that)

SHOULD
- Free Software (Although I think that Foobar2000 is excellent I fell uncomfortable creating anything for a program with a closed source core, I will use it only if I can't find any alternative)
- Work in Linux (better if also in Windows, but Linux is priority)
- Allow seeing easily the tags I am interested on (Like in allow choosing the fields that appear in the playlist)

WHISH
- Work both in Linux and Windows (If only one, better Linux that Windows)
- A decent tagger. (I will be using "language" tag for sure)
- Written in Python (just in case I need to touch the program itself, but not a must)

UNNEEDED
- The PC is not connected to any network, things like Last.fm or Wikipedia support are not only unneeded but also undesired if they can't be removed and complicate the interface.
- We don't need video or fancy visualizations.


These are the programs I have considered so far and the problems I've found:
- Foobar2000: Closed source, Windows only (I really prefer Linux).
- Amarok: Interface way too complicated, my workmates wouldn't even try it.
- Rhythmbox: Not play-list driven
- Listen: Interface has too many things we don't need.
- Quod Libet: May be, it has the best tagger, allows creating playlists with regular expressions and it's Python. But it's not playlist driven. I can achieve a similar behaviour if I take the "browser" to a different window and change the default behaviour of double click to "add to queue", but since it doesn't keep the settings of the windows it becomes "somehow complicated for my workmates". It also doesn't support dropping folders to it and the interface is a bit messy.
- Exaile: May be, my lazy-to-learn workmates would fell comfortable with the interface. it accepts plugins and it's written in Python. But, it has problems with language tagging, and ReplayGain support is limited to read. Maybe I can solve that with external programs. (Tags: Ex Falso, any idea for ReplayGain?)
- Aqualung: May be, haven't tested it fully.

Would you recommend any other?

Songbird

The nightly builds have gotten much better, but some things are still borked.

http://wiki.songbirdnest.com/Developer/Art.../Nightly_Builds

EDIT: yay, media keys are fixed in last nights build, fixed from a few days ago.

Foobar2000 works perfectly in Linux under Wine. However AFAIK drag-and-drop does not work in Linux+Wine.


Also a good suggestion! I don't think there is Replaygain support yet, though.

I like that it bases a lot of it's functionality in add-ons, because that allows removing what you won't use, and it feels much better than the last time I tried it. But it's default behaviour is to play directly the library (like iTunes) instead of queueing the songs (like Foobar2000), that is a show stopper for me. The NowPlaying addon would be enough if I could somehow avoid that a double click in the library plays directly the song, or even better, if a double click put the song in queue, but I haven't found a way. And then there's the ReplayGain support.



I'm keeping it as the last option.

Well, this player proably isnt what your looking for, but IMO its the best besides FB...the interface is the simplest I've ever seen, in fact thats why I like it and sounds a little like what your looking for, its ultra lightweight and doesnt have all the extra junk most players come with.

http://www.hakeem.gigahost.dk/

This is basically it, no fancy buttons, no nothing, its operated all by right click menu.

MPD with any client that may suit you?

My fault, I didn't mention that I managed to teach most of my mates the advantages of a tag based library, it's only a few that still prefer the drag&drop method.



Thanks a lot for mentioning MPD, the server-client model sounds perfect for what I want to do, there are some "things" that I must learn to fix, but I'll ask that in the MPD forums.