Command Line – How to Play a Song in the Background

bashcommand linemusicsox

I have installed play : 

sudo apt-get install sox libsox-fmt-mp3

I can now play my audio files like this : 

play Desktop/SONGS/01\ -\ Oh\ Baby\ Girl.mp3

Since I'm learning shell, I wish I could do something like this : 

 (sleep 10 ; play Desktop/SONGS/01\ -\ Oh\ Baby\ Girl.mp3 ) &

After 10 sec's, I can see the screen as :

 File Size: 7.38M     Bit Rate: 260k
  Encoding: MPEG audio    Info: 2012
  Channels: 2 @ 16-bit   Track: 01/09
Samplerate: 44100Hz      Album: Maalai Pozhudhin Mayakathilaey :::tunesinn.blogspot.com:::
Replaygain: off         Artist: Hemachandra, Achu
  Duration: 00:03:46.98  Title: Oh Baby Girl

But the song is not playing. But if I do this (without &) :

(sleep 10 ; play Desktop/SONGS/01\ -\ Oh\ Baby\ Girl.mp3 )

Is working as expected. But I couldn't able to use my terminal in meanwhile.

How could I resolve my problem, with using &?

Best Answer

Backgrounding play with & fails because play wants to output its status, e.g.

In:12.7% 00:00:27.31 [00:03:07.52] Out:1.20M [!=====|=====!] Hd:0.0 Clip:0

but cannot if backgrounded. So it keeps waiting until aborted.

To solve this, simply run play with the -q (quiet) switch. This will successfully background it and play will terminate when the song ends.

(sleep 10 ; play -q Desktop/SONGS/01\ -\ Oh\ Baby\ Girl.mp3 ) &

You can stop it by either typing killall play (if no other play instances are running), or by kill $! (if you haven't backgrounded other processes in the same terminal after starting play -- $! gives you the PID of the last backgrounded process)

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