Just Another Konsole YouTube-Music

Overview

My motivation for creating JAKYM came from my wish to create an application, that I could use to play music comfortably from the command line. I often play games and listen to music simultaneously, but using either Spotify or playing music in a browser takes a lot of resources from both my CPU and RAM.

I spent a lot of time looking through numerous CLI based music players, but they either require setting up a bunch of things, or required premium features to function; sometimes they didn't work at all, even after tinkering for hours.

Hence, instead of tearing my eyes out looking for a solution, I thought that I could code it myself.

So I present to you JAKYM, or "Just Another Konsole YouTube-Music": a command-line Youtube music player, written in Python with both Spotify and Youtube playlist support, easy on both memory and CPU resources.

Usage

Using Command Line Options

• Run it by using jakym command jakym.You can also specify arguments to easily play a playlist or song. The available options can be seen via jakym -h
• Use jakym -s "link" or jakym -y "link" to instanly start up by queuing a playlist without having to use the command window.
• You can also use jakym -p "song 1" "song 2" "song 3" to queue up multiple songs.
• To instantly queue a saved jakym playlist run jakym -l playlistpath playlistname.
• This will launch into jakym command window.

Using Jakym Command Window

• The program opens up into the jakym command window.
• Use commands to view all available commands.
• Enter a songname in command window to search for song or just enter its youtube link to play directly from a link.
• Jakym will queue the song once you type it and allow you to add the next song.
• The queue operates independent of the command window and plays the song on a separate thread.
• To exit the command window and hence the application simply type exit.

Commands

• Type spotify to play music using spotify playlist
• Type youtube to play music using youtube playlist
• Use rm to remove the last queued song from the playlist.
• Type shuffle to shuffle your queue.
• Use load to load a playlist and save to save your playlist. Include the trailing slash in path i.e. specify path as C:\Users\Lex\Music\ or /home/lex/Projects/jakym/.
• Use play , pause, next, back to control the playback.
• Use repeat all, repeat song and repeat offto control song repetition.
• Use seek with an integer like 10 or -10 to control the current song.

Installation

For Arch Linux users, jakym is available in the AUR. Simply use your favourate helper to get it.

To Update jakym simply run pip install --upgrade jakym

Installing ffmpeg

ffmpeg is required for this program to work correctly. Install ffmpeg by following these steps:

• On Linux - https://www.tecmint.com/install-ffmpeg-in-linux/
• On Windows - https://www.wikihow.com/Install-FFmpeg-on-Windows

Installing simpleaudio

simpleaudio is an optional pydub dependency, however it is essential for proper working of jakym as the playback depends on simpleaudio.

On Linux

• Install Dependencies by sudo apt-get install -y python3-dev libasound2-dev
• Install with: pip install simpleaudio

On Windows

• Download the .whl file of simpleaudio from here
• Once downloaded, it can be installed using the following command : pip install package_name.whl

Installing jakym

• Install by using pypi :-pip install jakym

• Run using jakym command jakym

Violla jakym is now installed!

Enjoy jakym

How It Works

• The program starts and runs two threads, one to input music into the playlist and the other to iterate over the playlist, download the corresponding music and play it.
• The yt-dlp library does most of the heavy lifting of both parsing links and downloading them into a suitable file format.
• The pydub and simpleaudio libraries provide cross-platform audio playback without any issues but setting up simpleaudio on windows and Linux take a different approach.
• The program runs until user types exit.

Version history

Copyright

Copyright (c) 2021 Mayank Jha

License - GNU GPL v3