Alternatives to Rhythmbox
A music player and library manager for the GNOME desktop with podcast and internet radio support. The listings below can replace it for an important use case. Each note says what changes if you switch.
The original
Rhythmbox
A music player and library manager for the GNOME desktop with podcast and internet radio support.
Replacements
Listings that take over the same core job as Rhythmbox.
Strawberry Music Player
A Clementine fork aimed at collectors, with proper support for high-resolution files and CD ripping.
Strawberry is an open-source GPL-3.0 player for Linux, Windows and macOS that adds hi-res format support, CD ripping, tag editing and lyrics lookup.
Amarok
A KDE music player and collection manager for organising and playing a local music library.
Amarok is a GPL-2.0 KDE music player built around managing large local collections, fitting a KDE desktop rather than GNOME.
Elisa
A KDE music player for browsing and playing a local music library and listening to online radio.
Elisa is an open-source KDE player with online radio, playlists and lyrics, built mainly for Plasma and also available on Windows and Android.
Exaile
A GTK music player and library manager with smart playlists, tagging, radio streaming and podcasts.
Exaile is an open-source GTK player with smart playlists, advanced tag editing, radio streaming, podcasts and more than 50 plugins, with a Windows installer too.
Sayonara Player
A fast Qt audio player and music library manager for Linux and BSD.
Sayonara Player is a fast Qt library manager with batch tagging, equalizer and crossfading, running on Linux and BSD without podcast support mentioned.
JuK
A KDE jukebox-style music player focused on managing a collection, playlists and tags.
JuK is a KDE jukebox focused on collection, playlist and tag management, but it supports only MP3, Ogg Vorbis and FLAC.
Tauon
An open-source desktop music player for local collections, with Jellyfin and Airsonic streaming support.
Tauon is an open-source Linux player with gapless playback, CUE sheets and smart playlists that can also stream from Jellyfin and Airsonic servers.
Gapless
A lightweight GTK4 music player for local audio libraries with an adaptive interface.
Gapless is a lightweight GTK4 libadwaita player that fits modern GNOME, but it focuses on playback rather than library management.
Also worth comparing
These listings name Rhythmbox as their own alternative, so the relationship runs both ways.
Amberol
A simple GNOME music player for local files that plays music and nothing else.
Rhythmbox adds full library management, podcasts and internet radio on the GNOME desktop, so it is heavier than Amberol's drop-in-and-play approach.
Clementine
Cross-platform music player forked from Amarok with cloud and streaming support.
Rhythmbox is a GPL music library player for GNOME with podcasts and internet radio, but has no official Windows or macOS build.
Dopamine
A simple desktop audio player for playing and browsing a local music collection.
Rhythmbox is a GNOME library-based music player that adds podcasts and internet radio, but it has no official Windows or macOS build.
Goodvibes
Lightweight GTK internet radio player for Linux.
Rhythmbox is a GNOME music player that combines internet radio with library management and podcasts, making it a larger app than a tray radio player.
gPodder
Simple desktop podcast client that downloads episodes to disk.
Rhythmbox handles podcasts alongside a music library and internet radio in one GNOME app, but it only has official builds for Linux, not Windows or macOS.
Podcasts
A lightweight GNOME app for subscribing to, updating and listening to podcasts.
Rhythmbox is a GNOME music player that also handles podcasts and internet radio, combining podcast listening with a full music library in one app.
Quod Libet
Organize and play music with flexible metadata tools.
Rhythmbox is a GPL library music player built for the GNOME desktop that adds podcasts and internet radio, but it has no official Windows or macOS build.
Radiotray-NG
Listen to internet radio through a Linux tray application.
Rhythmbox is a GNOME music player that includes internet radio alongside library management and podcasts, so radio becomes one feature of a larger app.
Similar software
Related functionality, not a direct replacement.
Tuner
Discover internet radio stations through a simple desktop player.
MusicBrainz Picard
The official MusicBrainz tagger, which identifies music by its audio fingerprint and fills in the tags.
beets
Organize a music library from the command line.
puddletag
An audio tag editor for Linux with a spreadsheet-style layout, modelled on Mp3tag.
Kid3
Edit audio-file tags individually or in batches.
