How to Play Mp3 File Using Python

Suraj Joshi Feb 02, 2024
  1. Play Mp3 Files With Python Using the playsound Package
  2. Play Mp3 Files With Python Using the pygame Package
  3. Play Mp3 Files With Python Using the vlc Package
  4. Play Mp3 Files With Python Using webbrowser Package
  5. Play Mp3 Files With Python Using the os Package
How to Play Mp3 File Using Python

This tutorial explains how we can play mp3 files with Python using packages like pygame, vlc, playsound and webbrowser.

Play Mp3 Files With Python Using the playsound Package

One simple way to play an mp3 file using Python is with the help of playsound library. It can be used to play both .mp3 and .wav files.

import playsound

playsound.playsound("sample.mp3")

It plays the sample.mp3 file placed in the current working directory. If the .mp3 is placed in any other directory, make sure you pass the path of the mp3 file relative to the current working directory.

If you don’t have the playsound package installed on your system, you can install it with the command:

pip install playsound

Play Mp3 Files With Python Using the pygame Package

pygame is a collection of modules that provide access to hardware components of the system like sound, mouse, keyboard, and so on. We can use this package to play mp3 files in Python.

import pygame

pygame.mixer.init()
pygame.mixer.music.load("sample.mp3")
pygame.mixer.music.play()

This code snippet plays the sample.mp3 file in the current working directory. If you face a problem playing mp3 files using pygame, you can convert the mp3 file into .wav format.

If you don’t have pygame package installed on your system, you can install it with the command.

pip install pygame

Play Mp3 Files With Python Using the vlc Package

We can also use the vlc package to play mp3 files in Python.

import vlc

p = vlc.MediaPlayer("sample.mp3")
p.play()

This code snippet plays the sample.mp3 file in the current working directory.

If you don’t have vlc package installed on your system, you can install it with the command:

pip install python-vlc

Play Mp3 Files With Python Using webbrowser Package

import webbrowser

webbrowser.open("sample.mp3")

The code snippet will open a tab in browser window and play the sample.mp3 file in the current working directory.

Play Mp3 Files With Python Using the os Package

We can use music players on our system to play mp3 files through Python. For this purpose, we take help of os module.

The native media players vary across different operating systems. Hence, the code for one platform might not work on another.

We use the following code snippet for the Linux platform to play mp3 files using the os package in Python.

import os

os.system("mpg123 " + "sample.mp3")

If you don’t have mpg123 installed on your Linux system, you can install it using the following command:

sudo apt install mpg123

For macOS, we use the following code snippet to play an mp3 file using os package in Python.

import os

os.system("afplay " + "sample.mp3")
Author: Suraj Joshi
Suraj Joshi avatar Suraj Joshi avatar

Suraj Joshi is a backend software engineer at Matrice.ai.

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