PyTone is a music jukebox written in Python with a curses based GUI. While providing advanced features like crossfading and multiple players, special emphasis is put on ease of use, turning PyTone into an ideal jukebox system for use at parties.
- simple song selection
- using an arbitrary number of music databases with hierarchical (artist/album/songs, some tags/artist/album/songs) navigation,
- from list of top and last played songs,
- from list of most recently added songs,
- random song list,
- stored playlists, or
- alternatively from file system
- editable playlist:
- deletion
- move song up/down
- delete played songs
- shuffle
- repetition and automatic addition of random songs, when the playlist is empty
- save to and load from .m3u file
- pluggable players, currently
- internal MP3/Ogg Vorbis player with crossfading and/or
- mpg321 or (the non-free) mpg123 based external player
- display of information for currently selected song:
- ID3 tag
- length, bitrate, sample rate, BPM, ReplayGain information, part of a compilation, podcast
- times played and skipped
- last played
- song rating (1 to 5 stars)
- plays currently selected song on second player (if your computer has a second sound card or one card with more than one line out)
- search functionality:
- quick search by first letter
- incremental search by regular expression
- random song selection taking into account song rating and time at which song was last played
- description of important key bindings in status bar and context sensitive help
- random song suggestion
- logging of played songs
- execution of arbitrary command when playback of new song starts
- basic mixer functionality
- customizable key bindings
- customizable look
- English, French, German, Italian and Polish user interface
- external control, e.g. from the shell
- plugin system; currently plugins for the AudioScrobbler service and for displaying the title in the terminal window and using xosd are included
- Python 3.5 (available from here),
- mutagen (available from here),
- for the mad based internal player (optional):
- for the mpg321 or mpg123 based external player (optional):
The latest version of PyTone can be downloaded as gzipped tar archive from here.
If you want to use the internal libmad based player, you have to build one C extension module located in the pcm subdirectory. This can be done simply via
$ python setup.py build_ext -i
Note that you can also build a C extension module for the output ring-buffer, which requires the libao header files (see above) by setting "buildbufferedaoext = True" at the top of the setup.py file before running the above command.
All configuration options of PyTone can be found in the sample configuration file conf/pytonerc. Side-wide configuration goes into /etc/pytonerc, user specific changes can be put into ~/.pytone/pytonerc. Note that you only have to supply options you want to change. Note that you only have to supply options you want to change. Furthermore, while most of the standard settings will probably fit your needs, you have to change the variable musicbasedir in the section [database.main] of the main database, which specifies the root of your primary MP3 collection. A minimal version of your configuration file should thus contain
# minimal ~/.pytone/pytonerc defining the root of your music collection
[database.main]
musicbasedir=/root/of/your/music/collection
After having adjusted the basic configuration variables to your personal needs, just start the program with
$ ./pytone
and look how the database is being rebuilt. The key bindings described below should say all about the use of PyTone. A list of command line options can be obtained by
$ ./pytone --help
Then let it rock...
The remote control of PyTone is possible using the pytonectl script. For a list of available options use:
$ ./pytonectl --help
In order for the remote control to work, either the socketfile or the enableserver option have to be set in the [network] section of the pytonerc file. By default, the former is the case.
In database/filelist window (left half of screen)
ArrowUp move selection up
ArrowDown move selection down
PageUp/CTRL-P move selection one page up
PageDown/CTRL-N move selection one page down
Home/CTRL-A move selection to beginning
End/CTRL-E move selection to end
ArrowRight/Enter/Space enter directory / add song
ArrowLeft exit directory
i/ALT+ArrowRight add song or directory (recursively)
r insert random selection of selected directory
(including subdirs)
u update ID3 information for song/directory
D delete / undelete currently selected
song/directory
ALT+Enter immediately play song
TAB switch to playlist window
ALT+<character> Quicksearch: jump to next entry that begins
with character
CTRL-S// Search in list
f Focus on songs matching approximately a search
string
In playlist window (lower right quarter half of screen)
ArrowUp move selection up
ArrowDown move selection down
PageUp/CTRL-P move selection one page up
PageDown/CTRL-N move selection one page down
Home/CTRL-A move selection to beginning
End/CTRL-E move selection to end
+ move selected song up
- move selected song down
d delete selected song
ALT+Enter immediately play song
r shuffle playlist
TAB/ArrowLeft/h switch to database/filelist window
ArrowRight/l jump to currently selected song in filelist window
Always active
p start/pause playing
S stop playing
n advance to next song in playlist
b go back to previous song in playlist
> fast forward in song
< rewind in song
BACKSPACE delete played songs
CTRL-D clear playlist
CTRL-W save playlist to file
CTRL-R load playlist from file
( decrease output volume
) increase output volume
{ decrease playback speed
} increase playback speed
~ reset playback speed to normal
1 - 5 change rating of selected item
ALT-1 - ALT-5 change rating of currently playing song
? show help
! show message log
% show statistical information about database(s)
= show information about selected item
L show lyrics of selected song
CTRL-V toggle information shown in item info window
F10 toggle UI layout (one/two column)
CTRL-X CTRL-X exit program (the keypresses have to be
maximally one tenth of a second apart)
For discussions on PyTone, a mailing list has been created. For more information on subscribing and for the list archive, see here.
PyTone was written since my favourite MP3 Jukebox (KJukebox) wasn't maintained anymore. Its simple user interface and good usability even without a mouse combined with the crossfading ability of the player, have not been reached by any other free program. Especially for the use at a party, KJukebox was very well suited.
However, after looking around on the net for sometime, I found mjs, a curses based MP3 Jukebox system, which featured a really simple and efficient GUI. Unfortunately, it was written in C and already the first attempts to tailor it to my needs showed that probably a Python version of this program would be a great win. That's how the development of PyTone started...
After one week of intensive programming version 1.0 of what was then called pyjuke was ready and was deployed during a three day long party. It proved to be very usable (even on a 38400 baud serial terminal) and astoundingly stable, even under extreme, Woodstock like conditions (very heavy rain + deep mud :-) )
Subsequently, the internal mad based player was written, which provides crossfading capabilities, a new, more imaginative name was found (kudos to Harry!) and PyTone was released.
PyTone was written by Jörg Lehmann and is free software licensed under the GNU GPL Version 2.
Please send comments, wishes, bug reports and patches to the mailing list or directly to me, Jörg Lehmann joerg@luga.de.
Of course, I always like to hear of happy users of PyTone.