Vuiet, the music player and explorer for Emacs

Playing and discovering new music from within Emacs has never been easier. With vuiet you can,

• Search and play any song, artist or create your own playlists which you can listen.

• Playlists can be created on a multitude of criteria. Most of the playlists contain a fixed number of songs which are played one after another. But some playlists are able to pick songs at random, indefinitely.

• Playlists can be created from:

  • songs from a given artist
  • all the songs from an artist's given album
  • songs from artists similar to a given artist, taken at random
  • songs from artists with the given genre
  • all the user loved songs, sequentially or at random
  • songs from artists similar the user loved songs artists
  • songs similar to the currently playing song

• Take advantage of lastfm's huge music dataset to figure out what are an artist top songs, the similarities between artists, each artist music genre, a user loved songs and listening history, etc.

• Search all the tracks on youtube and play them in the background with mpv, so not music files are necessary on your machine.

• Display an artist or music genre in an interactive buffer from which you can direcly play songs or explore similar artists or genres.

• Display the lyrics for the currently playing song and save it in a local database.

• Search through all the lyrics in your local database and select a song to play.

Vuiet has the music discoverability factor of lastfm or spotify but with the comfort and power of Emacs.

Music player

You can ask vuiet to play random tracks from random artists similar to an artist you already know and like. For example,

(vuiet-play-artist-similar '("steven wilson"))

There is no limit to the number of artists specified in this call. New tracks will be selected from random artists similar to artists from this list. The number of similar artists and the number of top tracks to consider, among others, is fully customizable.

Or you can play random tracks from random artists that are tagged with any of the genres you specify,

(vuiet-play-tag-similar '("classic rock" "80s"))

There are multiple variations on these two type of playlists, some of them random and basically infinite, others finite and sequential, some based on artists, other on genres or on lastfm user loved tracks or even single track play, given directly or from a lyrics search. The posibilities are endless. See the playlists section for details.

Music browser

Besides the player, there is also an explorer. I won't bore you with the details, just know that you can call it, and then explore everything on that page. Handy for picking out specific tracks for listening or for casually browsing similar artists or genres.

(vuiet-artist-info "steven wilson")

Search, browse and play from lyrics

Google is nice for searching that song that's in your head. But sometimes you just can't find it. Either the lyrics are too general and Google finds only cr**, either your track is obscure enogh that nobody has heard about it.

Either way, you can save the lyrics for each song you play with vuiet. All your saved lyrics are searchable, filterable and playable. Having a Google-like search for your local database of lyrics can come in handy.

Here, let me show you,

(vuiet-play-track-by-lyrics "secret")

Vuiet searched through all the lyrics in my database for the ones that contain secret in them. Hit <enter> on any song from that list, and vuiet will play it. Nice, eh?

Requirements

The recommendation system is based on lastfm. So you should have a lastfm account and the lastfm.el package installed first (see the lastfm.el README for details). The tracks themselves are taken from youtube via youtube-dl and played with mpv in the background (i.e. with the --no-video option). You should have both of them installed.

Complete functionality

Playlists

vuiet-play songs (random nil)

Play everyting in the SONGS list, randomly or sequentially.
SONGS is a list of type ((artist1 song1) (artist2 song2) ...).

vuiet-play-artist artist random

Play the ARTIST top tracks, RANDOM or sequentially.

vuiet-play-playing-artist random

Play the currently playing artist's top tracks.

vuiet-play-playing-track-album

Play the full album of the currently playing track.

vuiet-info-playing-track-album

Open an info buffer for the currently playing track album.

vuiet-play-album artist album

Play the whole ALBUM of the given ARTIST.
If called interactively, the album can be picked interactively
from the ARTIST's top albums.

vuiet-play-artist-similar artists

Play tracks from artists similar to ARTISTS.
ARTISTS is a list of strings of the form '(artist1 artist2 etc.)
If called interactively, multiple artists can be provided in the
minibuffer if they are sepparated by commas.

vuiet-play-playing-artist-similar

Play tracks from artists similar to the playing artist.
This function is similar to `vuiet-play-artist-similar', only the
list of artists is limited to the artist of the currently playing
track.

vuiet-play-tag-similar tags

Play tracks from artists similar to TAGS.
TAGS is a list of strings of the form '(tag1 tag2 etc.)
If called interactively, multiple tags can be provided in the
minibuffer if they are sepparated by commas.

vuiet-play-playing-tags-similar

Play tracks from artists with similar tags as the current tags.
Play tracks from random artists that have tags equal to one of
the tags of the currently playing artist.

vuiet-play-track artist name

Play the song NAME from the given ARTIST.
If called interactively, let the user select and play one of the
ARTIST's top songs, where ARTIST is given in the minibuffer.

vuiet-play-track-search track

Search TRACK and play the selected item.
Similar to `vuiet-play-track', but search for TRACK on last.fm
first and then let the user select one of the results.

vuiet-play-track-by-lyrics lyrics

Search a track by LYRICS and play it.

vuiet-play-loved-track

Select a track from the user loved tracks and play it.
The user loved tracks list is the one associated with the
username given in the setup of the lastfm.el package.

vuiet-play-loved-tracks (random nil)

Play all the tracks from the user loved tracks.
If RANDOM is t, play the tracks at random, indefinitely.
The user loved tracks list is the one associated with the
username given in the setup of the lastfm.el package.

vuiet-play-artist-loved-tracks artist random

Play all the ARTIST tracks found in the user loved tracks.
Similar to `vuiet-play-loved-tracks', but play only the tracks
from the given ARTIST.

vuiet-play-recent-track

Play one of the recent listened tracks.

vuiet-play-loved-tracks-similar

Play tracks based on artists similar to loved tracks artists.
Play tracks from random artists similar to a random artist from
the list of user loved tracks.

