Been enjoying Rhythmbox, what are your thoughts?

TIL rhythmbox still exists.

I've been a Linux user since 2005ish and a DJ since at least 2013. I've tried a lot of music players including Rythmbox. I settled on Clementine/Strawberry or Amorok, depending on use case. Haven't used either of them recently.

With that said, there is no right answer. Find one you like!

Absolutely classic music player. The iTunes 1.0 UI pattern, which was pre-enshittification. To my eyes, I still don’t think I’ve ever seen a more overall efficient and descriptive way of browsing a local music library.

I'm just going to use this opportunity to publicly grieve again for Winamp fake becoming open-source: https://hackaday.com/2024/10/16/winamp-taken-down-too-good-for-this-open-source-world/

I like Strawberry, for two reasons:

• It was the first player I found that supported playing directly to a pipewire sink, without going through the Pulseaudio compatibility layer.
• It can stream hi res FLAC files from Tidal.

Fooyin is also a solid choice.

Rhythmbox has been my main music app for over 15 years now. Every now and then I'll check out other options but I always end up back after a couple days.

I do wish they would give the UI some attention. Nothing major, just a few visual tweaks to bring it inline with modern Gnome (the alternative toolbar plugin is really close)

It still can't sort or browse by album artist, which makes it a real pain to use. You have to apply a patch and compile it from source to make it usable.

I prefer Quod Libet but I have fond memories of rhythmbox.

Clementine or strawberry for me

It's an amazing music player and shit podcast app

I like cmus best. It is both as simple and as complicated as I need it to be.

I'd rather use Lollypop.

I use mpd and ncmpc++, myself. My library got too large (Just shy of 70,000 songs now) and all the GUI players choke and freeze when I try to scan my library, including Rhythmbox and QuodLibet. I'm kind of interested in how inori develops, since ncmpc++ isn't getting any active development beyond fixing bugs when things break with updates, but I'm also pretty happy with it for now.

mpd for me

It literally hasn’t changed even a tiny bit since I first saw it in 2006 :)

I currently use Strawberry - a well maintained fork of the old Amarok player before they redone the UI for KDE 4. It does what I care the most:

• Tree view collection with artist -> album grouping
• Files view
• Lyrics
• Tag editor
• Queue
• Last, but definitely not least - gapless playback

Clementine was the best

If you are an audiophile, nothing beat QuodLibet right now.

i can't leave foobar2000 until i find something that has dolby headphone 🥲 and it's sometimes wonky in wine

I used it on Mint. I liked it. I use Strawberry now because it can bypass software decoding and output audio directly to my DAC.

Cantata.

I just looked up the initial release, it was in August 2001. I don't remember the first time I used it, but it was probably 20 years ago. Still remains my favourite for the reasons you mentioned.

I also use Rhythmbox, the UI is clean and simple. Other music players either are too complicated (UI has too much clutter, play queues) or want to automatically import all audio files in my home directory into the library, which is annoying. But to be fair, I haven't tried a lot of other players, because I'm happy using Rhythmbox.

Command line mplayer has been plenty for me.

Been liking Amberol lately, but it's extremely simple. Nice UI though.

For a second, I misread this and thought Rockbox had a desktop port.

You can have a look at this superb list for you to test other softwares : https://www.linuxlinks.com/best-free-open-source-music-players/

Tauon is really, really great. But because it is not the most stable on my system (arch) I mainly use Strawberry which is also great.

Love Rhythmbox! I used it way way back when I first installed Ubuntu (back when it was good) and it was part of a special nostalgic feeling of having been ushered into this new linux world, and I think it lets you rate your songs 1-5 stars (if you want) and I had a lot of fun doing that.

My only complaint with Rhythmbox is that it lets you close it while playing a song and then the ui is gone but the song keeps playing. Insanity!

I use audacious with a winamp skin.

can anyone suggest a tool to re-assess all my ripped mp3s and flacs with artist/track title info? I ripped ages of music from CD, and at some point a lot of the data got dicked up.

I really just want a media player that:

1. Has good media library support based on tags (lots do)
2. Has ReplayGain support (lots do)
3. Lets me have an album art panel bigger than a thumbnail (and here is where so many options fall short, including Rhythmbox)

Deadbeef seems to be the closest due to its good customizability, but the plugin which allows for actual media library capability is apparently Mac-only, for some unfathomable reason.

Gonna be stuck with Foobar via Wine for a fair sight longer, I think.

I've been enjoying Tauon, it does the things I want

Side question that may be relevant since this is for local collections. Does anyone have a recommended tool for ripping and tagging audio CDs (e.g. with musicbrainz support)?

I've been sticking with music players that can output directly through alsa. I settled on strawberry cause it can do that and also has other features that i care about baked in ootb. Deadbeef can also output directly through alsa and i liked it for the most part, but what i didn't like was that things like mpris support wasn't baked in, so i would have to mess with plugins. I don't know if there are any other players that can output directly through alsa, those are the only two that i could find so far.

I love rhythym box, but had an issue getting it to show grillo dlna media shares, had to add dleyna packages and dleyna-grillo then everything was discoverable

I use it occasionally but mostly I use terminal players like cmus or musikcube (aliased to mcu, because... geek)

Mostly I live in my shell with zellij and do basically everything on cli. Even web browsing (allbeit non graphical) can be done with stuff like lynx or w3m. And for fanfiction that's fine.

Well i personally doesn't like big screen audio player like clementine or rhythmbox, i like music player as simple & mini as possible like QMMP

I really really don't get why you just can't organize your music in plain old folders with rhythmbox. Not Playlists, not Meta data. Just folders. Ist it that exotic? Is it that hard to implement?

I'm currently using Sayonara, but Rythmbox is perfectly fine too.

Cider, apple music

@merci3 Just a very solid player. Linux music players come and go but Rhythmbox has always been there.

Are there any music players that will play my mp3s and stuff but also let me play audio from youtube or spotify without logging in? On android I use Musify, which does this but is a little wonky.

@merci3 I use rhythmbox as a music and webradio player. It does a good job for this use case.

Gapless is a sexy gtk4 based player.

Couldn't figure how to use the equalizer of strawberry

I think its almost perfect, just need a plugin to be able to show lyrics synchronised with the song

Lightweight? I guess things have changed in the last 15+ years... I personally settled on Sayonara. Then I discovered Nuclear. Still undecided.

I use Rhythmbox to edit/import/maintain my music collection and sync my iPods, and then I use Lollypop to play my music from my computer. Lollypop has next to no of the aforementioned features but its just nice to look at and simple.