Panflute provides a common interface for controlling music player
software.  While most music players offer some way to let other programs
control them and get status information, most of them implement their
own unique interface.  Even the players that implement an MPRIS
interface often have quirks unique to their particular implementation.
These issues make it difficult for a program to communicate with
whichever music player the user happens to prefer.

Panflute solves this problem by handling all the player-specific details
for you.  It exposes a MPRIS interface that hides the details of
whichever player is running, allowing remote-player-control applications
to code to a single interface.  Panflute also provides extensions that
expose additional features not available through MPRIS, such as setting
song ratings or being notified when the playback position changes
(saving the need to repeatedly poll for this information).

Panflute also comes with a MATE panel applet to demonstrate how the
Panflute backend daemon can be used.

Panflute supports the following music players:

  * Amarok (>= 1.4)  - http://amarok.kde.org/
  * Audacious        - http://audacious-media-player.org/
  * Banshee (>= 1.0) - http://banshee.fm/
  * Clementine       - http://www.clementine-player.org/
  * Decibel          - http://decibel.silent-blade.org/
  * Exaile           - http://www.exaile.org/
  * Guayadeque       - http://sourceforge.net/projects/guayadeque/
  * Listen           - http://www.listen-project.org/
  * MOC              - http://moc.daper.net/
  * MPD              - http://mpd.wikia.com/
  * Muine            - http://muine.gooeylinux.org/
  * Pithos           - http://kevinmehall.net/p/pithos/
  * Qmmp             - http://qmmp.ylsoftware.com/
  * Quod Libet       - http://code.google.com/p/quodlibet/
  * Rhythmbox        - http://projects.gnome.org/rhythmbox/
  * Songbird         - http://getsongbird.com/ via http://addons.songbirdnest.com/addon/1626?id=1626
  * VLC              - http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
  * XMMS             - http://legacy.xmms2.org/
  * XMMS2            - http://xmms2.org/

Panflute is the successor to Music Applet, redesigned from the ground up
to allow other programs to use its music player abstraction layer.

Panflute development is hosted at Launchpad:

    https://launchpad.net/panflute