MPD

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 installation, MPD should work "out of the box", via Gentoo's default configuration.

A list of supported features/plugins can be obtained by running:

MPD can be configured system-wide or per-user, depending on the intended usage.

System-wide configuration

Basic configuration

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"
}

With this configuration, MPD should be able to run as a system daemon under the mpd user, which is the default setting.

Per-user configuration

Basic configuration

Copy /etc/mpd.conf to ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/mpd/mpd.conf, then modify the latter as appropriate.

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 by running:

PipeWire (optional)

If MPD was built with the pipewire USE flag), add a dedicated audio_output section to ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/mpd/mpd.conf:

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

General configuration

PulseAudio (optional)

If MPD was built with the pulseaudio USE flag, a dedicated audio_output section can be added to the configuration file:

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

HTTP streaming server (optional)

If MPD was built with the httpd USE flag, a dedicated audio_output section can be added to the configuration file:

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"

Binding to 0.0.0.0 enables streaming on all discovered local IP interfaces; binding to a specific IP address such as 192.168.1.2 will enable streaming via only that IP.

Bluetooth headset (optional)

To set up a Bluetooth headset, first follow the Bluetooth headset page.

Pure ALSA setup

For Bluetooth support on a pure ALSA setup, add an ALSA configuration file (e.g. /etc/asound.conf or ${HOME}/.asoundrc for a system-wide or per-user configuration, respectively) to allow MPD to control the volume of the headset, changing the values of the interface and device settings as appropriate:

# 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 the following to the audio_output section in the MPD configuration file:

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

If trying to play AAC or other files results in an error such as:

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

then add the following line to the relevant section of the relevant MPD configuration file:

format "44100:16:2"

FIFO (optional)

Use the following to set up a fifo(7) for ncmpcpp's visualiser plugin, modifying the values of the name and path variables as appropriate:

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

Services

System-wide service

OpenRC

To start MPD:

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

systemd

To start MPD immediately:

To start MPD at boot:

Per-user service

systemd

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

To activate MPD, start the systemd socket:

Clients

Packaged for Gentoo

Not yet packaged for Gentoo

The MPD site also provides a sorted list of MPD clients.

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 mpd user causes permissions issues. Change the user in mpd.conf to the appropriate user:

user "larry"

See also

• Snapcast — a multiroom client-server audio player, where all clients are time synchronized with the server to play perfectly synced audio. Can be configured as a 'frontend' to MPD.
• 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

• Audio
• Media server
• Media library