Tomahawk media player offers multi-source library and genius playlists

By , Published March 28, 2011

Tomahawk is a new face in the menagerie of media players available for Linux.

The application is written in Qt and available for all major platforms - although Ubuntu users will need to compile it from source.

Tomahawk in Ubuntu 10.10

Does it differentiate itself?

Whilst it has a different interface to most – although the player-controls positioned at the bottom are reminiscent of Songbird – it is the unique take on media management that makes the application notable amongst its peers.

Features

Meta-music management. Almost.

Tomahawk sells itself as being able to find and play anything you want – whether it’s on your hard-drive, your mates server or somewhere else entirely.It is able to play tracks form multiple sources: computer, network, other Tomahawk users and 3rd party services, via the use of ‘resolvers’ – small add-in scripts for finding content on YouTube, Skreemr, etc – and the Playdar ‘music content resolver service’.

“Playdar is designed to solve one problem: given the name of a track, find me a way to listen to it right now.”

Annoyingly I couldn’t get Playdar working in Ubuntu 10.10 so much of my take on the application has been hampered by this. It doesn’t help that Playdar don’t provide a Linux package for easy installation.

Echonest

Tomahawk is also able to create so-called “genius” playlists thanks the The Echo Nest service.

Whack in an artist name; genre; tempo; key; adjective – whatever – and the Echo Nest powered playlist will throw back results.

A multi-source playlist in Tomahawk

In the example above I created a new playlist using Echonest specifying artists related to New Found Glory. It came back with a number of suggestions, as can be seen in the screenshot above. Some were already on my hard-drive but it also returned entries from YouTube thanks to the YouTube resolver I had also installed.

The tracks that are ‘greyed out’ weren’t available. Had I managed to get Playdar working on Linux everything you see above would’ve likely been playable.

Other features

Playlist importing and exporting, play queue, Last.FM scrobbling, Jabber, Google Chat and Twitter support and tray applet.

Tomahawk tray applet

How to install Tomahawk on Ubuntu 10.10

In the mean time you need to manually compile the application inorder to get it up and running. Sound scary? Lemme hold your hand…

Note that the following guide is for Ubuntu 10.10 and higher.

First install the required dependencies via the Terminal or by manually hunting them out via Synaptic: -

sudo apt-get install build-essential cmake libtag1c2a libtag1-dev libqt4-dev libqt4-sql-sqlite libvorbis-dev libmad0-dev libflac++-dev libasound2-dev libboost-dev zlib1g-dev libgnutls-dev pkg-config libgloox-dev libqjson-dev

Next we need to get and build libEchonest 1.1.4 and CLucene 0.9.23.

  • Download libEchonest from here
  • Extract
  • Open a terminal and ‘cd’ into the extracted folder
  • Enter: -
    • mkdir build && cd build
    • cmake ..
    • make
    • sudo make install

We follow the same format for CLucene:

  • Download CLucene from here
  • Extract
  • Open a terminal and ‘cd’ into the extracted folder
  • Enter: -
    • mkdir build && cd build
    • cmake ..
    • make
    • sudo make install

Finally we can compile and install the application itself.

And the final command to ‘run’ Tomahawk: -

    • ./tomahawk

If you try the application out be sure to share your thoughts on it in the comments below.

We’ll be sure to update you as soon pre-packaged Ubuntu installers are ready s0 chuck us in your Feed readers or follow us on Twitter or Facebook.

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  1. ‘MusicMe’ media player forced to change name, goes Tolkien
  2. Moovida core media player is banshee with ads
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  • http://twitter.com/toetjesman henk de vries

    i kinda like the GUI, will this ever be in the software centre?

    • http://bler.webschuur.com berkes

      Pretty sure it will. The build instructions are simple enough for someone to make it a PPA. And from there it will be simple enough to get a stable version in the centre.

      • http://twitter.com/MotionShot Heimen Stoffels

        I could build a deb-package for you guys, but it would be 64-bit only then.

        • http://twitter.com/mickstep Michael Stephenson

          Get launchpad to build the 32 bit versions for you.

      • http://twitter.com/MotionShot Heimen Stoffels

        I could build a deb-package for you guys, but it would be 64-bit only then.

  • http://twitter.com/davidshaheen93 David Shaheen

    although this is nice, i will never truly love a linux media player until i get something like this http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/Media+Player+Mockup?content=74718

    • http://twitter.com/davidshaheen93 David Shaheen
      • http://twitter.com/MotionShot Heimen Stoffels

        That looks like a combination iTunes and Minitunes to me.

