Last Updated on September 1, 2020
With my CD collection spiraling out of control, I’m spending more time listening to music with a number of popular streaming services.
Linux offers a great range of excellent open source music players. But I’m always on the look out for fresh and innovative streaming players. Step forward MellowPlayer.
MellowPlayer offers a web view of various music streaming services with integration with your desktop. It was developed to provide a Qt alternative to Nuvola Player.
The software is written in C++ and QML.
Installation
MellowPlayer is released under an open source license, so you can download the source code and compile it. But there’s convenient packages available for Ubuntu, Arch Linux, openSUSE, Fedora, and other popular Linux distributions.
The developer also provides an AppImage which makes it easy to run the software (but only some of the streaming services are supported). 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 ./MellowPlayer-x86_64.AppImage
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
Music streaming services are nothing but a ripoff! Why should I pay a monthly fee to stream music when I can pay once for the tracks I really like, and keep playing them forever? Plus the streaming services “channels” are obviously programmed by people who don’t know what songs belong on what genre or category. I can’t stand it when country music or blues or jazz gets played on a rock channel! Besides that, with streaming services, if I don’t have an internet connection, no music!
The vast majority of services supported by MellowPlayer offer free accounts. Spotify / Deezer and others are excellent.
“Why should I pay a monthly fee to stream music when I can pay once for the tracks I really like…?”
Hey, maybe streaming is not for you, but I happen to like a LOT of songs, so paying a flat fee is much cheaper than having to buy all of those songs (and the new ones that keep coming out).
Think about it like monthly-flat-fee broadband internet access versus pay-for-the-hour dialup/isnd.
Cheers!