One Thing Well

Today I noticed that loads of songs were missing from the mpd library on my Mac. It turned out they were all encoded in Apple Lossless/ALAC format, which mpd can’t play unless you build it with ffmpeg support.

Here’s how to get mpd with Apple Lossless support on a Mac running Mac OS X Lion, using the Homebrew package manager:

If it’s not installed already, grab ffmpeg:

brew install --use-gcc ffmpeg

Edit the mpd formula:

brew edit mpd

This will open the Homebrew formula for mpd in your text editor of choice. You need to add ffmpeg to the list of dependencies, like so:

depends_on 'ffmpeg'

Then, enable ffmpeg in the args list:

"--enable-ffmpeg",

The finished formula should look something like this.

Next, (re)install mpd

brew install --force mpd

If it’s your first time installing mpd, ditch that --force flag, write a config file (~/.mpdconf by default) and create the directories and files mentioned therein. Here’s my config:

music_directory         "/Volumes/Music/"
playlist_directory      "~/.mpd/playlists"
db_file                 "~/.mpd/db"
log_file                "~/.mpd/mpd.log"
pid_file                "~/.mpd/mpd.pid"
state_file              "/.mpd/mpd.state"
auto_update             "no"

audio_output {
    type            "osx"
    name            "My Mac Device"
    mixer_type      "software"
}

Finally, (re)start mpd and update your library:

mpd --kill
mpd
mpc update

Bingo! Apple Lossless files will now show up in your mpd client, and play without a hitch.