      • http://twitter.com/MotionShot Heimen Stoffels

        That looks like a combination iTunes and Minitunes to me.

    • Anonymous

      what so ever the lower panal of Tomahawk is downright sexy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
      the navigation icons of the top are however awfull

      • http://twitter.com/davidshaheen93 David Shaheen

        How are the navigation icons, which are expected by everyone to be at the top, awfull?

        • Atermoon

          I don’t think he was talking about the position…

        • Anonymous

          abit ugly blue…

    • http://twitter.com/luisfmercado Luis Mercado

      That looks great. However I will settle for iPad support, even with an ugly GUI.

  • Anonymous

    Enough! I can’t even decide which seat to take on friday. I’ll use aplay from now on.

  • Anonymous

    Nice player, i would like to have file-browser view
    and wide view. Just installed, and like it much more than python players, because its working very good with network, no freezes and lags, just working :)

    still i think its too itunes oriented and seek is not working, or this is how it must be !?

    ps. dependencies – 258 of extra space used.. ooh

  • http://www.facebook.com/MeanEYE ミヤトヴ ムラデン

    That looks like Qt application. Am I right? I’d like to see GTK+. At the moment am using Audacious with buggy global hotkeys plugin. It’s driving me crazy but others are way too bulky and resource hungry.

    Any suggestions?

    • http://twitter.com/MotionShot Heimen Stoffels

      The article clearly says it’s a Qt-application and else you would’ve noticed it by seeing tht it uses cmake. So yeah, it is Qt. Learn to read.
      And btw, what does it matter that it’s Qt? Qt is NOT KDE. So it looks better in your GNOME than a KDE-app.

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_JAKNSI4K6MS7J4T2A2H2K2SQCE TaLenT

      What about Guayadeque? If thats too recourse hungry, you should post on the forums, they are happy to develop and make their app better!

  • http://globallistic.blogspot.com Anonymous

    You don’t need to install Playdar for the content resolution to work, Tomahawk is compatible out of the box.

  • Atermoon

    The interface is kinda nice, though some things can be improved a bit. Doesn’t seem very heavy.

    On the bad side – scrolling is impossible, doesn’t use local cover art (I have both embedded in each mp3 and a cover.jpg inside the folder) but downloads its own instead which I really don’t like.

    Also all those options for twitter, jabber and what not are too much for me. I think I’ll stick with Banshee, it’s performance is a lot better in Natty than it used to be in Maverick, syncing my Nexus One is a pleasure and seems to be the only freaking player in the Linux world that recognizes and writes ratings to the id3 tags which is also a must for me.

    • http://twitter.com/MotionShot Heimen Stoffels

      Amarok also does that (id3 tags). Just use the latest version from the Kubuntu PPA.

      • Atermoon

        Hmm 2.4.0.90 on Natty with the Kubuntu beta PPA isn’t reading my ratings. On the other hand Banshee and Amarok seem to be using different methods (full stars only in Banshee vs full and half stars in Amarok) so that might be it. There should be some sort of standard for this thing >.<

  • Atermoon

    The interface is kinda nice, though some things can be improved a bit. Doesn’t seem very heavy.

    On the bad side – scrolling is impossible, doesn’t use local cover art (I have both embedded in each mp3 and a cover.jpg inside the folder) but downloads its own instead which I really don’t like.

    Also all those options for twitter, jabber and what not are too much for me. I think I’ll stick with Banshee, it’s performance is a lot better in Natty than it used to be in Maverick, syncing my Nexus One is a pleasure and seems to be the only freaking player in the Linux world that recognizes and writes ratings to the id3 tags which is also a must for me.

  • http://profiles.google.com/spatiegames Bas van den Heuvel

    Can’t seem to compile. Had a lot of trouble getting CLucene installed, finally got it to work by cloning it with Git (there is no version 0.9.23 on the given website, only 0.9.21b). When executing “make” on tomahawk, I get at around 60% weird errors (don’t have them now), almost ready to give up..

  • http://fapnews.com Screatch

    You, sir, have a nice music taste :)

  • Anonymous

    Dayum, another media player?!

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_W2XEHOD3AY777GM53VCK76U3H4 Anonymous

    Glad I recently moved to Archlinux… All I had to do to install it is:

    yaourt -S tomahawk

    :-D

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_4LXTMAC7KVMD7JBKWBCCBU4HSU inner_turbulence

      So did I two days ago. but meh… me not impressed, waiting for the future.

    • Anonymous

      I’m building it from the AUR right now. This may be light and simple enough for me to use regularly; we’ll see momentarily. Been enjoying ncmpcpp for some time, now.

