Last Updated on July 13, 2021
With my CD collection spiraling out of control, I’m spending more time streaming music. While digital music downloads are on the decline, music streaming services are soaring in popularity, not least because of the behemoths Google, Apple, Spotify, and Amazon. Streaming services let you pay a modest fee each month, or even listen to the music for no charge with some limitations.
Linux offers a great range of excellent open source music players. But I’m always on the look out for new and innovative streaming players.
You may have heard of Cloud-Player which was released under the GNU General Public License. It’s recently been relaunched/rebranded as aux.app. In this article, I’ll look at the native Linux player for aux.app. This streaming player plays music from YouTube, SoundCloud, and Deezer.
The frontend is written in TypeScript with Angular 7 (a platform that makes it easy to build applications with the web), Backbone (a JavaScript library with a RESTful JSON interface) and styling based on Bootstrap.
There’s a REST API written in Python 3 with Tornado. Playlists and accounts are stored using a PostgreSQL database. Redis is used to enable a Remote Control feature and the software’s recommendation system uses Elasticsearch.
The desktop app embeds the website in an Electron container which offers background playback and media keys to control to the app.
Installation
aux.app is not released under an open source license. While there’s a GitHub page for aux.app, its source code is sadly absent. The file package.json states a MIT license, but this does not apply to the frontend or backend. Given the lack of source code, what are your options?
The developers provide an AppImage as well as a snap. While I’d definitely prefer access to the source code, the AppImage and snap make it easy to run the software. AppImage is a format for distributing portable software on Linux without needing superuser permissions to install the application. All that’s required is to download the AppImage, and make the file executable by typing:
$ chmod u+x aux-app.AppImage
The first time you run the software, you’ll be given the option of integrating the software into your system. This moves the AppImage into a predefined location (~/Applications/), and adds an entry into your application launcher.
Next page: Page 2 – In Operation
Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Introduction / Installation
Page 2 – In Operation
Page 3 – Other Features
Page 4 – Summary
Also look at MusikWave – fully open source, streams from youtube and indexes from last.fm
Yes, that’s on my radar to cover. I write about open source and proprietary software.
For everyone else, to recap, YouTube music streamers I’ve written about recently include:
Before looking at more YouTube players, there’s lots of general music players that you could look. How about Pragha and Museeks? Pragha is a fairly lightweight music player that is written in C and fully integrates with GTK+3. It supports Last.fm. Museeks is Electron based and in early development but it’s pretty darn good.
Just my 2c
I think I’ve had my quota of Electron based music software for a while, but there’s an article due for Pragha in a few weeks (subject to editorial approval).