MusicPod is a cross-platform music, radio, television and podcast player. It’s free and open source software and is under active development.
We reviewed MusicPod back in May 2023. At the time, the software was in an early stage of development. We promised we’d revisit the software at a later date. There have been a fair few releases since May 2023, so let’s take a fresh look at this software.
Installation
When MusicPod was first reviewed, we used a snap to evaluate the software. This time, we’re testing MusicPod with Manjaro, an Arch-based distro. Arch is famous for the Arch User Repository (AUR), a community-driven repository. It contains package descriptions (PKGBUILDs) that allow users to build software from source with makepkg and then install it via the in-house pacman, a lightweight, simple and fast package manager that allows for continuously upgrading the entire system with one command.
One of the reasons why we enjoy evaluating software with Manjaro is because it offers a decent GUI package manager (Pamac). Combined with the AUR, it’s a huge time-saver if you like experimenting with new software.
Here’s an image of Pamac in action. A search for MusicPod reveals a package in the AUR and a Flatpak. Installing software with Flatpak can consume large amounts of disk space, so we generally consider it a last resort option (like snap and AppImage). We went with the AUR package.
Pamac handles any missing dependencies for us. No fuss, no bother.
If you’re trying to build the software on a non-Arch distro, it’s worth looking at the PKGBUILD file for the software. It’s a plain text file which you can view with any text editor. It’ll give pointers on how to build a program if you run into issues.
Besides Linux, the developer provides binaries for macOS and Windows. We only evaluated the software under Linux.
Next page: Page 2 – In Operation
Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Introduction and Installation
Page 2 – In Operation
Page 3 – Internet Radio
Page 4 – Podcasts
Page 5 – Summary
Whilst it seems this is a slick and functional application – it really fall down for me in at least two respects.
Mostly, with Radio, it dumbs down the interface – not allowing access to basic information wit radio stations instead reduced to an icon, with no information whether it’s coming via an mp3, an aac, or an opus stream… which is vital for choosing between similar stations.
For this reason, the web search of radio-browser remains a far superior tool for the job allowing you to copy the feed link and paste into some other app.
Basically ANY player that can handle m3u for me, as I keep my stations listed in a simple m3u playlist (opens with Audacious, for example, or Strawberry – which then pulls down artwork, lyrics, and other information).
Update:
OMG this is so impressive – I made a comment and got a solution within 13 hours.
I am now a fan of this project.
Another program that uses the awesome mpv.
fooyin’s developer is planning on adding internet radio. It will blow away every internet radio app if it’s half as good as the existing functionality.