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MPD (Music Player Daemon) is a flexible, server-side application for playing music. Through plugins and libraries it can play a variety of sound files while being controlled by a network protocol.

Installation

USE flags

Emerge

Configuration

After finished installation MPD should be working with the Gentoo shipped default configuration.

A list of supported plugins/features of your MPD can be obtained by issuing:

MPD can be configured in a system-wide or per-user fashion. The configuration style choice depends on the intended usage.

System-wide configuration

Basic configuration

Below an example of a simple configuration:

music_directory      "/var/lib/mpd/music"
playlist_directory   "/var/lib/mpd/playlists"
db_file              "/var/lib/mpd/database"
log_file             "/var/lib/mpd/log"
state_file           "/var/lib/mpd/state"

user                 "mpd"

bind_to_address      "localhost"
bind_to_address      "/var/lib/mpd/socket"

input {
        plugin "curl"
}

audio_output {
        type            "alsa"
        name            "default"
        mixer_type      "software"
}

At this point MPD should be able to run as a system daemon with its own user called mpd, which is the default setting of MPD.

PulseAudio (optional)

If MPD was build with PulseAudio support (pulseaudio USE flag), add a dedicated audio_output section to your /etc/mpd.conf:

audio_output {
        type            "pulse"
        name            "Pulse Output"
        mixer_control   "Master"
}

Pipewire (optional)

If MPD was build with Pipewire support (pipewire USE flag), add a dedicated audio_output section to your /etc/mpd.conf:

audio_output {
        type            "pipewire"
        name            "Pipewire Output"
}

Built-in HTTP streaming server (optional)

If MPD was build with network USE flag, add a dedicated audio_output section to your /etc/mpd.conf:

audio_output {    
        type            "httpd"
        name            "HTTP Stream"
        encoder         "vorbis"                # optional, vorbis(OGG) or lame(MP3)
        port            "8000"
        bitrate         "192"                   # do not define if quality is defined      
        format          "44100:16:1"
}

bind_to_address "0.0.0.0"

Replace localhost with 0.0.0.0 or a specific interface IP. Bind to address 0.0.0.0 means here: stream on all local found IP interfaces. You could change it to a specific interface IP address like e.g. 192.168.1.2 then the streaming server is bound to that interface IP only.

Bluetooth headset (optional)

Setup a Bluetooth headset first, according to the Bluetooth headset article.

ALSA (non-PulseAudio) setup with BlueZ 5

Put a user level ~/.asoundrc file in MPD's $HOME directory, which is /var/lib/mpd by default. MPD will be able to control the volume of the headset.

# Specify the parameters of the Bluetooth connection
defaults.bluealsa {
     interface "hci0"            # host Bluetooth adapter
     device "XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX"  # Bluetooth headset MAC address
     profile "a2dp"
}

To be able to switch between the Bluetooth headset and the default sound card, add these lines to the audio_output section in /etc/mpd.conf:

audio_output {
        type            "alsa"
        name            "My ALSA Device"
}

audio_output {
        type            "alsa"
        name            "ALSA Bluetooth Headset"
        device          "bluealsa"
        mixer_type    "software"
}

MPD might crash when switching output _while_ playing (if so, pause before switching).

If you experience some issues while trying to play AAC or other files, like:

...
alsa_output: Failed to open "My ALSA Device" [alsa]: Error opening ALSA device "bluealsa" (snd_pcm_hw_params): Invalid argument
...

Then add this line to your audio_output:

format          "44100:16:2"

FIFO (optional)

The FIFO output setup for the visualiser plugin which in the media-sound/ncmpcpp client. Following additional settings enable the FIFO functionality:

audio_output {
        type  "fifo"
        name  "mpdFIFO"
        path  "/tmp/mpd.fifo"
        enabled  "yes"
        format  "44100:16:2"
}

The name and path variables values can be set to reflect own needs.

Service

OpenRC

To start MPD:

To start MPD at boot time, add it the default runlevel:

systemd

To start MPD immediately:

To start MPD at boot time:

Per-user configuration

It may be handy to run MPD configured for a specific user.

Basic configuration

Start with copying /etc/mpd.conf to $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/mpd/mpd.conf. Then you need to adjust the configuration to your needs.

Sample configuration using PulseAudio output:

# Recommended location for database
db_file                 "~/.mpd/database"

# Input
input {
        plugin          "curl"
}

# PulseAudio output
audio_output {
        type            "pulse"
        name            "Pulse Audio"
}

Now it should be possible to start MPD simply issuing:

Service

systemd

It is possible to leverage systemd user services to control MPD in a per-user way.

To activate the MPD, start the systemd socket:

Clients

• Sorted List of MPD clients

Commandline/Console

• media-sound/mpc — A commandline client for Music Player Daemon (media-sound/mpd) (useful for key-bindings)
• media-sound/ncmpc — An ncurses client for the Music Player Daemon (MPD)
• Ncmpcpp — An ncurses mpd client, ncmpc clone with some new features, written in C++
• media-sound/pms — Practical Music Search, another ncurses based mpd client with vi like keys, written in Golang
• media-sound/vimpc — An ncurses based mpd client with vi like key bindings
• Ampc — Asynchronous Music Player Controller for Emacs
• clerk — mpd client, based on rofi/fzf, written in Perl
• vimus — An MPD client with vim-like key bindings, written in Haskell

Graphical (GTK)

• media-sound/ario
• media-sound/gimmix
• media-sound/glurp
• media-sound/sonata
• media-sound/xfmpc

Graphical (Qt)

• media-sound/cantata
• media-sound/quimup

Graphical (other)

• x11-plugins/wmmp

Web

• ympd — MPD Web GUI - written in C, utilizing Websockets and Bootstrap/JS

Scrobblers

Scrobblers are clients that submit to Audioscrobbler — compatible services (eg. libre.fm or last.fm)

• media-sound/mpdas
• media-sound/mpdscribble
• media-sound/scmpc

Troubleshooting

For general troubleshooting refer to the MPD user manual troubleshooting section

No Audio from PulseAudio

Running mpd as a system service under the user "mpd" causes permissions issues. Change the user in mpd.conf to your current user.

user "larry"

See also

• Upmpdcli — a free and open source UPnP media renderer front-end for Music Player Daemon (MPD).

External resources

• MPD Forum
• MPD on Sourceforge
• MPD at Arch Wiki