Ubuntu / Linux news and application reviews.

YouTube-DL GUI 0.4 Ships With New User Interface, More [PPA]

After two years since the previous version, a new YouTube-DL GUI (YouTube-DLG) version was made available for download recently. The new 0.4 version ships with a a new user interface, easier format and save path selection and more.

YouTube DL GUI

YouTube-DL GUI is, like its name suggests, a graphical user interface for the powerful command line tool youtube-dl, available for Linux and Windows. In case you're not familiar with youtube-dl, this is a popular tool that allows downloading videos from YouTube and around 1000 other websites.

Jam: Listen To Google Play Music From The Console

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about GPMDP, a Google Play Music desktop application that integrates Google Play Music with the desktop and adds various features on top. If you don't need all those desktop features and all you need is a lightweight, console Google Play Music client, you can try Jam.

Jam Google Play Music console player

Jam is a new Google Play Music console player for Linux and Windows. The application, which is written in Go, had its first alpha release about two weeks ago, and it's currently at version 0.4.0.

Extract Individual Tracks From Audio CD Images With Flacon

Flacon is a Qt tool which can be used to extract individual tracks from audio CD images which contain an entire album, such as WavPack, APE, FLAC, WAV or True Audio, based on the information provided in the CUE file.

Flacon

The application provides output format-specific settings: you can set the output quality, compression and so on as well as ReplayGain, either per album or per track.

Another useful Flacon feature is its ability to tag the resulting tracks, either based on the information provided in the CUE file or manually.

Complete Flacon feature list:
  • supports the following input formats: WAV, FLAC, APE, WavPack, True Audio (TTA).
  • supported output formats: LAC, WAV, WavPack, AAC, OGG, MP3 and Opus (with the latest Flacon 1.2.0) with preset and quality settings, etc.;
  • replay Gain analysis (album-gain and track-gain modes);
  • multi-threaded conversion process;
  • automatic character set detection for CUE files;
  • automatially tag resulting track files;

Flacon 1.2.0, released recently, brings Qt5 support along with Opus output support. However, please note that the packages available in the official Flacon PPA are still built with Qt4.


Install Flacon in Ubuntu or Linux Mint


To install Flacon in Ubuntu or Linux Mint, you can use its official PPA. To add the PPA and install the application, use the following commands:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:flacon/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install flacon
For other Linux distributions, see the Flacon downloads page.

Report any bugs you may find @ GitHub.

Pandora Client `Pithos` 1.1.0 And 1.0.2 Released

Two new Pithos versions were released yesterday: 1.1.0 (for GTK 3.14+ only) and 1.0.2 and they include an important bug fix which caused the app to stop playing randomly.

Pithos

Pithos is a Pandora.com (a music streaming and recommendation service that's only available in the United States, Australia and New Zealand) client which comes with pretty much everything you'd need in such an application, like:

Install Asunder CD Ripper 2.5 In Ubuntu Via PPA

Asunder is a GTK2 Audio CD ripper and encoder for Linux. It can be used to save tracks from Audio CDs and encode them in various popular audio formats such as MP3, OGG, FLAC, WavPack, WAV, Musepack, Opus, AAC and Monkey's Audio.


Spotify For Linux Gets A Refreshed User Interface, Other Changes

Spotify is a music streaming service that comes with native clients for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux as well as mobile devices such as iOS, Android, BlackBerry, etc. 

The service is available in quite a few countries, including US, UK, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, Norway, Netherlands and more - see the Spotify Geographic availability @ Wikipedia.

Spotify 0.9.10 linux

The native Spotify Linux client was updated to version 0.9.10 recently, which introduces a new darker theme, refreshed typography and rounded iconography. There are also some Linux-specific changes:

Pandora Linux Client `Pithos` 1.0 Released, Install It In Ubuntu 14.04

Pithos, a Pandora.com Linux client, was updated to version 1.0 recently. With this release, Pithos was ported to Python 3, GTK3 and GStreamer 1.0 but that's not all that's new - there are also some new features as well as a new app icon.


Pithos Pandora client for Ubuntu

Pandora is a music streaming and recommendation service that's only available in the United States, Australia and New Zealand. You can use it in any other country with an US proxy, VPN or a DNS service such as Unlocator (for free alternatives, see the comments).

Nuvola Player 2.1 Beta 1 Released [Cloud Music Player With Desktop Integration]

Nuvola Player

Nuvola Player is a cloud music player that supports services such as Grooveshark, Google Play Music, Amazon Cloud Player, Pandora, Rdio, Hype Machine or 8tracks.

The application integrates tightly with the desktop, providing notifications, multimedia keys support, Unity quicklists, Mpris v2 (Ubuntu Sound Menu / GNOME Shell Media Player extension integration) support and more. Other features include last.fm scrobbling, proxy support, Dock Manager integration (integrates with Docky, AWN or DockBarX) and lyrics fetching.