    • Anonymous

      I’m building it from the AUR right now. This may be light and simple enough for me to use regularly; we’ll see momentarily. Been enjoying ncmpcpp for some time, now.

    • Anonymous

      I’m building it from the AUR right now. This may be light and simple enough for me to use regularly; we’ll see momentarily. Been enjoying ncmpcpp for some time, now.

    • Anonymous

      I’m building it from the AUR right now. This may be light and simple enough for me to use regularly; we’ll see momentarily. Been enjoying ncmpcpp for some time, now.

    • http://twitter.com/humphreybc Benjamin Humphrey

      How do you know someone is an Arch user?

      They tell you about it.

      • http://profiles.google.com/paasila.marko Marko Paasila

        Whats funny is that OMGubuntu is one of the best linux end user blogs even if I use ArchLinux too.

        • Anonymous

          Ditto. It’s just become a great all-around Linux blog- most fashionable around. So outside of the Unity posts, I tend to find some pretty useful stuff (might try Unity, anyway).

      • Anonymous

        I come here for Linux news–not to glorify the single distro it’s dedicated to. Chances are, if something mentioned here is in a PPA, it’s found its way the Arch User Repository, too. Sorry if that rubs some fanboys and fangirls the wrong way. Keep up the good work, OMGU!

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

        that’s quite amusing coming from an iPad user

  • http://nosheep.org.ua Алексей Раю

    Not another one of those rhythmox-banshee-exile-whatever-whatever-whatever types!

    • http://twitter.com/MotionShot Heimen Stoffels

      It doesn’t look like a familiar player to me TBH. It looks somewhat like Clementine, but it’s more like it’s inspired by Clementine. It’s easy to shoot a media player, I know there are lot of, but you can’t give statement like this unless you’ve tried it.

      • http://nosheep.org.ua Алексей Раю

        Yeah, Clementine. But there are more of a sort.

  • http://nosheep.org.ua Алексей Раю

    Oh, and I bet people in Lybia and Iraq will like your player. you can call the next version “A-Bomb”, for people in Japan to like it too.

    • Anonymous

      Yeah, and another version can be called “Clovis” so’s we can give the finger to the Mastadons, too, huh huh… Lighten the hell up, dude. Maybe it’s called “Tomahawk” because it “hacks away the competition,” not because it “blows away unfortunate Third-World peasants like a modern missile.” You can’t expect everyone to name everything “Patchouli” and “Daisy Chain.” Jesus.

      • http://nosheep.org.ua Алексей Раю

        Yeah. No problem. Next one will be “napalm’. Kinda hot.

  • http://nosheep.org.ua Алексей Раю

    Oh, and I bet people in Lybia and Iraq will like your player. you can call the next version “A-Bomb”, for people in Japan to like it too.

  • Anonymous

    Does it sync playcounts with an iPod and scrobble those, too? Or is that STILL something only Amarok1.4 and Rhythmbox is able to do?

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_HHS3YNBYUFBBEPUESRLV747QOM Dylan

    Yay another media player… just what we need! :P

    • http://twitter.com/MotionShot Heimen Stoffels

      Well, it at least shows that more interest for Linux is coming.

    • http://twitter.com/MotionShot Heimen Stoffels

      Well, it at least shows that more interest for Linux is coming.

    • Anonymous

      Yeah… Instead of making the already existing ones better and sexier, why not make yet another one from scratch? :P

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

    Why when ever you do an article on a new media player do you never seem to say about important features: is it gapless? Gstreamer? Can it handle enormous music collections? etc

    • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

      Does the second question ever even need answering? I’ve yet to come across a single moder player that can’t handle large libraries.

      No it’s not gapless; no you can’t use the seekbar; yes it uses Phonon etc.

      The main reason we don’t mention some of that stuff is because the target audience of OMG! don’t want/care about which point release of some obscure library it’s using underneath: they want to know what it does.

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

        “I’ve yet to come across a single moder player that can’t handle large libraries.” I can! Rhythmbox can’t handle huge (40000+ track) libraries, without performance issues and can’t even have multiple folders unless you use symlinks. I want to know what it ‘does’ too, as in does it actually play a large collection without freezing up or using a gig of ram to just play a track? These are important considerations when there are a million and one players out there! So who is this target audience? I guess you don’t care about anybody else

  • http://profiles.google.com/dziuliuss Julius Markunas

    I think you forgot to mention that to build on ubuntu “doxygen” package is also needed (well, at least for natty).

