Title: Port of the week: musikcube

	Title: Port of the week: musikcube
	Author: Solène
	Date: 15 April 2021
	Tags: portoftheweek
	Description:

	# Introduction

	Today I will share about the console oriented audio player "musikcube"
	because I really like it. It has many features while being easy to use
	for a console player. The feature that really sold it to me is the
	library management and the rating feature allowing me to rate my files
	and filter by score. The library is nice to browse, it's easy to
	filter by pattern and the whole UI is easy to use.

	Unfortunately it doesn't come with a man page, so you can check the key
	binding by typing "?" in it or look at the key bindings menu in the
	main menu.

	Official user guide
	Official project website

	The package is not yet available on OpenBSD but should arrive after 6.9
	release (so it will be in 7.0 release).

	Picture of Musikcube playing music from a directory mode display

	# A terminal client

	Musikcube is a console client, meaning you start it in a terminal. You
	can easily switch between menus with Tab, Shift+Tab, Enter and keyboard
	arrows but you should also check the key bindings for full controls.
	Note that the mouse is supported!

	Once you told musikcube where to look files, you will have access to
	your library, using numbers from 1 to 6 you can choose how you want the
	library filtered but 6 will ask which criteria to use, using
	"directory" will display the file hierarchy which is sometimes nicer to
	use for badly tagged music files.

	You can access to the whole tracks list using "t" and then filter by
	pattern or sort the list using "Ctrl + s".

	# A server

	When run as musikcube, a daemon mode is started to accept incoming
	connections on TCP ports 7905 and 7906 for remote API control and
	transcoding/streaming. This behavior can be disabled in the main menu
	under the "server setup" choice.

	Running it with the binary musikubed binary, there will be no UI
	started, only a background daemon listening on ports.

	# Android companion app

	Musikcube has a companion app for Android named musikdroid but it only
	available for download as a file on the github project.

	The app has multiples features, it can control the musikcube server for
	music playing on the remote system, but you can also use it to stream
	music to your Android device. The song on the musikcube server and
	android devices can be separated. Even better, songs played on the
	android devices will be automatically stored for offline (you can tune
	the cache) and even transcode files to have smaller files for the
	device.

	Look for a .apk file in the assets list of the releases