Nuvola Player is indeed a different kind of music player. Instead of playing music directly from your computer, it is a wrapper for various cloud music services, so you can play cloud music directly on your desktop, without having to visit the site on your browser. At the moment, it supports only 4 cloud music services, namely Hype Machine, Grooveshark, 8tracks and Google Music. It previously only supports Google Music and has recently upgraded to include 3 other services, so it is likely possible that we will see more cloud services added in the future. To install: This is what you will see on the first run:
Being a Grooveshark fan, the first service that I clicked on is, of course, Grooveshark. This is what you will see. You can perform a search and add songs to your playlist. Everything is just what you see in the browser.
The same goes for Google Music, Hype Machine and 8 Tracks. Note: Although Google Music is only for US citizens, with a simple US-based VPN connection, you (those who do not reside in US) should be able to activate Google Music service with your Google account. Once the service is activated, you won’t need a VPN to access your music anymore.
System tray icon with Player Control
Nuvola Player also comes with an app-indicator (or system tray icon) with the ability to control your music. You can Pause/Play the current song and go Next/Previous song in the playlist. There is even a Thumb Up/Thumb Down button.
Conclusion
Nuvola Player is basically a browser wrapper that contains links to various cloud services. There is nothing new that you can’t do on your normal browser, but the convenience of having several cloud music services at your fingertips and the ability to run separately as a native app make it a winner. What do you think? Is this kind of music player suitable for you? Or you prefer the good old Rhythmbox and Amarok? Nuvola Player
