Installation and configuration guide for NCMPCPP and MPD music players on Linux Mint
My first attempt at getting these two great tools working was a bit of a pain in the ass but it was totally worth it because it is by far the best way of organising and playing your music that I’ve ever used. Now that I’ve set it up a few times on various Linux builds I know it’s fairly straight forward but there are a few gotchas to watch out for so I’ve written this guide for future reference.
Although it’s possible to install NCMPCPP with a simple apt install ncmpcpp I
found that approach gave me a bunch of problems when configuring the software
because the version you get using apt install is pretty old meaning many of
the configuration guides I found online didn’t work (speaking of guides, the
best one to follow and consult for trouble shooting is the ncmcpcc guide on
wiki.archlinux.org).
Instead I found it’s best to build it yourself from source as you’ll get the
latest version and should find it easier to set up. First clone the source code
then cd into the directory.
cd /usr/local/lib
sudo git clone https://github.com/ncmpcpp/ncmpcpp
cd ncmpcpp
Now follow the steps in the INSTALL file to get it running. You’ll probably
have to run the configure file a few times because it’ll complain about
various packages not being found. I had to install the following packages:
sudo apt install libboost-all-dev
sudo apt install libmpdclient-dev
sudo apt install libcurl4-openssl-dev
sudo apt install libtag1-dev
That last item is called Taglib, it’s an optional package so the configure
script won’t prompt you to install it, but without it the metadata editor
feature of NCMPCPP won’t work. You’re probably gonna want to use the metadata
editor so get Taglib installed before you run make to compile the NCMPCPP
package.
Once you’ve successfully compiled the package you can make install then run
ncmpcpp to start it up. It’ll probably say “connection refused” at the bottom
because we’re yet to install and configure MPD.
You’ll need a folder for your config at ~/.ncmpcpp. The config file is just
named ‘config’ and the bindings file is named ‘bindings’. Here is an example
with some basic settings:
# ~/.ncmpcpp/config
ncmpcpp_directory = "/home/planteroast/.ncmpcpp"
mpd_music_dir = "/home/planteroast/gs-music"
mpd_host = "localhost"
mpd_port = "7700"
mpd_connection_timeout = "5"
mpd_crossfade_time = "0"
Note that I’ve set the port to 7700 instead of the default 6600, this is because I was getting some strange issues with Mint telling me that the port is already in use and I found setting the port it to something other than 6600 fixed it. If you do this then you’ll need to set the MPD port too (info on how to do it is later in this guide).
You can get a fresh version of the config file and the bindings file from the following locations and edit it with your settings.
# Fresh versions of the config and bindings to use as templates
cp /usr/share/doc/ncmpcpp/bindings ~/Desktop
cp /usr/share/doc/ncmpcpp/config ~/Desktop
Are you using the latest version? Many of the guides I’ve seen on the web use old verions and state outdated variables. It’s best to build the latest version yourself and use the latest config variables. Also, I’ve found while styling NCMPCPP that some of the variables don’t seem to work or maybe they do work but not in the way that the name suggests?
You might find after installing MPD and NCMPCPP and successfully playing some music that the tag editor screen is not available when you push 6. This might be because when you built NCMPCPP you didn’t have taglib installed, as when its not available NCMPCPP will build itself without the tag editor feature. It’s listed as an optional dependency in NCMCPCC’s README file so if you install it then rebuild NCMPCPP it should work
The details below are a summary of the full guide on wiki.archlinux.org so go check that out if it’s your first time installing and setting up MPD.
MPD can be easily installed with apt install, as can its command line user
interface mpc. MPC is not necessary to play your music via NCMPCPP but you’ll
need it when you install MPD in order to create a database. I think it might be
possible to create the MPD database using NCMPCPP’s update command too? Either
way, MPC comes in very handy later if you want to set up any custom key bindings
or scripts for controlling your music so you might as well just install it.
sudo apt install mpd
sudo apt install mpc
mpc update
There are 2 modes which MPD can run in; system-wide, and per-user. For a basic music player setup per-user mode is what you need, or if you’re building a fancy multi user audio server you might want to look into system-wide mode.
# Run MPD in per-user mode (probably the one you want to use)
mpd
# Run MPD in system-wide mode (for advanced use such as always-on audio servers)
sudo systemctl start mdp
When running in system-wide mode you can stop MDP with sudo systemctl stop mpd
and see the status of it with sudo systemctl status mpd.
You might see an error when you run MPD relating to wildmidi being uninstalled or unavaliable. It seems to pop up all the time but it’s a low level warning which you can probably ignore unless you are using midi.
# Ignore this low level warning (unless you intend using midi)
decoder: Decoder plugin 'wildmidi' is unavailable: configuration file does not exist: /etc/timidity/timidity.cfg
The MPD configuration file belongs in ~/.config/mpd/mpd.conf. If you need a
template configuration file there’s one in /user/share/doc/mpd which you can
copy.
# Template for making a MPD config
mkdir ~/.config/mpd
cp /usr/share/doc/mpd/mpdconf.example ~/.config/mpd/mpd.conf
My personal config file look like this:
# ~/.config/mpd/mpd.conf
music_directory "/home/planetroast/gs-music"
bind_to_address "0.0.0.0"
port "7700"
playlist_directory "/home/planetroast/gs-music/playlists"
metadata_to_use "artist,album,title,track,name,genre,date,comment"
Here’s an explanation of why I set the above settings:
| Setting | Why I changed it |
|---|---|
music_directory |
Because I keep my music library somewhere else instead of the default ~/Music directory for organisational reasons |
port |
Because I was getting errors about the default port of 6600 being in use and setting to something different fixed the problem |
bind_to_address |
Because it was required to fix the ‘port in use’ issue |
playlist_directory |
Because I keep my playlists somewhere else instead of the the default ~/.mpd/playlists |
metadata_to_use |
Because it allows the metadata editor to update comments on songs (more info on this below) |
This is probably because MPD is already running and you weren’t aware of it, it
happens if you run mpd more than once. If you need to stop or restart MPD you
should use the systemctl commands: sudo systemctl stop mpd.
In theory stopping MPD should be all you need to do but I’ve found on some Mint installations that the only way to solve the ‘port already in use’ issue is to change the port that MPD and NCMPCPP use. My configuration in this guide uses port 7700 instead of the default 6600 which fixed the problem for me.
Open the metadata editor screen in NCMPCPP (keybinding for this is number 6) and you’ll see the option to edit the comments for your songs, but you might find that any changes to the comment does not persist after saving. I spent fucking ages trying to solve this because I assumed it was an issue with NCMPCPP or with Taglib, but it turns out that it’s a MPD configuration issue.
The fix is easy, just add the comment attribute to the metadata_to_use
setting of your mpd.conf. By default the string doesn’t contain comment so
just add it in there and your comments should start saving.
# mpd.conf
metadata_to_use "artist,album,title,track,name,genre,date,comment"
Had I been looking for a solution in the MPD man page then I would have found it pretty quickly as it says it right there at the end of the description: The default is to use all known tag types except for comments.
# MPD Man page
# https://linux.die.net/man/5/mpd.conf
metadata_to_use <tags>
This specifies the tag types that will be scanned for and made available
to clients. Note that you must recreate (not update) your database for
changes to this parameter to take effect. Possible values are artist,
album, title, track, name, genre, date, composer, performer, comment,
and disc. Multiple tags may be specified as a comma separated list. An
example value is "artist,album,title,track". The special value "none"
may be used alone to disable all metadata. The default is to use all
known tag types except for comments.