‘Innovative music player’ MiniTunes released

By , Published July 5, 2010

Minitunes, the new music player from the creator of desktop YouTube application MiniTube, sees it's first official release today, developer Flavio Tordini has just announced.

MiniTunes uses Qt and Phonon, makes use of either GStreamer or Xine and aims to €œ[unclutter] your music listening experience with a clean and innovative interface€
This first release of Minitunes does lack features many users would consider 'vital' but remember that the aim of MiniTunes is to 'unclutter' your music experience rather than replicate the bloat of other players. As such you won't currently find Last.FM Scrobbling or the ability to save or load playlists. Nor is there support for advanced audio effects such as gapless playback or crossfading.

With the caveats in mind you'll find that MiniTunes is an aptly named player with a fantastic UI that certainly makes using it preferable to the now-archaic 'browser' modes instituted by the main media players.

There is also an extensive to-do list that pencils in some of the above features – and a boat load more – which is viewable here. If you're a fan of MiniTunes and the direction then please consider donating to Flavio.

Download

You can download binaries for Linux  @ http://flavio.tordini.org/minitunes

MiniTunes is also available for OS X Snow Leopard and, shortly, Windows.

Article originally appeared on omgubuntu.co.uk

Related posts:

  1. MiniTunes music app close to first release, test it now.
  2. minitunes Player makes Your music Collection look good
  3. Minitube 1.0 Released
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  • Muhammad Negm

    I can’t USEIT!!
    the Bin Contains Icons

    • xvellyx

      run
      sudo aptitude install phonon
      before

  • http://twitter.com/explodingwalrus Carl Draper

    I’ll use it once they’ve added gapless playback, playlist and last.fm support

  • http://twitter.com/syanide1 Syanide

    No track queue, no way to remember a playlist, no seach = no game.

    Having said that, I’m looking at the to-do list, and it’s nice to see they will be addressing a lot of the issues. Looking forward to trying it out again soon.

    • http://orkutcidio.deliriocoletivo.org Peterson Espaçoporto

      I’m thinking of using it when my friends are together and want to choose the music themselves. I don’t know why (maybe because they’re all windows users) they are somewhat scared of amarok and don’t know what to do. This UI is VERY intuitive.

  • Asdas

    what is the points of this ?

    what did he think when he made this ? Isin t audacious enough for the simple music listenner?

    We need a foobar for linux!!!

    • Glennz NL

      We have, it´s called Deadbeef.

    • Tamalet

      For me that player is Guayadeque. It still needs a few (advanced) features, but the developer is fantastic.

  • Glennz NL

    Gonna try it now

  • Anonymous

    As soon as this gets load/save playlist support I will use it!

    • Anonymous

      As soon as this gets gapless playback support, I’ll most certainly use it…
      EDIT: grammar

      • http://orkutcidio.deliriocoletivo.org Peterson Espaçoporto

        If the sound works this time, I’ll use it occasionally.

      • Anonymous

        Yeah, that too. This programs looks good for netbooks but I depend too much on playlists to be able to use it as it’s now.

  • Anonymous

    looks cool

  • Lapega

    Mmmm, It’s QT, sorry, but I don’t give a try…

    • http://twitter.com/andreybond Andrey Bond

      Agree

    • http://moondowner.wordpress.com Martin Spa.

      Why not? If it was done in GTK+ do you think that it would have such a nice look & feel? Plus, it looks native on all desktops, whether GNOME or KDE, so I don’t see a point in not trying.

      Open Banshee and open Minitunes, and tell me which one uses more recourses.

      • http://bigbrovar.aoizora.org/ bigbrovar

        Look why bother he is just some brainwashed gnome fanboy who thinks Qt = KDE

        • http://moondowner.wordpress.com Martin Spa.

          I must bother, someone who doesn’t know will read it, and then he’ll think the same way, and he’ll comment on another place the same thing. That’s how misinformation spreads :D

          It’s sad that lot’s of people think that a Qt app = KDE app. A KDE app is an app that uses Qt _but_ also uses KDE’s features. A Qt app is an app that uses _only_ Qt, but fits natural on KDE desktop.

          • http://bigbrovar.aoizora.org/ bigbrovar

            You have a point there. While u are at it also let him know that Opera browser, Skype, Virtualbox all great apps which all looks native and great on Gnome are Qt apps

          • Bob

            maybe there is a reason why opera moved from Qt finally?

          • http://www.google.com/profiles/rub3nmv Rubenmv

            Yeah, and the only change I’ve seen so far is an awful visual integration, on both qt and gtk desktops.

          • Reinis

            for me opera on gnome looks like opera and I don’t see anything visually awful with it

          • http://jamesgecko.com/ James

            Skype doesn’t really look or feel like a native Gnome application. It makes a half-effort and sticks out like a sore thumb. The UI design is also very reminiscent of Windows.

            Virtualbox does a much better job at blending in, but Qt is still imperfect at mimicking the GTK+ engine. The toolbars didn’t adhere to my Gnome preferences and the font rendering was off last time I tried it.

