Music Player Daemon (MPD) allows remote access for playing music (MP3, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, AAC, Mod, and wave files) and managing playlists. MPD is designed for integrating a computer into a stereo system that provides control for music playback over a local network.
It also makes a great desktop music player, especially if you are a console addict, like frontend options, or restart X often.
MPD is a daemon which provides a queue and control for your music. The daemon stores info about all available music, and this info can be easily searched and retrieved. Player control, info retrieval, and playlist management can all be managed remotely. MPD uses a text file as a database in which to maintain the basic music file information when it is not running. Once the daemon is started, the database is kept completely in-memory and no hard disk access is necessary to look up or search for a song.
The goals are to be easy to install and use, to have minimal resource requirements (it has been reported to run fine on a Pentium 75), and to remain stable and flexible.
The separate client and server design allows users to choose a user interface that best suites their tastes independently of the underlying daemon (this package) which actually plays music. Recommended clients with a graphical interface include Ario, Gnome Music Player Client, and Sonata.
Key Features
- Plays MP3, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, MP4/AAC, Mod, and wave files.
- Remotely control MPD over a network (IPv4 and IPv6 supported).
- Play MP3 and Ogg Vorbis streams.
- Easy to Install.
- Stores ID3 (id3v1 and id3v2) tag information (MP3s, FLAC’s, and AAC’s).
- Stores Vorbis Comments information (Ogg’s and FLAC’s).
- Stores MP4 metadata information (MP4/AAC’s).
- ID3/Vorbis information can be searched.
- Easy to import new songs.
- Buffer support for playback (prevents skipping due to high load or network latency).
- Gapless playback (great for live albums).
- Crossfading support.
- Seeking support.
- Save, Load, and Manage Playlists (in m3u format).
- Volume control (OSS, Alsa, and software mixers).
- Wide range of audio devices supported (OSS, Alsa, Sun, esd, arts, and more).
- Minimal hardware requirements.
Website: www.musicpd.org
Support: Forum
Developer: Warren Dukes, J. Alexander Treuman, Eric Wong, José Anarch, Guus Sliepen, Jim Ramsay, Qball Cow, Patrik Weiskircher
License: GNU General Public License v2.0
MPD is written in C++. Learn C++ with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Audio Systems | |
|---|---|
| PulseAudio | Integral part of all relevant modern Linux distributions |
| PipeWire | Low-latency, graph based processing engine on top of audio and video devices |
| MPD | Flexible, powerful, server-side application for playing music |
| JACK | Professional low-latency sound server API and pair of daemon implementations |
| ALSA | Advanced Linux Sound Architecture |
| sndio | Small audio and MIDI framework |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
| Music Servers | |
|---|---|
| Music Player Daemon | Flexible, powerful, server-side application for playing music |
| Jellyfin | Media system to manage and stream media |
| Koel | Personal music streaming server. |
| Navidrome | Web-based music collection server and streamer |
| Icecast | Ogg Vorbis and MP3 streaming media server |
| Ampache | PHP web based audio/video streaming application and file manager |
| owntone-server | DAAP (iTunes), MPD (Music Player Daemon) and RSP (Roku) server |
| mopidy | Extensible music server |
| gonic | Music streaming server with a subsonic server API implementation |
| Gerbera | UPnP media server |
| Euterpe | Self-hosted streaming service for music |
| Funkwhale | Share music and audio within a decentralized, open network |
| Airsonic | Web-based media streamer |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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