MPoD
Music Player Daemon (MPD) allows remote access for playing music (MP3, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, AAC, Mod, and wave files) and managing playlists. MPD is designed for integrating a computer into a stereo system that provides control for music playback over a local network. It’s a great solution to link a headless computer system to your audio installation.
The iPhone or iPod Touch makes for an ideal companion to MPD with the introduction of MPoD. An intuitive and great looking interface makes it very easy to browse through a large collection of songs (my own is 10.000+), and find the album or song that you want to hear.
In the spirit of MPD and open source software, MPoD is available free of charge from the AppStore. That said, I put a lot of time into building and supporting it, and I have to pay for hardware, software and developer licenses. Therefor I’ll be happy to receive any donations, small or big, into my Paypal account to support me in my software development. Clicking on the Donate button will take you to the secure Paypal donation site.
The following features are available from MPoD:
- Connects to your MPD server over TCP/IP.
- Automatically find MPD servers that make themselves know via Bonjour/Zeroconf.
- Supports the use of a password for making a connection to the server.
- Store multiple connection profiles.
- Fast application startup.
- Now playing screen shows active playlist and playing song.
- Cover art from Amazon or local http server.
- Volume control.
- Move to previous, next song.
- Move to any song in active playlist.
- Seek in song.
- Toggle random, repeat.
- Stream mp3 directly to iPhone via icecast server or mpd (v0.15 or above).
- Play random album or random songs by shaking your iPhone.
- List of artists with drilldown to albums and songs.
- Option to hide artists that only appear on compilation albums.
- List of albums with drilldown to songs.
- Option to group songs into albums based on server directory.
- List of songs, which also displays artist and album for each song.
- All lists are searchable.
- List of all playlists.
- Save the active playlist into a saved playlist.
- Choice between ‘add to active playlist’ or ‘replace active playlist’.
- Support for last.fm.
- Full iOS4 compatibility including background operation, remote control functions, retina display.
- Works well with Mopidy (mpd like Spotify player).
MPoD version 1.5.1 is available now from the AppStore. Here are some screenshots from this version:
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Is there a way to remove a song from the playlist or to drag the songs in the current playlist around, so they are played in a different order?
This would make the program into a fantastic little “Jukebox”
Fantastic program!
Currently there is no way to edit the playlist. It’s on the todo list.
I’m not sure how to get “on the go” mode to work properly. I’ve got my mpd streaming via VLC on my computer so I know it’s working. I’ve put in the stream URL, is there anything else I needed to configure?
got it to work! I tried using lame encoder instead of ogg, and it works. Thanks. this app is super awesome now
I should make it more clear that streaming is only supported with mp3, not ogg.
I’m using MPoD with the Auraliti music MPD server. It’s fairly intuitive, but I’m not sure I know all the commands. Is there a command list published somewhere?
What do I need to do to get a cover art display? I don’t have one now.
There is a little how-to that you can get to from the settings. But there really aren’t many more commands then what is obvious from the screen.
This is a really great program!
I have a few comments on the interface…
1. When I click on “… more”, and go to playlists, there is no way to go back out to be able to select the browse mode. Once playlist is selected, then only way I found to get to browse mode is to exit and enter the program again. Once playlist is selected, a click on “… more” goes directly to playlist. I think there could be a button in playlist to go back out, or that “… more” always goes back out of playlist.
[Oh, I just figured it out! You just press "...more" while in playlist mode!!]
2. I’d really like to be able to browse by genre, too.
3. When in browse mode, you have the option to select “replace mode” vs. “add mode” in the highest level (i.e. the top level). Below that, you can’t select – the top left botton is now a button to go up a level in the browser. It also seems that no matter what you chose at the top level – replace or add, once you are down a few levels, it always defaults to add.
4. I’d change the title of the dialog when you save the current playlist as a new playlist to “save playlist as..”, instead of “add playlist”. That will make it clearer that you’re not just creating a new empty playlist.
5. How do you “hide artists that only appear on compilation albums.”?
2. I know the request. Not likely to be added anytime soon.
3. The replace/add mode is a global setting (even if the button appears multiple times) that should work on all lower level screens as well. I can’t reproduce the problem your describing.
4. Why not.
5. When the local cache is created, every album with more then 2 different artists is flagged as a compilation. The ‘hide artists’ function will not show artists that ONLY appear on compilations.
3. Hmmmm. I can’t recreate that now, either. I’ll report if I see it again. Is it possible to add a button also on the lower levels for switching mode? I guess it isn’t THAT bad to have to navigate to the top level to switch mode or check what it currently is, and back down.
5. Where is the ‘hide artists’ function? I can’t find it. Ah! Finally! The preferences area contains more than just connection info…. Duh.
Thanks!
What a nice app! Beautiful, simple interface and deals with my very large library (73000) extremely well. Would love to see a couple of enhancements:
1) I would like to be able to have albums sorted by track number. As an album listener it is always disconcerting to hear tracks in the wrong order.
2) I’d also suggest adding a small amount of feedback to the user when something is clicked. For example, when you add an album via the (>) icon it doesn’t give an indication the command was accepted. And, since your dealing with remote commands and responses that may have quite a bit of latency, it would also be nice to indicate this somewhere in the interface. For example, when adding an album, perhaps indicate ‘refreshing playlist’ in the message area of your app. This gives the user confidence that their activity isn’t being ignored.
Anyway, thanks!
Turns out albums are sorted by track number. The problem here is that ffmpeg – which mpd uses to extract tag information from files – does not correctly output the track number for m4a files. ffmpeg also has a problem with the composer field showing up in the artist field for the same file types.
I like the 2nd suggestion, and I’ll have a look what can be done.
[...] you need to use an MPD client to connect to your MPD server, for example Theremin for MacOS or MPoD for iPhone. Check out the MPD client wiki for more clients. Add some songs to your playlist and [...]
Hi,
I have been using MPoD for a few months now and i love it.
There is only one thing that i miss. When browsing artists it would be great if albums where presented as: Year – AlbumName instead of just Albumname. Or maybe just an option to change how albums are sorted (alphabetically or chronologically).
Is this something that might get implemented in the future?
Thanks!
The years available through MPD, I can add it to the display. But sorting on year is not easy to do.
Great client, works wonderfully. Contributed some via paypal, but it credited qcalc instead of MPod, just wanted you to know what the donation was for.
I’ve downloaded the app and I’m currently testing it connected to my laptop, but in the future I’ll build a dedicated music server. Nice app, but I’d like to browse the music by composer, useful with classical music.
Any chance to implement this feature?
Thanks
Unlikely that browsing by composer will be added anytime soon.
Hi,
I am using mpod both for streaming to airport express and in “on the go” mode. Mpd is version 0.15.9 (self compiled) and mpd is actual version.
It just works perfect !! Thaks for the work.
But what I am really missing in “on the go” mode is the function of the ear phones remote controll (pause/play and next song).
Any idea if that will be implemented in near future ?
regars
I have been unable to find a way to catch events from the remote control buttons.