What's with the library obsession of audio players?

Seriously. Why are audio players trying to be my media manager, and not give me a say in it? Why do they insist that they have to keep track on where my media are, when there's a perfectly usable way of doing it in the first place? Or have all audio player dev teams suddenly had a brain hemorrhage at the same time and forgotten the existence of the ghoddamned filesystem in just about every desktop operating system in use today?

I realize I'm part of a small niche, but I won't believe that that niche is so very small that it can be safely ignored.

Let me walk you through a usual scenario for me, back when I was still doing a 9-to-5. But first, in order to take out all suprises whatsoever, I'd like to state for the record that I'm using Music on Console, since it works well enough. And now for the walkthrough.

At home, I have a desktop computer that functions as a regular desktop, a NAS (network-attached storage—it has a 400 gig hard drive that's about full now), a development server for personal projects, as well as a source control repository. (If that desktop ever dies, I'll weep a thousand wailing tears).

Being a NAS on a heterogeneous home network, I have Samba set up on it, partly as being the path of least resistance, but mostly due my abhorrence of even the idea of trying to make NFS work. I have several shares set up, so it's easy to just get access to selected media. So, I can stream TV shows, movies, and/or recordings of live performances over my laptop, other computers in the house, or on my Wii.

Fun, fun. Except when I go to my previous mentioned 9-to-5.

I used to have MPD set up on the desktop-slash-NAS. It was great, since, at the time, I had plans of turning it into a central media player for the house, wherein I had speakers set up everywhere. (I still want that, but it'd have to wait until we move in to the house I bought.) It wasn't so great when it came to playing music from my laptop.

See, MPD, like most audio players nowadays, insist on keeping your song information in a database. A small database, to be sure--typically, MP3 headers are only a few bytes), but a database nonetheless. It stores media metadata, along with paths, for... I don't know for what, really. It can't be for speed, since your database is still dependent on your hard disk's performance, not to mention your choice filesystem, so, in that way, at least, a database is just another abstraction on top of your filesystem. Overhead, in short. Unless you're using a specialized database and are processing gigabytes of data--and you're not, unless you're processing the metadata of music ever produced by mankind in one go--you're merely slowing down whatever you're doing, right? (I really am asking; this, to me, seems like common sense. If you know better, please, share your knowledge.)

So, back to the topic. MPD wants you to tell it where your audio files live, so it can build a database that you can then pick songs out of. I don't mind the overhead, snce MPD's pretty light, and, heck, it's not like you do it very often.

Oh, wait. You do. You need to rebuild your database if you add an album. Or one file. Also if you should move your media to a different directory. Or renamed it. Or just one of the files in a directory (unless you don't ever want to play that file). Or if you manage to get your database corrupted.

At my-then-work, I was also assigned a workstation. Not beefy, but okay for minor development work. I usually just used my laptop, anyway, so mostly the workstation was there as a browser-testing station and as a third monitor--pity the picture here was taken before I had my trusty IBM Model M setup.

Hooray for Synergy! Although, I originally wanted to try and make Xdmx work (dragging frames across machines FTFW!). I still have hopes for the latter, though!

Aside from being a third monitor, my workstation also served as a sort of NAS, storing media I brought from home, temporary dumping ground of copies of media from co-workers (those I want to keep, I copy to my laptop and take home).

That means I have to rebuild the MPD database on my laptop pretty much everytime I go to work, the exception being the days when I don't try to play music at home after coming home from work.

Again, it doesn't take too long. But, WTH? Why do I even have to do it? What's so wrong with, I don't know, using filesystem paths? Sure, you cache metadata, but what do I care? What can't I just play my music?

At one point, I want to just keep MPD on the desktop and the workstation, and just stream the audio to my laptop's speakers (or, well, the earphones attached to its audio port) using PulseAudio. Good thing I realized in time how thoroughly dumb it was to do that, instead of, I don't know, switching to a different player.

Except my experience with MPD has left me experiencing a distinct sour taste in my mouth whenever an audio player lists having a 'library' in its feature list or, ghod forbid, bills itself as a media manager. It wouldn't be so bad if they're a niche product, catering to certified or near-audiophiles with tons and tons of lovingly ripped FLAC copies of an unreleased Rolling Stones or Led Zep live performance. Except, for whatever reason, the pure audio players (you know, those that just have a playlist and plays music) are becoming rare, to the point that they've all but disappeared.

This probably reads like (and most likely is) an old fart's rant, one who's insecure in the fact that technology is moving faster than he can run, and that those damned kids are in his lawn again, but still, what the fuck, I've got to know:

What's wrong with filesystems, and why can I just tell a player to load my music that way?