After Amarok 1.4, there are not friendly music players on Linux. All of them try to compete with iTunes and Winamp (–what for?). So if you’re looking for a nice alternative and actually are a kind of melomaniac, Music On Console (MOC) is the solution.

What you get is the fastest music player ever.

What you do NOT get is: genius-trend playlists, a store, …

Moc in my terminal

  • To install it, use the command below:
sudo apt-get install moc
  • To launch it, run as typical bin executable
mocp
  • Once opened, press ‘h’ to see the list of keyboard shortcuts

Another alternative with many plugins and constant improvements is KODI (aka XBMC), Nevertheless, such amazing media player is not made for multitask, even with an external monitor. If you don’t know what KODI is about, please give it a try, its great.

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Adding Last.Fm scrobbler

Of course if you love music, and are reading a post about Linux, you will be willing to track your life through Last.fm (– am I wrong?). Follow the next steps in order to get this functionality:

  • Install lastfmsubmitd:
sudo apt-get install lastfmsubmitd

  • Fill the typical options: user and password.

  • Download moc_submit_lastfm and put it wherever you want.

  • Make it executable.

chmod 755 moc_submit_lastfm
  • Configure the flag: OnSongChange, as described in the script and tell MOC where moc_submit_lastfm is. The instruction is around line 635.
vim ~/.moc/config

OnSongChange = "/home/user/.moc/myscript %a %r"
  • Completely quit MOC and restart it.

Fix

If you cannot make lastfmsubmitd working, try switching the configuration file variables.

vim /etc/lastfmsubmitd.conf

[account]
password = your password
username = yourname