Looking for a good MP3 music manager is reoccurring task for me, because so far none has really convinced me, yet. After switching to a new distro recently, it was time to reevaluate the choices. Below is a list of library managers/players available through the Arch package manager.

I installed them all, tried to import my music library¹⁾ and tested a few common tasks. The list below is not an in depth feature comparison. It's just the features/non-features that caught my attention.

All tested players have an iTunes-like artist/album/song browser. I was most interested in their last.fm integration but also had a look at other features. My album cover images are stored as a file named folder.jpg, so I checked if the tools would find and display that correctly.

• http://amarok.kde.org/
• KDE based
• Most feature rich player
• Automatically rates songs based on your behavior
• Great context browser showing Wikipedia info, last.fm related songs and artists, additional albums by the same artist, lyrics…
• “smart” playlists
• Last.fm scrobbling, neighbor and tag radio, love/tagging for radio only
• Radio station browser, podcast support
• Album cover support with cover manager to download from Amazon
• Plugin system with browser/downloader
• Customizable notification window

• http://banshee-project.org
• GTK+ based player
• Ripping and burning support
• Video player
• Last.fm scrobbling and neighbor/recommended radio support, no love/tagging
• “jump to playing song” didn't work for me
• Notifications

• http://bmpx.backtrace.info
• GTK+ based
• Somewhat slow loading
• No way to play from all songs!?
• Album covers didn't work for me
• Full last.fm support with scrobbling, radio (including friends), play similar and love/tagging
• Internet radio station browser
• Podcast support
• Notifications
• No “smart” playlists

• http://www.exaile.org/
• Written in Python/GTK+
• Aims to be a GTK+ Amarok clone (but has less features, yet)
• Internet radio and podcast bookmarks – no radio browser
• Plugin support (with browser/downloader)
• Last.fm scrobbling built in – no radio, suggestion or love/tagging support
• Album cover support with automatic (Amazon based) collector
• Customizable notification window

• http://squentin.free.fr/gmusicbrowser/gmusicbrowser.html
• Written in Perl/GTK2
• Layout can be configured in many different ways
• Last.fm scrobbling only
• Lyric support didn't work for me
• Considers all files for playing, allows you to set filters – nice!
• Manual song ratings
• Album cover support, manual Google cover search
• No podcast or internet radio support

• http://code.google.com/p/gogglesmm/
• Uses the FOX GUI library – simple but fast
• Couldn't get album cover support working
• Gapless playback and volume normalization
• No last.fm support
• Not much more

• http://www.listen-project.org/
• Written in Python/GTK+
• Freezes when trying to import my library
• I previously used an older version which was quite nice, can't say much about the current one

• http://www.sacredchao.net/quodlibet
• Written in Python/GTL+
• Different interface layouts
• Internet radio station bookmarking
• Plugin support – but none available in Arch
• No last.fm support (maybe plugin somewhere?)
• Cover art didn't work

• http://www.gnome.org/projects/rhythmbox/
• A Gnome project
• Last.fm scrobbling and neighbor radio support, send love for radio songs only
• Podcast support, radio station bookmarks
• smart playlists
• Album cover support
• Plugin support

None of the players is perfect. So far Amarok seems to have the biggest feature set and currently is my default player. What I like most is the automatic song rating based on my listening behavior. When I skip a song it gets a lower score than when I listen to it in full. KDE isn't my desktop environment of choice²⁾ so it feels a bit foreign and I'd love to replace Amarok with a GTK based player someday.

Exaile and Rhythmbox made the best impression inteface/feeling wise so far. The best last.fm integration by far is to be found in BMPx – unfortunately it is missing other important features.

Do you know of any other Linux software I missed? What desktop MP3 player do you use? Let me know in the comments, please.

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