MPD

Music Player Daemon (MPD) is a database-using music player server.

Developed by Warren Dukes
Initial release: 2003
Stable release 0.14.0 (2008-12-20)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_Player_Daemon
http://www.musicpd.org

"By default, MPD does not stream audio; all playback occurs on the server where the music files are located. The remote client controls playback from a nearby location. A shoutcast output is available for redirecting the local output to an Icecast source client."

Client front-ends

"MPD has a variety of front-ends which communicate with the server using a custom protocol1 over a TCP connection. Clients usually implement different types of interfaces. mpc (part of the MPD project) is a simple command line interface to most of the server's functions. ncmpc is a more fully-featured ncurses client similar in concept to MOC. Sonata uses GTK+ to provide a graphical user interface for playing files and managing playlists. GMPC also uses GTK+ but implements a different style of UI with many search options and plugin support. Ario uses tabs in its interface. Gimmix provides a simple interface with a very small memory footprint. mpdlirc interfaces mpd via an infrared remote control.2. Simple clients can script the mpc program to issue commands to the server. Some clients run within a web browser and can be located on the same computer as the server, requiring only a browser be installed on the client machine. There is a client implemented as a Firefox add on3, and one as a Xfce taskbar plugin4. Libraries exist to interface with MPD from many programming languages, including C, Python, Ruby, Perl, and Lua5."

Sonata is a GTK+ music player client for the Music Player Daemon . Sonata is licensed under the GPL and is free software. It has been forked from the unmaintained Pygmy project in order to fix bugs, introduce new features, and proceed down a different path.
http://sonata.berlios.de

Gnome Music Player Client or GMPC is a GTK+ music player client for the Music Player Daemon. It uses a one window/two pane interface similar to clients such as iTunes or Exaile with a sidebar containing files, playlists and various search options, and a main song list which incorporates the playlist and search results.

Ario is a GTK+ music player client for the Music Player Daemon. The newest version features a dynamic playlist using similar artist data from Last.fm, similar to a feature found in Exaile and Amarok.

Gimmix is a Music Player Daemon client written in C for Linux and Unix systems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimmix

Comments:

"I stumbled across MPD a few months ago when I was looking for a music player that could play a playlist without introducing .5 seconds gaps between songs. I do like to listen to opera, and Wagner is not fun with Rhythmbox. Seriously. Even if you're not into opera, any live recording or Dark Side Of The Moon will exhibit the same annoying problem.
If there was a GUI like Rhythmbox for a proper player like MPD I'd be perfectly happy. Until then I'll stick with MPD." - djmutex, November 2005
"You may be interested in _Pygmy__ then, a nice MPD frontend."
"Actually, if you're looking for something like Rhythmbox, might I recommend Pymp'd?"
"I switched from PyTone to MPD (with ncmpc as frontend) and love the much lower resources"

It doesn't do album covers.. it doesn't do drag-n-drop playlists, in fact it doesn't do playlists at all, except to read them.

What it does have though is one magical ability... It continues playing music irregardless of what your doing in regards to logging in and out of X and it has a very nice command line client, as well as web clients, and native gtk or qt clients, and probably others beyond that.

"mpd is a cool program. It runs as a daemon, with various user interfaces that talk to it. gmpc can control it from your linux desktop, got another program on the mac to control it as well. Can control it from the command line, or from the webserver running on the same box. Music never stops."

"MPD has been my music player of choice for quite some time now.
The best is that you don't need to care about some frigging GUI.
It just plays my music. 24/7. ;-) I've bound some keys in my WM for it, and thats just about as much as I interact with it.
There are a dozen of frontends, i usually have gmpc running, since it shows me the song title upon song change. But thats just about all the features I need..."

http://lwn.net/Articles/160704/

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