Play Music From The Command Line

Play music from the command line with this music player in Linux.

CMUS command line music player

Install with:

$ sudo dnf install cmus

If this shows in Fedora:

Error: Unable to find a match: cmus

Then install RPMFusion as shown in the docs.

For the free repo:

sudo dnf install https://mirrors.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm

Then try again:

$ sudo dnf install cmus

Output:

Installing:
cmus  2.9.1-1.fc33  323 k

Installing dependencies:
libmp4v2  2.1.0-0.22.trunkREV507.fc33  439 k

Install  2 Packages

Total download size: 762 k
Installed size: 2.2 M

Running transaction
Preparing:
Installing: libmp4v2-2.1.0-0.22.trunkREV507.fc33.x86_64
Installing: cmus-2.9.1-1.fc33.x86_64
Running scriptlet: cmus-2.9.1-1.fc33.x86_64
Verifying: libmp4v2-2.1.0-0.22.trunkREV507.fc33.x86_64
Verifying: cmus-2.9.1-1.fc33.x86_64

Installed:
cmus-2.9.1-1.fc33.x86_64  libmp4v2-2.1.0-0.22.trunkREV507.fc33.x86_64

Music Player Size Comparison

Here is a comparison of installed sizes of different music players:

CMUS: 2.2 M
Rhythmbox: 2.26 M
Winamp: 16 M
Spotify: 44 M
iTunes: 400 M

Starting CMUS

Start with:

$ cmus

Once you open it for the first time, it creates a config file here:

~/.config/cmus/

$ ls ~/.config/cmus/
playlists

Opening CMUS for the first time is similar to opening Vim. There is nothing to see and you cannot figure out from this screen how to use it.

Below is a summary of the official docs here

Navigating CMUS

CMUS is similar to Vim. You have to know the keyboard shortcuts or commands to use the interface.

Navigate different views by pressing numbers from 1 to 7.

As seen in the docs:

1: Library view. All songs added to the library.
2: Sorted library view. Save as view 1 but sorted.
3: Playlist view. Editable with optional sorting.
4: Play queue view. Upcoming songs to play. They are played before anything else.
5: Directory browser. Add music for the library, playlist, or queue.
6: User defined filters.
7: Settings/keybindings.

Add songs to the library

Press the key 5 and navigate to your Music directory. Then press a to add songs to your library. There is no confirmation message when you add songs. The only indicator is that pressing a will move to the next line. I just kept the a pressed until it reached the end of the directory.

Like in Vim you can enter commands with the colon syntax. Use this to save your settings: :save.

A message at the bottom says:

:save only works in views 1 - 4

Navigate the other views to see what they have.

View 1 has a split screen with Artist/Album on the left and the song files on the right.
View 2 has the song files sorted.
View 3 has an empty split screen with Playlist *default on the left and Track on the right.
View 4 says Play Queue - 0 tracks.

Let’s try to save in View 4:

:save

No luck there. Got this message:

Error: need a file as argument, no default stored yet

Jump to View 1:

:save

No error. It is saved.

Playing music

Since View 1 is split in two. You can use tab to move between sides. Then up/down. You can play songs from View 1 or View 2.

Move to View 2.

Press Enter to play a song.

The bottom of the screen shows the playing time like this:

song.mp3
> 01:01 / 45:06

Press c to pause/play the song.

The bottom right of the screen shows this:

all from library | C

You can change these settings by pressing m which will change all from library to other options.

To the right where the C is you can change these settings:

Continue with shift C
Repeat with r
Shuffle with s
Follow with f

You can experiment with these to see what they do.

You can add songs to a queue without interrupting the current song. While in View 2 (just press 2). Tap e to add a song to the queue. Then switch to View 4 to see the Queue. You can pause the song from this view as well by tapping c. Change the order of the songs in the queue by pressing p.

Not very intuitive. I would change the keybinding so that p is pause. Changing the order of the queue moving a song up with u and down with d. Add a song to the queue with a.

Create a playlist

I use music apps mostly in playlists. For example I have a playlist called focus.

Go to View 2 and use y to add songs to a playlist.

Go to View 3 (press 3) to view the playlist. This view is also split in two.

The left side says this:

Playlist
* default

Move between sides with tab. Then you can use p to move a song up or P to move it down.

Switch to the left side with tab to select the playlist name default. Then type the command to rename it. Like this:

:pl-rename focus

The left side now says:

Playlist
* focus

Switch to the right side with tab and press Enter on one of the songs to start playing the list.

Remove songs from the playlist with upper case D.

Sources: