Ultimate low-footprint music player for Mac OSX?

Question

My Mac at work has 2GB of RAM total, and I'm constantly using enough middleweight programs simultaneously that I wind up in Rainbow Circle Hell.

I've been using Songbird, but it frequently runs into "Not Responding" (and is usually the first thing to go among all programs when things begin to freeze up).

I'd like to use a different player.

This is all I want out of my music player:

1. Mac OSX freeware.
2. It has a file browser.
3. It can play all music in a folder if told to play all music in that folder.
4. It has a randomize function.
5. It has an incredibly low system footprint. It will run when everything else on the system is freaking out.
6. It needs to read MP3, m4a, FLAC and OGG files. This is less mission-critical.

I do not need to see album art. I don't need any "features" other than "play all the music in this folder" followed by it playing all the music in the folder.

Suggestions, folks? I've searched the forum, but other than this thread (which made it seem like Cog might be a contender) this seems like kind of unexplored territory.

EDIT: Oho! This thread also seems good. From two years ago, though -- any newer reccs?

Answer 1

Have you considered VLC media player?

1. It is free and open source.
2. If you open a folder, it will play all files in that folder (and subfolders).
3. It has a shuffle button (in the screenshot, the one that looks like a waveform at the bottom of the player).
4. I am not sure how small a footprint you need, but I usually see it using between 30 and 50 MB of memory.
5. It can definitely play the codecs you mentioned, and just about anything else you care to throw at it.

Answer 2

mpd + ncmpc have all you need.

I just checked, you can play a folder if you want, pressing a will add all songs in a folder.

• free
• randomizing
• file browser
• RAM usage is only ~6MB for mdp and ~2MB for ncmpc. That makes it, let's say ~10 MB in total
• OGG/OGA, M4A, FLAC, etc..

I just wrote a short blog post about it

Answer 3

Enqueue? It's free and appears to do what you'd like. Unfortunately, I'm not a regular Mac user so I can't really offer you any greater insight.