  • http://profiles.google.com/ionutlucaci Ionut Lucaci

    damn it, i was developing something very similar x(

  • veldar

    yep linux has the ugliest media players on earth

    • Anonymous

      Nope. iTunes doesn’t run on Linux :).

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_DID3BVH23GHHZDFQITQDT7EPZY Sean

    Sounds awesome, very tempted to switch to it

  • Anonymous

    This is a new application. Please give it a little bit of time to improve. Both Banshee and Amarok had problems when they were first created. If you are in great need of a light weight music player try DeadBeef or Clementine. To me none of the Linux music player are great. But if I come across one that does not “skip” when something happens in the background, that will be my only player!!!

    • Anonymous

      if it could import Rhymbox ratings for the songs then I would give it a try but otherwise screw it. I aint gonna manually rate 2000+ songs.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_FUL7WV2GJLQ3F7FHQKZOIS7OE4 Moraru

    For me it looks the best from what is the in Ubuntu(I’m talking about the interface)…

  • http://profiles.google.com/lobo3268715 Trevor Lenten

    just compiled. nice program except I cannot find any way to fast forward or skip to a certain point in a track.

  • Anonymous

    I miss the connection between cmake and Qt…

  • http://profiles.google.com/oraslaci Laszlo Oras Kupsa

    I managed to compile playdar on Ubuntu 10.10
    If anyone interested, check these links:
    https://github.com/mxcl/playdar/blob/master/INSTALL.txt
    https://lists.berlios.de/pipermail/mrs-user/2010-January/000488.html

  • http://twitter.com/mueslix Christian Muehlhaeuser

    Hey, this is Chris, the author of Tomahawk. To resolve some confusion caused by this article, hear me out:

    1. You do _not_ need to install Playdar. Tomahawk is a C++ implementation of the Playdar design and is compatible with all existing resolvers. Just add them in the settings dialog.

    2. Our team consists of a bunch of old Last.fm and Amarok devs. We wouldn’t just start from scratch if there wasn’t a good reason to do so. Before you judge Tomahawk, I beg you to at least give it a try: connect to another Tomahawk via Jabber or Twitter, stream music between the Tomahawks and start a station to fully grasp what we’re doing.

    3. Also check out the Tomahawk extensions and the Skreemr Resolver. I promise they’re fun to play with :-)

    Enjoy Tomahawk,
    Chris

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_UQY4AEA77HHGCOAXFQTX7EYRII Pranav

      I am having problems in compiling on ubuntu 10.10. I am a total newbie about linux. The command line output for “make” command in this post (for the last step that is installing tomahawk) is written below…

      pranav@pranav-pc:~/tomahawk-player-tomahawk-de92b0b/build$ make
      [ 40%] Built target tomahawk_jdns
      [ 40%] Built target tomahawk_qtweetlib
      [ 40%] Built target portfwd
      [ 40%] Built target qxtweb-standalone
      [ 40%] Built target tomahawk_lastfm2
      [ 40%] Built target alsaplayback
      [ 40%] Building CXX object src/libtomahawk/CMakeFiles/tomahawklib.dir/network/servent.cpp.o
      In file included from /home/pranav/tomahawk-player-tomahawk-de92b0b/src/libtomahawk/network/servent.cpp:44:
      /home/pranav/tomahawk-player-tomahawk-de92b0b/src/libtomahawk/../../include/tomahawk/tomahawkapp.h:60: fatal error: lastfm/NetworkAccessManager: No such file or directory
      compilation terminated.
      make[2]: *** [src/libtomahawk/CMakeFiles/tomahawklib.dir/network/servent.cpp.o] Error 1
      make[1]: *** [src/libtomahawk/CMakeFiles/tomahawklib.dir/all] Error 2
      make: *** [all] Error 2

  • http://gonze.com/blog/ Lucas Gonze

    The point of Tomahawk is multi-source resolution. The conversation here is about how it’s yet another media player, but it’s really not. Resolution is the distinction between this and everything else.

  • http://profiles.google.com/lsolsen Spencer Olsen

    Followed instructions until…
    make (tomahawk)
    /home/user/Downloads/tomahawk-player-tomahawk-8fbcf0c/src/libtomahawk/../../include/tomahawk/tomahawkapp.h:60: fatal error: lastfm/NetworkAccessManager: No such file or directory

  • http://gonze.com/blog/ Lucas Gonze

    The point of Tomahawk is multi-source resolution. The conversation here is about how it’s yet another media player, but it’s really not. Resolution is a huge distinction between this and everything else.

 
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