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# Pianobar

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- List of Applications/Multimedia

Pianobar is a free/open-source, console-based client for the personalized online radio Pandora (only available in the USA).

Features

- play and manage (create, add more music, delete, rename, ...) stations
- rate songs and explain why they have been selected
- upcoming songs/song history
- customize keybindings and text output
- remote control and eventcmd interface (send tracks to last.fm, for example)
- proxy support for listeners outside the USA

Tip Since Pianobar is a command line interface based program it can be placed in a different virtual terminal than your desktop and be left to run.

## Installation

Install the pianobar package.

## Configuration

First, you need to create a configuration file for Pianobar. This should be located at `$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/pianobar/config` or `~/.config/pianobar/config`

    $ man pianobar

    CONFIGURATION
           The  configuration file consists of simple key = value lines, each ter‐
           minated with a newline (\n) character. Note that keys  and  values  are
           both  case  sensitive, and there must be exactly one space on each side
           of the equals sign.

           act_* keys control pianobar's key-bindings.  Every  one-byte  character
           except for \x00 and the special value disabled are allowed here.

Here is an example configuration file. See pianobar(1) for more configuration options.

    ~/.config/pianobar/config

    audio_quality = {high, medium, low}
    autostart_station = stationid

    password = plaintext_password
    user = your@user.name

## Troubleshooting

### Sound Quality Issues

If you are experiencing sound/quality issues when running pianobar, and you are currently using ALSA as your sound driver, the following fixes may be useful.

Warning The provided fixes may affect other applications that use audio as the default driver is being changed.

Install alsa-oss. See the ALSA page for more information.

Change the default libao driver from `alsa` to `oss`:

    /etc/libao.conf

    default_driver=oss

Now run pianobar:

    $ aoss pianobar

Alternatively, you can use PulseAudio:

    /etc/libao.conf

    default_driver=pulse

Note Be sure to remove the `dev=default` option of the ALSA driver or adjust it to specify a specific Pulse sink name or number.

### Network Error

If you are receiving the `Network error: Peer certificate cannot be authenticated with given CA certificates`, try adding the following line:

    ~/.config/pianobar/config

    ca_bundle = /etc/ca-certificates/extracted/tls-ca-bundle.pem

## See also

- Project's homepage
- Project's GitHub
- https://wiki.k2patel.in/pianobar

Categories:

- Music
- Streaming

Pianobar
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