Music library with Album Art

General Help
1

have been all over the forum(s)... not yet;
stumbled across references to "snap", "flatpack", etc. (??)
Still REALLY appreciate copy/paste to terminal :))
To the point:
Trying to find music library software very similar to...dare I say it?
Windows Media Player (no interest in running windows software in Zorin(17)
so far: Audacious (vs. "Audacity"??)
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install audacious audacious-plugins
...so far, so good (based on Aravisian posted recommendation)

However, would really like to have the "stacks" of album art imagery, grouped by artist- i.e. double-click said stack, then click on album art to play the album.

Tip: as the new Zorin install was to a new drives (dev/nvme01np1), saved the original Win10 ssd... to transfer from "users"> "john"> "desktop", then dragged/dropped "flac" folder to one of the new drives (of 2 SSDs)
Also, to my great consternation, when moving music collection to previous Win installs, WMP typically dumped the first two tracks of albums to "unknown" folder.

Audacious did not (whew!!) no more putting the puzzle pieces together!!
fwiw, library is ripped in ".flac" format

Also, some discs are SACD... yet to find a ripper. everything else is 16/44 .flac
really don't care about file size (for "resolution"); tons of real estate is available for my library.
thanks all,
John

2

It's package formats.
.deb is to preferred as flat and snap can give complications.

Audacity is an audio editor. Not sure it's what you are looking for.

Have you tried Rhythmbox? It's very customizing.

3

First of if you look for any Application like said from Storm, if there is a recent version in apt - go for that (easier to use cause it's not in container, less storage used, more efficient) and if the apt version is outdated or there is none - i would stick with flatpak. A Music Player is fine from flatpak without restrictions - so no worries.

I think the app "lollypop" fits best your needs, it has a great GUI (not minimal), can load covers in the background and from the artists (not 100% accurate). All in all a very modern look but a bit overload cause that. I use .flac but only 16/44 (5? as compression level) and no problems so far - so i only used normal Audio CD. How good (=intelligent) the Music player shows cover and information still depends on the meta information the audio files provide. You can edit meta information later with "MusicBrainz Picard" who search for your audio files in a database and manipulate meta tags and even provide covers (in many cases). Sometimes it's just not a real match - so its a manual labor and you have to check it yourself. If you want to search for only covers you can go for SACAD but still it can be a hassle.

So it's always most accurate if you provide the information meta tags so there is less guessing and that depends on the ripper. I used Asunder as ripper and it work fine but i had to add more meta tags later (with Picard).

I would give that a try. for me it works fine and you can try the default results just if lollypop recognize all by itself, without providing more informations.

Edit (for isntallation):
Ripper

sudo apt -y install asunder

Player:

flatpak -y install org.gnome.Lollypop

Meta Tag Editor (+Cover)

flatpak -y install org.musicbrainz.Picard
4

I have a music collection about +6000 MP3 and Most of them are in FLAC, And I have tested a lot of players, Lollypop is the best choose for me for playing and setting the musics by Artists/etc. And Easytag is the best one for tagging the musics.

sudo apt install lollypop -y

sudo apt install easytag -y
5

I have also a big music library and I'm very glad with "Strawberry" (flathub) and for tagging I use Kid3 (flathub)

6

There are many audio organizers and players on GnuLinux. My current preference is Exhaile which has the settings you said you are looking for.

7

Ah, somewhat off-topic (but kinda-sorta not), after 50 years of Microsoft world (preceded by GWBasic, stored/loaded on punched paper tape! As well as a wee bit of Fortran/Cobol... "cake cover" magnetic disk drives - IBM System 360!),
Still a relatively new immigrant to Zorintopia, via Zorin 16.5(“pro”… Ubuntu 18?… finally broke the habit of typing “Unbuntu”, vs. Ubuntu).

Today: Zorin OS 17 (“pro”, “Ultimate”, or what have you)… aka “Ubuntu 22.04”

Still somewhat vague, regarding “.deb”;

In my previous life, understand most MS software was written with C+, or Visual Basic… with “.bin”, “.cab”, “.csv”, “exe”, “.bat” etc. file extensions… (still remember “.bat” as “batch files”, from DOS days)…

as well as “self-extracting .exe”.

