Many of our audio reviews have explored music players that are in an early stage of development. We’re always conscious that it can be unfair to review software too early in its lifecycle. It’s not surprising that they can miss essential functionality or lack stability and polish. Sometimes it’s best to wait until software has matured somewhat before putting it under the microscope.
Quod Libet is a mature music player with music management functionality. It offers a variety of ways to access your media library and combines streaming audio and podcast feeds. There’s metadata editing and searching functionality on offer.
The software is written in Python and published under an open source license.
Installation
Quod Libet is cross-platform software. There are packages available for some of the major Linux distros, and if you’re running something else, we recommend using the available Flatpak. We tested the software exclusively in Linux with the Ubuntu and Manjaro distros.
When installing packages using Ubuntu Software app or with the command line utilities such as apt or apt-get, packages are downloaded from one or more apt software repositories. An APT repository is a network server or a local directory containing deb packages and metadata files that are readable by the APT tools.
You won’t find Quod Libet in Ubuntu’s default repositories. Instead, we can add the project’s Personal Package Archive (PPA). A PPA is a software repository designed for Ubuntu users.
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:lazka/ppa
We can now install the Quod Libet package from that PPA with the command:
$ sudo apt-get install quodlibet
Next page: Page 2 – In Operation
Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Introduction / Installation
Page 2 – In Operation
Page 3 – Memory Usage
Page 4 – Summary
Meh – Internet radio is best served with something like pyradio, Advanced Radio Player, Tuner and/or shortwave.
So? It’s really a music player with some added functionality
I have used Quod Libet for several years. But since I discovered GMusicBrowser, I can’t do without it. I find it much more complete and configurable, with a much better interface. It also consumes very little RAM.
gmusicbrowser is good but its lack of functionality like cue sheet support, internet radio streaming (30,000+ stations), Spotify support and good network playback makes me prefer Tauon Music Box.
We like gmusicbrowser too. It scored pretty high in our graphical music players roundup.