VLC is a mainstay for most fans of FOSS technology and most Linux distros. It’s a great little player, don’t get me wrong, but if you have a large library of audio files, some times you need something more powerful.
The Clementine Music Player is a full-service audio player with all the tools you need to keep track of your audio library. According to the project’s website, Clementine “inspired by Amarok 1.4, focusing on a fast and easy-to-use interface for searching and playing your music.”
Clementine contains the following features:
- Search and play your local music library
- Listen to internet radio from Spotify, Grooveshark, SomaFM, Magnatune, Jamendo, SKY.fm, Digitally Imported, JAZZRADIO.com, Soundcloud, Icecast and Subsonic servers
- Search and play songs you’ve uploaded to Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive
- Create smart playlists and dynamic playlists
- Tabbed playlists, import and export M3U, XSPF, PLS and ASX
- CUE sheet support
- Play audio CDs
- Visualizations from projectM.
- Lyrics and artist biographies and photos
- Transcode music into MP3, Ogg Vorbis, Ogg Speex, FLAC or AAC
- Edit tags on MP3 and OGG files, organize your music
- Fetch missing tags from MusicBrainz
- Discover and download Podcasts
- Download missing album cover art from Last.fm and Amazon
- Cross-platform – works on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux
- Native desktop notifications on Linux (libnotify) and Mac OS X (Growl)
- Remote control using an Android device, a Wii Remote, MPRIS or the command-line
- Copy music to your iPod, iPhone, MTP or mass-storage USB player. Queue manager
Clementine is released under the GPL v3. The most recent version of Clementine (1.3.1) was released in April of 2016.
Installing Clementine music player in Linux
Now let’s take a look at how you can install Clementine on your system. Clementine is a popular application and is available in almost all major Linux distributions.
You can search for it on your distribution’s software center:
If you are feeling a little geeky, you can always hop on the terminal train and use your distribution’s package manger to install Clementine.
In Ubuntu, Clementine is available in the Universe repository. You can use the apt command in this fashion:
sudo apt install clementineIn Fedora, you can use this command:
sudo dnf clementineIn Manjaro or other Arch-based distributions, you can use:
sudo pacman -S clementineYou can find a list of Linux distros that have Clementine in their repos here. You can also download packages directly from the Clementine site.
If you have a Windows system, you can download a .exe from the project’s download page.
Experience with Clementine music player
I have installed Clementine on multiple Linux and Windows systems. I have a large collection of Old Time Radio shows, audio drama, and some music. Clementine does a good job of keeping it all organized.
I also used it to download and listen to podcasts. It worked well for that. However, I did not use that part very much.
I didn’t use the cloud options because I don’t trust the cloud with my audio stuff.
Final Thoughts on Clementine
I like Clementine. I installed it on multiple systems. I only used a small portion of the wide range of tools it offers and they worked great.
The only thing that concerns me is that the developers haven’t updated the project in three years. The project’s GitHub page has almost 2,000 open issues and 40 pending pull requests. I can understand that the developers might think that the project is stable and mature, but it looks like some users are having issues that are not being addressed.
I guess this is the reason why Clementine has been forked into Strawberry music player. If you are looking for an audio management program that is updated regularly, you may check out Sayonara music player or some other new music players for Linux.
Have you ever used Clementine? What is your favorite music player/manager? Please let us know in the comments below.
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