Ubuntu – MPD deletes previous played song from playlist

I had this problem when I first started using mpd, but it was quite some time ago, so I can't exactly remember what I did to fix it!

Do you have PulseAudio preferences installed? I found this tip on a forum: sudo apt-get install paprefs

Then open PulseAudio prefrences from the menu: System->Preferences->PulseAudio Preferences Click the Network Server tab, then check the "Enable network access to local sound devices" box, and finally check the "Don't require authentication" box. After that, restart mpd: sudo /etc/init.d/mpd restart

However... I just realized that mpd works fine for me and I don't have "network access to local sound devices" enabled.

I think you might be right about needing to run mpd as the current user, which is what I'm doing. (I have no clue as to why this is though!)

A simple guide to setting up mpd to be run as a user can be found here: http://gmpc.wikia.com/wiki/MPD_INSTALL_USER_SERVICE_UBUNTU

To sum things up, since you already have mpd installed:

1.) Stop it: sudo update-rc.d mpd disable

2.) Copy your mpdconf to your home directiory (as .mpdconf), and change the following entries to places where your user can access and write to:

music_directory
playlist_directory
db_file
log_file
error_file
pid_file
state_file 

The page I'm taking this from suggests just creating a .mpd folder in your home directory for this stuff, save for your actual music directory.

3.) Comment out the user line in .mpdconf: #user "mpd"

4.) Now you can run mpd and update the database.

5.) To make mpd start up automatically as a user when logging in, go to Startup Applications and add an entry for mpd, then create an autostart file in ~/.config/autostart/.

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Exec=mpd
Hidden=false
NoDisplay=false
Terminal=false
X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true
Name[en_US]=Music Player Daemon
Name=Music Player Daemon
Comment[en_US]=plays the music
Comment=plays the music

There are probably downsides to running as a user, so maybe this won't suit your needs.

Finally, better than pulseaudio daemon mode, the best solution is there: it is about running mpd as yourself (and not mpd user) so you have no problem to use your own session pulseaudio.

A different answer , but tested and also working:
configure pulseaudio to run as "daemon mode" instead of the standard "user mode"

• in a terminal, run
  sudo gedit /etc/init/pulseaudio.conf
  then uncomment line 20 removing # to get:
  start on runlevel [2345]
  save and quit gedit.
• Run this 2 commands in a terminal:
  sudo usermod -aG pulse,pulse-access mpd
sudo usermod -aG pulse,pulse-access your-login
  In the 2nd command, replace "your-login"

Now reboot: hopefully , it will work.

Note: For info, this page lists reasons why you must avoid pulseaudio daemon mode, but i find it ok on a single user pc (especially I see no more cpu/memory usage than user mode).