To wit: on occasion, when downloading driver/software at the manufacturers’ website (ex: HP printer), several files would download to a specified/selected/created folder: much of this included the aforementioned “.bin”, “.cab”, “.csv” files… when the “setup.exe” would be what one searched for (kinda-sorta a “batch file”)

While with Zorin16.5, found/downloaded compressed/”zipped” files; which, when unzipped, presented several files… some “amd64” and/or “.deb”, “.tar”, “.tar.bz”; was never thoroughly sure of which to click.double-click…

SO, I have become relatively comfortable with copy/pasting “sudo apt get”, etc. text(aka "dialogue") to “terminal”. (as well as precluding a boatload of files in the "downloads" folder)

...consider me somewhat akin to a Pakistani immigrant to the U.S… with a really bad accent.

Will staple “flat” better for “.deb” to my forehead… “snap”= “problematics”.
(for what ever that means...)

fwiw, Rhythymbox is installed.... still looks like a generic list of .flac files... have yet to figure out how to group together as albums; vs. manually creating playlists, Usually play music as sequential tracks, as an album.
Many thanks for your indulgence and patience.

8

Thanks,
As a relatively new immigrant to Zorintopia (OS 17 "pro")
I do not understand the difference between "flatpak" and "sudo apt..."
i.e. can I simply copy/paste to "terminal"?...
Also, what is the function ("qualifier"?) "-y"?
So, with Terminal open, simply enter (or copy/paste) "flatpak -y install org.gnome.Lollypop" (with capitalization?
also, Rhythmbox installed; Music ("flac" folder") is on second nvme drive: (/dev/nvme 1n1)
"Imported" folder to rhythmbox... ended up with a rather generic looking list of tracks... for some odd reason, track 1 of many albums were dumped to "unknown artist" folder.
Would/could Picard sort this out? (i.e. which track 1 belongs to which album?)
Also, boot drive is "first" nvme drive (/dev/nvme0n1p1);
When Ryhthmbox "imported" my flac folder, did it make another copy on the "home"/Boot drive (which would defeat the purpose for keeping flac folder on second nvme drive.)

fwiw, will set up second nvme drive to mount at boot... keeping it available for music player.

9

First of sudo is just so you swap to your superuser (asked for password) cause you can't install them as normal user.
apt and flatpak are both package managers, while apt installed .deb (Debian) packages, flatpak installed flatpaks. Main differences are that apt installed packages from the Ubuntu 22.04 (Zorin 17 is build on Ubuntu 22.04) repository, so it installed the version of your application and their dependencies that this repositoy provide (which become at somepoint limited so it's often an older version). Flatpaks as software provider work on many distribution (not only on debian-based) and it works cause it will install needed dependencies which are not shipped by your base repository (Ubu 22.04) and install the needed environment. So flatpaks take more space cause it installed the environment and run as a virtual environment, which can limit access (less permissions on file system) and from terminal you have to run them as flatpak run application which is limited as poweruser. In the case of a music player it's no big deal cause you'll launch it as desktop-app and only access your media and internet, so i choose flatpak cause you can access more software (that's not in apt) and in a newer version (like with lollypop) - that's the reason for flatpaks, if you have a new version in apt it's always easier to use.

Say "yes" to all, normaly the terminal ask - do you really want to make changes to your system? - (Y)es/(N)o and you have to prompt Y and only after that it'll install.

yes, if you are really uncomfortable you can use the Software Center, where you search for the application in a gui and in the right corner you can select from a drop-down menue the source (apt/flatpak or snap). The commands always work like that scheme <opt. parameters>

I write the commands in the swareness of your quest for a simply copy/paste with the full-application name, if there are more than one matching application it'll show a list and asked what you mean. But with the fullname org.gnome.Lollypop vs. lollypop there is only one match.

Picard from Musicbrainz is a meta tag editor for music, so it edit your music files (their tags) like album, title, interpret of album, interpret of song, genre, year, label - you can make all by yourself or you can search your files album by album in their database if there is a match (there can be missmatches too cause there are often many versions like standard or premium, different versions depending on country). And with Album i mean there can be 2-CD Releases too, so you can add both folders and safe than the changes to file. Look on their homepage for a guide, before you start - but it's easy to use and if there is a match you just have to save all the data from their db without a manual edit requried (so only import music folder -> search -> save - in the case of a good match. Don't know your genre but i only struggle with old classical recordings because it's often a selection from many different recordings (whos the interpret of a classical song the composer like Mozart or the orchestra) and do your file is from the best-of or the initial recording. :slight_smile:

1 Like
10

Brilliant!! many thanks :+1: :+1:

11

...fwiw.

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