      • http://jamesgecko.com/ James

        > Why not? If it was done in GTK+ do you think that it would have such a nice look & feel?
        Not necessarily, but I don’t see why not. Possibly nicer, as people who write GTK+ applications tend to refer to the Gnome HIG. Draw a mental box around each control in that screenshot up there. Note how the boxes don’t line up (esp in the bottom right corner), and how it looks slightly messy.

        > Plus, it looks native on all desktops, whether GNOME or KDE, so I don’t see a point in not trying.
        “Look” and “feel” are two different things.

        > Open Banshee and open Minitunes, and tell me which one uses more recourses.
        Irrelevant. Banshee uses Mono and GTK#.

    • boxjon

      Are you nuts, QT is awesome…..

    • http://orkutcidio.deliriocoletivo.org Peterson Espaçoporto

      When I first saw (here @ OMG!Ubuntu!) I thought it was for GTK+ so good it looks. I’m only giving it a try because it looks amazing in KDE too! =D

    • Anonymous

      QT aint at all that bad buddy: http://www.wikivs.com/wiki/GTK_vs_Qt

      I personally don’t have a preference between the two, as long as the application is well made and functional.

  • http://twitter.com/andreybond Andrey Bond

    Yes, it is pretty, finally there is someone who knows what design is. All Linux players are ugly. BUT! This players DOES NOT WORK on my Dell 1501. It says that my sound card HDA ATI SB (Stac92xx Analog) does not work. It is gonna run Playback recording through the pulseAudio sound server
    Any ideas how to fix it?

  • Anonymous

    I would love to use it but it keeps telling me

  • http://moondowner.wordpress.com Martin Spa.

    I only need:
    - CUE file support;
    - Last.fm scrobbling;
    - Playlist customization;
    - ‘tray icon’ & minimize to tray icon;

    and I’ll switch to Minitunes in a snap.

  • http://www.janvitus.netsons.org Janvitus

    Welcome to GTK/GNOME World, a world of 321312904012348209358290385 media players.

    • Anonymous

      It’s actually Qt.

    • Anonymous

      Actually, it would be more correct to say “Linux, a world of 321312904012348209358290385 media players.”

      And then, more generally, “Linux, a world of choice.”

      But then Windows and Mac probably have just as many, if not more media players available for purchase.

    • http://orkutcidio.deliriocoletivo.org Peterson Espaçoporto

      …Only it’s qt. But true HEAEHAEHHAEAEH

  • David

    Love it, my only issue with it is that for a program that puts major emthesis on the album art, it should check the folders for existing cover art before checking online, as it can’t find pictures for many of my albums and I have cover art in them already, which Rhythmbox and Banshee have no problem using.

  • B Boerma

    Only for 32bit?
    That’s a pain.
    Looks awesome to me

  • skkeeper

    Is there a way to run this on 64 bits Ubuntu 10.04?

  • Saa

    nothing happens when i double click the minitunes icon after unpacking. for the love of god help me

    • David

      Never fear, WebUpd8 has set up a PPA for easy install!

      sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8 && sudo apt-get update
      sudo apt-get install minitunes

  • Anonymous

    Does it automagically fetch album art? If not, the browser mode wouldn’t look that great..

  • Fletcher Andy

    Voted hot solely due to Zerbahead.

  • http://twitter.com/Nickbaskerville Nick Baskerville

    it looks great but it isn’t playing any of my songs, kind of a turn off as far as music players are concerned

  • Gustavo

    After 2 hours and 30 minutes, only scan 40% of my collection (100G)!
    Will be great if this work on background and use all tags information.

  • Anonymous

    keeps telling me that libtag.so.1 is not available. In synaptic its there and installed. I have a 64-bit ubuntu

  • Anonymous

    Used it loved it. I am aware that this is a work in progress, and that some more features will be added.This is what I was looking for, a very simple player. Sometimes less is more. On whatever platform I am on, I usually browse my music via folder (Welcome back to the 1980′s).I would like to see this in the software centre. Does anyone know the process for a piece of software to be included in the software centre? I have Googled it, but to no avail. I would be more ready to make a donation if it were in the actual Ubuntu repositories.

    +

    Once all the media has been downloaded off the internet to bring up the covers, lyrics etc… is it possible for this info to be stored locally, so that it does not have to connect all the time?

  • Jevus

    I’m getting a lot of errors about having unmet dependencies. I’m running Lucid 64, trying to compile it myself.

    Example:

    The following packages have unmet dependencies:
    phonon: Depends: libphonon4 (>= 4:4.6.2-0ubuntu5) but it is not going to be installed
    Depends: phonon-backend-xine but it is not going to be installed or
    phonon-backend

    And when I try to install those dependencies I get even more unmet dependencies! I’m so nagry I can’t resolve this.

  • http://twitter.com/yuretsz yuretsz

    Nice player but it is not well-integrated with the DE.
    1. Panflute Applet 0.6.2 doesn’t work with this player
    2. There is no way of controlling it from the command line or D-BUS, so it is hard to create your own custom integrations.

  • http://twitter.com/kmetamorphosis Bertel King

    It is pretty embarrassing to compare the Ubuntu screenshot above with the Mac screenshot on the project’s homepage. It was surprising for me to see that it was the exact same interface, because the Mac version looks immensely more modern.

  • http://carlos.utfpr.net Carlos Alexandro Becker

    QT isn’t enought, need Phonon too.. OMG