Music Browser

vuiet-artist-info artist

Display info about ARTIST in a new buffer.

p   play all the artist songs, sequentially.
s   select and display info for a similar artist with ivy.
l   visit the artist's lastfm page.

vuiet-artist-info-search artist

Search ARTIST and display info about the selected item.
Similar to `vuiet-artist-info', but search for ARTIST on last.fm
first and then display the info about it.

vuiet-tag-info tag

Display info about TAG in a new buffer.

vuiet-loved-tracks-info (page 1) (n 50)

Display N tracks from the user loved tracks in a new buffer.
If the user has more than N loved tracks, PAGE can be used to show
the next PAGE * N tracks.

<enter>  On a song entry, plays that song only.
i        Display the next PAGE * N songs.
u        Display the previous PAGE * N songs, if N > 1
s        Choose a song to play, with ivy.

vuiet-album-info artist album

Display info about the ARTIST's ALBUM in a new buffer.

s   choose a song with ivy.
a   pick another album with ivy.
p   play all songs from the album.
l   save lyrics for this album.

vuiet-album-info-search artist

Search all albums from ARTIST and display the selected one.
The album is displayed in a dedicated buffer.  See
`vuiet-album-info' for details regarding the active keybindings
inside this buffer.

Player Interaction

vuiet-stop

Stop playing and clear the mode line.

vuiet-playing-artist

Return the currently playing artist.

vuiet-playing-track-name

Return the currently playing track name.

vuiet-playing-track-str

Return the playing TRACK as a human-readable string.

vuiet-next

Skip the currently playing track and play the next.

vuiet-peek-next

Display the next track in the mode-line for a few seconds.

vuiet-previous

Replay the previous track.

vuiet-replay

Play the currently playing track from the beginning.

vuiet-seek-backward (seconds 5)

Seek backward the given number of SECONDS.

vuiet-seek-forward (seconds 5)

Seek forward the given number of SECONDS.

vuiet-play-pause

Toggle the play/pause status.

vuiet-player-volume

Get the music player volume, between 0% and 100%.

vuiet-player-volume-inc

Increase the music player volume by STEP percent.

vuiet-player-volume-dec

Decrease the music player volume by STEP percent.

vuiet-playing-artist-info

Display info for the currently playing artist in a new buffer.

vuiet-playing-track-search-youtube

Open a youtube search for the currently playing track.

vuiet-playing-track-continue-on-youtube

Pause vuiet and continue playing on youtube.

vuiet-artist-lastfm-page artist

Visit the ARTIST lastfm page."

vuiet-playing-artist-lastfm-page

Visit he currently playing artist lastfm page.

vuiet-love-track

Add the currently playing track to the user loved songs.

vuiet-unlove-track

Remove the currently playing track from the user loved songs.

vuiet-playing-track-lyrics

Display the lyrics for the currently playing track in a new buffer.
See `versuri-display' for the active keybindings inside this buffer.

vuiet-update-mode-line

Update the mode line.

Customization

vuiet-scrobble-timeout 30

Time, in seconds, for the same song to play before scrobbling it.

vuiet-scrobble-enabled t

Enable/disable last.fm scrobbling.
Decide if the currently playing track should appear in your list
of recently played tracks on last.fm.

vuiet-update-mode-line-automatically t

Enable/disable the automatic update of the mode-line.
If enabled, the mode-line is automatically updated after
`vuiet-update-mode-line-interval' seconds. More specifically,
`vuiet-update-mode-line' is called periodically while a track is
playing to update it's current playback position.

vuiet-update-mode-line-interval 10

Timeout, in seconds, after which to update the mode-line.
See the `vuiet-update-mode-line-automatically' custom variable
for details.

vuiet-artist-similar-limit 15

Number of artists similar to the given artist.
When considering artists similar to a given artist, take as many
into consideration as this limit.  A lower value might mean
artists and tracks you already know and love.  A higher value
increases the chances you'll discover something totally new.

vuiet-artist-tracks-limit 15

Number of tracks for the given artist.
When considering the top tracks for a given artist, take as many
into consideration as this limit.  A lower value might mean
tracks from this artist that you already know and love.  A higher
value increases the chances you'll discover something totally new
but it also increases the chances that you'll get wrongly
scrobbled songs and youtube will find something totally unrelated
as a result.

vuiet-tag-artists-limit 15

Number of artists for the given tag.
When considering the top artists for a given tag, take as many
into consideration as this limit.

vuiet-loved-tracks-limit 500

Number of tracks to take into consideration when playing user loved tracks.
A number higher than your actual lastfm loved tracks, will take
all of them into consideration.  A lower values is useful for
taking into consideration only the most recently loved tracks.