Protesilaos Stavrou

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Per-user MPD setup

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The Music Player Daemon is a program that stores information about your music collection. It manages metadata and playlists of currently queued songs or ones that are saved.

MPD uses a server/client model. To interface with it we need to use one of the many available client programs. The simplest one is mpc, a console utility with basic functionality for querying the daemon’s status, handling media controls, and the like. A more feature-rich client is ncmpcpp, which also runs in the console.

Basic configuration

MPD may be run as a system-wide server and can be controlled remotely as well. For my use case, all I need is a local, user-specific setup. This is what we will be doing.

Assuming you have followed the instructions in the chapter about installing the core packages, you should have these in place:

sudo apt install mpd mpc ncmpcpp mpdris2 python-mutagen playerctl

Then switch to the base of my dotfiles’ directory and proceed to create symlinks for the music-related programs:

~/cpdfd $ stow music

Now you need to run a series of commands to configure mpd in accordance with our per-user requirements. Start by disabling the systemd service, since we autostart mpd from within the bspwm session:

sudo systemctl disable mpd

Now switch to the local config directory:

cd ~/.config/mpd

Create the directory where saved playlist data is stored:

mkdir playlists

Generate the files mpd needs in order to run:

touch database log pid state sticker.sql

Configuration is done! You might need to reboot for changes to take effect.

Update the database

To update the mpd database (assuming the presence of audio files at ~/Music) either run mpc update in a terminal or type ncmpcpp and then press u. If your music is in a different directory, edit the relevant path in ~/.config/mpd/mpd.conf.

Basics of ncmpcpp

The “Ncurses Console Media Player C++”. To start interfacing with this excellent tool, simply type ncmpcpp in a terminal, or use the key chord chain super + x ; 5 (see the chapter about the basics of my BSPWM).

To play music, learn how to use ncmpcpp by studying the corresponding manpage. I typically switch to screen 4, by hitting 4, then A and hit enter. This inserts an empty prompt which adds all available music to the playlist. Then I toggle on repeat mode with r, random playback order with z, and a 5 second cross-fade with x.

If you do not like ncmpcpp, I highly recommend cantata, a graphical MPD front end using the Qt toolkit which, however, does not integrate well with my mostly GTK- and text- based environment (as such, Cantata is not part of my custom desktop session).

Why we also need mpc

The comparatively simpler mpc tool performs the role of a remote control. We use it to assign key chords with which to control mpd even when no client is running. In a similar fashion, mpc provides a simple way of querying the status of the server for the sake of, say, displaying information about the current song on the panel (see the chapter about the top panel).

The MPRIS bridge

By default, mpd does not behave like most up-to-date music players in the GNU/Linux world. Put differently, it cannot be controlled by dedicated media keys, nor interact with specialised tools that might be offered by the desktop environment.

This kind of functionality is part of the MPRIS protocol. To make mpd a good citizen, we have fetched the mpdris2 package as well as a dedicated, console-based program for controlling MPRIS-aware applications: playerctl.

With these in place, the Music Player Daemon (and all other MPRIS-aware media players, like the ever-popular vlc) can be controlled using the keyboard’s dedicated media keys. See man playerctl for more demanding types of interaction. The key chords are defined in my sxhkdrc as explained in the chapter about the basics of my BSPWM.

Peace of mind

MPD is great because while it is powerful and can cater to the needs of the most avid audiophile, it also works seamlessly once you set it up. I prefer it over its alternatives because it is very much laissez faire, to the point you almost forget it is even there.

When you log back in to the custom BSPWM session, mpd will be up and running, waiting for your input in a paused state (or stopped, in case that was the last interaction with it).

You do not need to keep any window open, nor run some resource-hungry web app just for the sake of playing audio from your local collection. Use the keyboard’s dedicated key for play/pause or use the combination super + down arrow: music will start playing, while you get on with your work (do not forget to see my sxhkdrc for the relevant key chords).