Lollypop
Lollypop is a lightweight modern music player designed to work excellently on the GNOME desktop environment. However, it will install and work on other desktop environments too.
"A Music player for GNOME featuring intuitive browsing of your music collection. Supports downloading of lyrics and cover art, syncing music with MTP devices, and has a kiosk (party) mode view."
Features
Lollypop features a party mode which will automatically select party-related playlists to play; a full-screen view which lets you visually access the player from your couch thanks to its HiDPI support; and native support for replay gain.
Features
Lollypop features a party mode which will automatically select party-related playlists to play; a full-screen view which lets you visually access the player from your couch thanks to its HiDPI support; and native support for replay gain.
- Multiple Audio Formats – Play mp3/4, ogg and flac files
- Metadata – Fetch lyrics, artist bio, and automatically download cover arts
- Synchronization – Sync Lollypop with your Android device via MTP
- Audio Scrobbling – You can scrob songs to Last.fm, Libre.fm and ListenBrainz
How To Install Lollypop
Open your Terminal and enter the following:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gnumdk/lollypop
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install lollypop
You can also download the install file from pkgs.org or via Flatpak or from the GNOME wiki site.
To remove the program enter the following:
sudo apt-get remove lollypop
sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:gnumdk/lollypop
Open your Terminal and enter the following:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gnumdk/lollypop
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install lollypop
You can also download the install file from pkgs.org or via Flatpak or from the GNOME wiki site.
To remove the program enter the following:
sudo apt-get remove lollypop
sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:gnumdk/lollypop
You can access the program through your menus. I use Ubuntu MATE 18.04.4 LTS, so I click on the Applications menu, highlight Sound & Video, and then click on Lollypop.
The first time you open the program it will look blank. You'll have to load your music or albums.
Click the three dots (...) in the upper right corner and click on Preferences when a drop-down arrow appears.
When the Preferences dialog box appears, click on the Music tab. Select the folder that contains your music or albums. If you have more than one folder that contains music then click the plus (+) icon and add additional folders. The program will start scanning your music and create album art for the albums it locates within the folders.
The progam looks simple which makes it easy to use andiIt's great for handling album art.
It has two great features that make it sound out: smart playlists and ratings. You can select a 1 to 5 start rating for each song you listen too. You can click on the heart icon to save it to your favorites.
Your albums will appear in the All albums section on the left.
It will also organize your music by artists by clicking on the All artists section on the left.
Lollypop also an Equalizer so that you can adjust the frequency or boost the treble and/or bass output. To access the Equalizer click the three dots (...) in the upper right corner and click on center button or Equalizer icon. You'll notice an Equalizer appear in the center of the program. It will be set to a Default setting. You can click the checkbox to the left of Defualt and you can change the different frequency settings.
You can drag each slider until you get your desired sound setting. This will create you a new Custom setting.
You can click the drop-down arrow a chose between 23 different settings. Each of the difference settings are labeled with a certain genre to help you quickly pick the best settings for the type of music you enjoy listening to.
You can take a look through the different tabs within the Preferences dialog box in the slides below.
If you add a new folder that contains a lot of music albums you will notice that they will appear in the All albums section on the left. It may take a while to populate your list depending on how many albums you have in your folder.
If you click on an album cover it will open that album allowing you to see your song list. You can double-click on a song to start playing it. If your song list or title or cover art is not correct then click the vertical three dots in the upper right corner and click Modify information when the drop-down list appears. It will open your default audio tag editor. I highly recommend using EasyTag graphical tag editor because it is easy to use and supports over a dozen different music formats or extensions.
EasyTag or your default audio tag editor will pop-up and allow you to fix any problems that you may have with a song title, album title, album art, artist information, year, and more. Then you'll select the files you modified and click the Save button. The changes should immediately show up in Lollypop.
I like the way that Lollypop displays your albums on your system. This is my favorite program for organizing my music albums.
It also has a nice way of organizing your albums by artists. This makes it easy to locate a particular song or album.
If you get the message "You need to install kid3-cli" next to Save changes to files within the Behaviour tab in the Preferences dialog box then you need to install kid3-cli or command line audio tag editor.
Open your Terminal and enter sudo apt-get install kid3-cli and press the Enter or Return key. Enter your password and press the Y key when prompted to start the installation process.
When you re-open Lollypop and go to your Preferences and click on the Behaviour tab, you'll notice the message has changed to a button that you can turn on if you want Lollypop to make changes to the metadata of your songs.
Lollypop uses a variety of methods to organize your music. On the left side you can click to access Popular albums, Random albums, Recently added albums, Playlists, Years, Web, All albums, and All artists. I do not use Lollypop to stream online music that's why you see the message, "You need to enable Spotify and Youtube in network settings." For my online music I use Radio Tray, Pithos, Spotify, and Google Play Music Desktop Player.
If you use Lollypop to organize all your music albums, then I recommend creating multiple playlists for those special occasions. Using the Random albums mode is great for playing random songs from your album collection; however, "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" during a summer time party might sound a little weird. You can create you a playlist for each occasion throughout the year. You can create a Christmas playlist, Birthday Party playlist, or whatever occasion you may have that requires music in the background.
Create a New Playlist
Click the Playlists section on the left to make it active. Then click the New playlist button at the top.
Create a New Playlist
Click the Playlists section on the left to make it active. Then click the New playlist button at the top.
You should see a New playlist 1 appear in your lists area. Click the gear icon on this new playlist and give it a name and then click the Save button.
Now go into an album that you want to add to your new list and click the three verticle dots. When a drop-down list appears click the option Add to and the name of your new playlist.
Now click back on the Playlists section on the left. You'll notice that your album was added to your new playlist. Keep doing these steps for each album you want to add to your new playlist.
You will eventually have all your songs organized for that special occasion. As you can see in my example below, I now have all my Christmas albums on this computer organized in a Christmas Playlist.
I added four Christmas albums into my Christmas Playlist and it created a playlist that will play 3 hours and 17 minutes of non-stop Christmas music. This is great for playing quitely in the background to help create ambience of Christmas.
View Lyrics
To view the lyrics of a song you'll need to enable the Lyrics in the Options menu. Click the three dots in the lower left corner and then put a check in the box next to Lyrics.
To view the lyrics of a song you'll need to enable the Lyrics in the Options menu. Click the three dots in the lower left corner and then put a check in the box next to Lyrics.
Next, click on three dots in the upper right corner and click on Preferences.
Next, click on the Web tab across the top and scroll down to the Lyrics section. Turn on or enable each option in that section and then close the Preferences dialog box. .
Select a song from your music collection and click the play button
Next, click the Lyrics option on the left to display the lyrics to the selected song.
Lollypop is one of the best music players for organizing your stored music albums. I use Audacious as my default music or audio player and I use Lollypop to organize my albums. I use EasyTag to fix songs with the wrong metadata information, so that my music is correctly organized.
If you have a few or a lot of albums on your computer, I recommend that you give Lollypop at try. It's easy to configure and it's easy to use.
If you have a few or a lot of albums on your computer, I recommend that you give Lollypop at try. It's easy to configure and it's easy to use.
Mar 18, 2020