Add MPG123 Terminal Music Player to Raspberry Pi, Linux

by Lewis Loflin

MPG123 is a fast console MPEG Audio Player and decoder library. It works in a terminal. It consumes almost no system resources and I use it for background music on my desktop.

I works on standard Linux and Raspberry Pi. To install:

~ $ sudo apt-get install mpg123

The website is https://www.mpg123.de.

How to Use

Open a terminal and type the following and you get the above assuming folder Music is in your home folder and has mp3s:

~ $ aterm -e mpg123 -CvZ ~/Music/*.mp3

With aterm it can be any terminal in your system such as lxterminal in Raspberry Pi.

Let's set this up as a bash script and save in your $HOME/bin folder. Open a text editor:

#!/bin/bash
# -C, --control Enable terminal control keys.
# -v --verbose
# -Z random loop
lxterminal -e mpg123 -CvZ ~/Music/*.mp3
exit

Note you can use any terminal you have such a aterm, xterm, etc.

Save and close.

This will play every song at in the directory random forever. Leave out -Z and it will play every song in the directory in alphabetical order then exit.

The -C allows one to display a help menu by typing h.

Above is my Python audio menu.

Save the above as mpg123.sh (or rename it anything other than mpg123) in you bin folder or /usr/local/bin. Add the command you your menu.

Make the file executable:

~ $ sudo chmod +x mpg123.sh

Below are various terminal commands. Some may not working depending on how the binaries were compiled.

[s] or [ ] interrupt/restart playback (i.e. 'pause')
[f] next track
[d] previous track
[b] back to beginning of track
[p] pause while looping current sound chunk
[.] forward
[,] rewind
[:] fast forward
[;] fast rewind
[+] volume up
[-] volume down
[r] RVA switch
[v] verbose switch
[l] list current playlist, indicating current track there
[t] display tag info (again)
[m] print MPEG header info (again)
[h] this help
[q] quit