Linux offers a huge range of free and open source music software, much of it mature, powerful, and actively developed. Many Linux music players include advanced features and integrate smoothly with online music services. Most desktop environments already come with one or more audio players, and there are also many excellent cross-platform and standalone options available. With so many choices, Linux users are genuinely spoiled when it comes to music players.
Every music collection is different, and choosing the right open source music player can make a real difference to how you enjoy your library, particularly if you manage a large collection of music.
Soul Player is a modern desktop music player focused on local-first playback and user privacy. It’s designed for people who want to manage and listen to their own music collection without cloud uploads, telemetry, ads, or mandatory subscriptions.
The program supports Linux alongside other desktop platforms and combines local library management with a more advanced audio engine than many lightweight players.
This is free and open source software.
Installation
I evaluated Soul Player with CachyOS, an Arch-based Linux distribution.
There’s a package in the Arch User Repository (AUR) which I installed using Octopi, a graphical front end for pacman that lets you search, install, remove, and update packages more easily. Octopi can also work with the AUR with a supported helper. By default CachyOS uses yay, but there are other helpers available.
The software installs with no issues.
The software has a wizard which lets you choose the theme. I went with the light theme.
It also helps you add your music folders.
This sort of wizard is a great idea, and more Linux software should have it as they help new users get started faster.
In Operation
I’ve loaded our small collection of CC-licensed music, the standard library we use for fair comparisons between music players. Here’s a track now playing.
The program’s user interface has a modern design. It lets you view albums, artists, and genres.
The first thing I check out is whether a music player supports gapless playback. That’s the ability to play consecutive audio tracks seamlessly, without any audible pause, click, or silence between them. Many albums particularly live recordings, DJ mixes, classical music, and concept albums are are designed to flow continuously from one track to the next. Without gapless playback, a small delay ruins the experience.
The good news is that Soul Player supports gapless playback.
Software’s functionality
- Plays local music libraries without cloud uploads, tracking, or telemetry.
- In addition to gapless playback, there’s also crossfade with configurable fade behaviour.
- Handles multiple audio formats including MP3, FLAC, OGG, WAV, AAC, and OPUS.
- Offers ReplayGain normalization, high-quality resampling, and DSD playback features.
- Scans music folders and extracts metadata including ID3, Vorbis, and APE tags.
- Includes artists, albums, genres, and playlist management for organising collections.
- Provides a modern interface with dark mode, album and artist views, and customizable keyboard shortcuts.
There’s a fair chunk of customization available. I’m showing the Appearance tab below, but there also tabs for data, audio, and keyboard shortcuts.
The audio section lets you configure your audio processing pipeline by stage with resamling, DSP, and leveling options. By default, resampling is set to High, which delivers excellent quality for critical listening. Other options include Fast for lower CPU usage on older hardware or when saving battery, Balanced for solid quality with moderate CPU use, and Maximum for the highest possible, audiophile-level quality.
Summary
If judged by its GitHub stars, Soul Player would be regarded as a poor program. After all, it has a mere five GitHub stars. But star counts should not be a factor when assessing software. Soul Player is a good music player and certainly belies its low star count. It offers a solid feature set, seems reasonably stable, and has a decent UI. That said, it still needs a lot of improvement before it can compete with our recommended music players.
The software uses Symphonia for decoding and CPAL for audio I/O. ps_mem reports that memory usage is around 197MB. That’s a bit on the high side.
Although the developer uses Claude to help with development, this is not simply a vibe-coded project.
Website: github.com/soulaudio/soul-player
Support:
Developer: Soul Audio
License: GNU Affero General Public License v3.0
Soul Player is written in Rust, TypeScript, and JavaScript. Learn Rust with our recommended free books and free tutorials. Learn TypeScript with our recommended free books and free tutorials. Learn JavaScript with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Graphical Music Players | |
|---|---|
| Tauon Music Box | Python-based music player that's an absolute gem |
| fooyin | Customizable music player similar to foobar2000 |
| Strawberry | Music player and collection organizer originally forked from Clementine |
| Rhythmbox | Integrated music management application, originally inspired by iTunes |
| Sayonara Player | Small, clear and fast music player written in C++ |
| Audacious | XMMS-like skinnable player |
| Exaile | Music player aiming to be similar to KDE's Amarok, but for GTK+ |
| DeaDBeeF | Basic and simple player with a small footprint. |
| Clementine | Modern music player and library organiser. Inspired by Amarok |
| Lollypop | Modern music player for GNOME |
| Amarok | KDE audio player offering a wealth of features, yet intuitive to use |
| Musique | Small but sophisticated graphical music player |
| Cantata | Feature-rich client for Music Player Daemon |
| Quod Libet | GTK+-based music management program |
| GogglesMM | Polished music collection manager and player |
| Aqualung | Advanced, gapless Gtk2-based audio player |
| MusicPod | Music, podcast and internet radio player |
| gmusicbrowser | Music jukebox for large collections |
| Yarock | Qt music player with browsing based on cover art |
| qoob | A foobar-like music player |
| GNOME Music | Simple music player |
| Pragha | Distinguished and resplendent open source music player |
| Deepin Music | Visually attractive and simple music player |
| Musicalypse | Music player and server built with Web technologies |
| Melody | Music player designed for elementary OS |
| Elisa | Simple music player developed by the KDE community |
| QMPlay2 | Video and audio player which can play most formats and codecs |
| Tomahawk | Qt-based music player |
| mtoc | Visually-rich music player and library browser |
| Kalorite | Lightweight audio player |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
 Explore our comprehensive directory of recommended free and open source software. Our carefully curated collection spans every major software category.This directory is part of our ongoing series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. It features hundreds of detailed reviews, along with open source alternatives to proprietary solutions from major corporations such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. You’ll also find interesting projects to try, hardware coverage, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. Discovered a useful open source Linux program that we haven’t covered yet? Let us know by completing this form. |