Music

9 Best Free and Open Source Web-Based MPD Clients

MPD is a powerful server-side application for playing music. In a home environment, you can connect an MPD server to a Hi-Fi system, and control the server using a notebook or smartphone. You can, of course, play audio files on remote clients. MPD can be started system-wide or on a per-user basis.

MPD runs in the background playing music from its playlist. Client programs communicate with MPD to manipulate playback, the playlist, and the database.

The client–server model provides advantages over all-inclusive music players. Clients can communicate with the server remotely over an intranet or over the Internet. The server can be a headless computer located anywhere on a network.

There are graphical clients, console clients and web-based clients.

To provide an insight into the quality of software that is available, we have compiled a list of 9 best web-based MPD clients. Hopefully, there will be something of interest here for anyone who wants to use MPD.

Here’s our verdict captured in a legendary LinuxLinks-style ratings chart. Only free and open source software is eligible for inclusion.

Ratings chart

Let’s explore the 9 web-based MPD clients. For each title we have compiled its own portal page, a full description with an in-depth analysis of its features, screenshots, together with links to relevant resources.

Web Based MPD Clients
RompЯMusic player with the emphasis on discovery
myMPDStandalone and lightweight web-based MPD client
ympdRuns without a dedicated web server or interpreters like PHP, NodeJS or Ruby
Sola MPDFairly competent web based music player solution
ampdBuilt with Angular and Spring Boot
RetrotubeMain view of Retrotube displays all your album covers
CYPControl Your Player: a web-based MPD client
cryMPDMinimalistic client written in Crystal
AudioloaderSpecial focus on playing music organized in folders

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Cliff
Cliff
3 years ago

ompd is missing.

[Link removed]

Cliff

Poisson Dix
Poisson Dix
3 years ago

I found RompЯ difficult to install. Guess I need to brush up my Linux skills. For me easy installation is key. Probably why I end up using snaps most of the time to try out new software.

Lucy Swanston
Lucy Swanston
3 years ago

Yeah, running a web server is more complicated to setup if you’ve not done it before.

paul
paul
2 years ago

Rompr is a brilliant tool, let down by frequent annoyances. I finally deleted it from my system. When it works – it is great. It will prompt for upgrades – which is fine, but when you dismiss the notification, trying to find what the actual update was is really hard. When you do upgrade, it breaks – totally. Whilst it tries to be helpful, you have to re-read the docs to figure out what is wrong. Worse, its written in PHP – so that adds a barrier of complexity (wheres the log file?).

Really annoyed with this.

josh
josh
2 years ago
Reply to  paul

I use the docker container, makes things much easier for me.