First, if you wonder about what is supposed to be a music player or what makes a music player different from a simple media player, read this: What is a music player
Annoyed by all existing players because some subset of:
- not open source
- missing sound format (FLAC, Ogg, ...)
- bugs (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, ...)
- missing output possibility (RAOP, PulseAudio, ...)
- none or too limited intelligent automatic queue (iTunes calls this DJ mode, others call this PartyShuffle)
- no library / database
Features of this player:
- open source (simplified BSD license, see License.txt)
- simple
- support of most important sound formats
- advanced intelligent automatic queue which is the main mode to play music
- simple music database
- ReplayGain / audio volume normalization
- Last.fm scrobbling
- AcoustID fingerprint
- Gapless playback
About the intelligent automatic queue, what I want (maybe some of these somewhat configurable):
- continuously always add songs when queue becomes too empty
- liked songs more often
- context-based choices, e.g. related songs more likely
- possibility to easily manually add songs to the list
- easy way to restrict to a subset of songs (like a genre, a playlist, a filesystem directory, etc.)
About the database:
- main function: search
- should be fast and optional for playback, i.e. music can be played even when the database is currently not ready for some reason
- should automatically be filled by a filesystem directory
- import like-state from local players like iTunes and also online services like Last.fm
TODO / possible additional missing features:
- BPM determination and clever DJ-like fading
- echoprint.me or similar song determination (mostly for metadata, esp. if missing)
- use tags given by Last.fm (mostly more tags)
- Last.fm streaming support
- watch music directory for changes (e.g. new files added)
Installation:
So far, there is a prebuild MacOSX app bundle in the download section which should just work. Otherwise, to get the source working, you need these requirements (e.g. install on MacOSX via Homebrew):
- ffmpeg
- portaudio
- chromaprint
(Debian/Ubuntu: apt-get install python-dev libsnappy-dev libtool yasm libchromaprint-dev portaudio19-dev. FFmpeg in Debian/Ubuntu is too old (lacks libswresample), so either do add-apt-repository ppa:jon-severinsson/ffmpeg && apt-get update && apt-get install libavformat-dev libswresample-dev or install it from source. Chromaprint depends on FFmpeg, so if you have a custom FFmpeg install, you might also want to install that manually. ./configure && make && sudo make install should work for FFmpeg and PortAudio. You might also want to use --enable-shared for FFmpeg. cmake . && sudo make install for Chromaprint.)
Then call ./compile.py to build the Python modules (it will build the Python modules ffmpeg.so and leveldb.so).
To start the player, just call ./main.py.
The current GUI is Cocoa only. Additional Qt support is planned. The music player also works without any GUI.
Authors:
- Albert Zeyer, http://www.az2000.de: founder of the project, main core, ffmpeg module, etc.
- Bryan Joseph, http://bryaninspired.com: some initial ideas about the database