Recommend good music-playing software that handles large playlists and runs in Linux

In My Humble Opinion
1

I know where I want to be, but I don’t know what software to use to get there. (And yes, I know I’m way behind the times here.)

I want to set up a music server and use it to house all my digital music. No problems there, I have excellent software for ripping and encoding. But I want to create and be able to manage playlists that could contain thousands of songs. Being new to this way of dealing with music, I simply don’t know if that’s asking a lot.

I’ve been looking at WinAMP for a while and it looks good, but it turns out for various reasons that the PC I’ll be using for this project will run Ubuntu Linux rather than Windows, so I need something I can use there. One recommendation I’ve found is for XMMS, which I’ve never used.

I don’t use a portable player, so easy syncing is no selling point for me, FWIW.

2

Banshee’s the best music player for Gnome, IMO (and I think I’ve tried all major ones, and a load of minor efforts).

(sudo apt-get install banshee).

3

Thanks, Capt! I’ll definitely give that a look-see.

4

XMMS is OK, it’s a lot like WinAmp 2. Amarok has a lot of features but can be a resource hog, and integrates better if you’re using KDE.

5

Wow, I’m getting a lot of officers in this thread!

I wouldn’t be averse to switching this machine to Kubuntu if I like Amarok’s features better, so thanks for that tip Commander!

6

I have Kubuntu and I like Amarok, but I haven’t played around a lot with anything else. I use it for different reasons than you would be (I like to play my last.fm through it and see the lyrics of songs without having to open up a browser) but I think it is worth a look. I definitely prefer Amarok 2 over the previous one though.

7

Have you tried VLC Media Player?

8

I’m going to throw a curve ball. While Amarok and XMMS and Rhythmbox and JuK are great music players (and collection managers) they really are not Digital Music Servers.

Take a look at Jinzora, a web based music collection manager. It can organise the collection (including tags, cover art and other metadata), manage playlists, play music via the web-server soundcard, or stream to a web browser (even using a pretty built-in Flash music player for those who don’t have a music player).

I use that, plus the Firefly daap server (for remote iTunes capacity and a Roku Soundbridge) and TwonkyVision (for uPnP to send to the XBox360 and Pinnacle Showcenter). I am hopeful that in the future, the Coherence project will deliver the DAAP/uPNP presentation functionality, with Jinzora providing the back end media database.

What all that means is that I can manage my music collection via a browser, play music from a local device (like a laptop) over the internet, copy music from my server to my iPod or laptop local folder (using GIT or RhythmBox), connect a wireless music player, play music off the XBox360 or pipe music from my server to whatever room in the house I want. And the server is headless (no screen) and tucked away in a corner out of sight.

Si