PiBox

1. Nightingale
2. Clementime
3. Exaile

Subsonic is also an (very good) option since it provides an API we can use from a GTK+ app. However, it requires Java 5 or later. See RM #

1. Subsonic - requires Java but has an API
2. Ampache - may not require Java and has an API

Ampache requires MySQL so that one won't be used.

Here is a way to extract id3 info from mp3s using exiftool:

exiftool file.mp3 | egrep "Artist|Album|Title" 

The problem is that this is a perl script and the module it belongs to is not specifically defined by Buildroot, though it may be possible to get it as a custom module. Alternatives to this include id3v2 or eyeD3. id3v2 only requires the idv3lib and is C code but it's output is not line oriented, making it harder to parse (but not impossible). It seems the best fit though it doesn't appear id3lib is included in Buildroot, re: I'd have to build both as a combined third party package.

Note that I simply need a way to create a DB for music, like I do with videos (via VideoLib and VideoFE). The player can be omxplayer, which knows how to play mp3 files.

• Use ffprobe (part of ffmpeg) to extract metadata as JSON:
  

  ffprobe -show_format -show_streams -print_format json <file> | jq .format.tags > <file>.json
  

• Use ffmpeg to extract the cover art for an individual file:
  

  ffmpeg -i <file> <file>.png
  

1. Set the root directory for music
2. Find directories that contain music files.
3. Create a .musicdb in that directory.
4. Run ffmpeg to gen cover art to .musicdb/coverart for each file as file.png
5. Run ffprobe for each file and output to .musicdb/file.json

That's it. No Internet lookups required. We assume your music is already tagged.

Users can search for music by Album or Artist (based on contents of all metadata files).

Now audioFE just scans the root directory for .musicdb/coverart and displays the first image found for each. Selecting an image selects that directory and extracts track names. User can play all or select one. No playlists to start (feature to be added later). Cover art for each track is displayed while playing the music. ESC stops the music playing or exits. omxplayer plays the music files.

This may be easier than I thought. I can add the DB generation to VideoLib pretty easily. Finding directories with music in them might be harder, maybe.

Preparing test on RPi, I constructed my music databases (two of them) on a USB stick and tested on my desktop (bigger than my laptop). It exposed some bugs in how I find the files. Those were fixed and the changes pushed.

On the RPi the app comes up but fails to start because it can't find the default album.png image. This is in data/album.png in the source tree and appears to be hard coded in the source - I thought I made that configurable with the -T option but must have missed something. Anyway, on the RPi that file can't be found because it's actually in /usr/share/musicfe.

Once I fix that I think the app will start properly. Then I can see if it plays music and, probably more importantly, how responsive it is.