It doesn't fit my use-case very well, though. I'm not saying it needs to, but I'm going to put my use-case out there in case someone is looking for project ideas.
We have oodles of music players on Linux, GUI and terminal. But we have very few choices that
* are optimized for the absurdly, comically large library of someone who has been diligently collecting and organizing music for decades
* collect playback statistics and allow user rating of songs
* that can be used to create smart playlists
I used amarok for years, but it keeps dying and reviving, and I don't trust it to stick around. I then used mpd for years, but while mpd excels at large libraries, the other two requirements have to be implemented client-side, and the experience was always at least a little janky. I currently use Strawberry, but 1) it chugs with a large library, 2) its smart playlists aren't expressive enough, and 3) it is also kind of janky, and I experience frequent crashes.
The only player I've found that really fits my use-case like a glove is MediaMonkey, but I walked away from Microsoft years ago, and I'm not about to go back now just to wrangle my music library.
Nice, thanks for sharing your thoughts. Currently, I use navidrome[1], which not really is a player but more a music server, but since it supports the "subsonic" protocol, you can use native apps to connect and manage your stuff (substreamer for android / iOS is all I really need but navidrome also comes with a handy web interface). It also has support for json based smart playlists[2].
Just to add an alternative, I'm using Airsonic Advanced[0] as my subsonic server of choice if for only one reason: it properly supports folder navigation. I've ranted about this before (looking at you Jellyfin) but my folder layout is sacred and any media service I use needs to respect it.
For an android client I use tempo[1] which again was one I landed on because pretty much all the other clients didn't support folder lookup either (I think dsub also does but tempo is a lot prettier).
That looks like it checks most of my boxes, but I have a personal/philosophical objection to running a service. The objection is, I don't want to[0]. I just want a local application. Not local-first, I want local-only. Just an application.
[0] and also I think it's insane to add that much complexity to something that is single-user.
I'm also a navidrome user and I run it via docker exposed via traefik so I can access my music anywhere. I can use any subsonic client on android or iOS and I can bluetooth that to my car or headphones or whatever and I can load it up on my laptop anywhere.
As you've said you just want a local application just wanted to mention that in case that's actually something that might also be useful for you.
Totally understandable. I recently thought of developing a cross platform player in C# and AvaloniaUI, but cross platform audio is not as easy as it seems, especially trying to use open source libs only and minimizing dependencies.
Yes, while a comically large music library is supported in principle (kew offers to cache your library if it takes a long time to search through), it might not be entirely suited for it.
As for your other two suggestions those fall outside the scope of kew. kew is supposed to be simple with minimal bloat.
Strawberry is a pretty solid Amarok fork that is picking up steam. They are now releasing multiple releases a month and in my opinion it's a great "fully featured", gui first, easy to use player that handles large libraries well.
It doesn't fit my use-case very well, though. I'm not saying it needs to, but I'm going to put my use-case out there in case someone is looking for project ideas.
We have oodles of music players on Linux, GUI and terminal. But we have very few choices that
* are optimized for the absurdly, comically large library of someone who has been diligently collecting and organizing music for decades
* collect playback statistics and allow user rating of songs
* that can be used to create smart playlists
I used amarok for years, but it keeps dying and reviving, and I don't trust it to stick around. I then used mpd for years, but while mpd excels at large libraries, the other two requirements have to be implemented client-side, and the experience was always at least a little janky. I currently use Strawberry, but 1) it chugs with a large library, 2) its smart playlists aren't expressive enough, and 3) it is also kind of janky, and I experience frequent crashes.
The only player I've found that really fits my use-case like a glove is MediaMonkey, but I walked away from Microsoft years ago, and I'm not about to go back now just to wrangle my music library.