The pMusic play-engine is a separated module. You can play audio with it either using the commandline or the more common solution; operate it through a frontend. This is a graphical layer that manage input to the engine (backend). pMusic offers several frontends for specific targets. The default frontend is meant to offer all the goodies in one gui, while other frontends is specialized to do specific tasks better than the bloated default gui.

You can choose another frontend in the View-menu or by using commandline attributes. To make your preferred frontend the default for next run, this can be set in the preferences.

Let's take a look a the most common frontends:

This is the default frontend you meet when choosing pMusic from the menu or executing 'pmusic' in a terminal. At first sight it might look as a simple player - because it is meant to fit the task as a default audioplayer. But the gui expands quickly to become a much more complex player. The Manager frontend supports most options you'll find in the backend and configuration. Hopefully, the dynamic behavior will make it fit both grandma and pilots.

A simple frontend to manage internet radio.

pMusic offers all functionality of any average CD player/ripper. This frontend collects these functions.

pMusic 5.2 added a heavily improved support of Podcasts, and version 5.4 naturally shipped a specialized frontend to manage this.

If your system are low on resources this frontend might be worth checking out. It works like (and looks like) the Manager frontend, but skips the heavy functions. The LowPowered frontend can be downloaded here.