MPD-Presence

A Discord Rich Presence client for MPD (Music Player Daemon). Automatically displays your currently playing track on your Discord profile, complete with album art fetched from MusicBrainz / Cover Art Archive.

Voice channel	User activity

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Features

• Displays track title, artist, album, and release year in Discord
• Album art lookup via AcoustID fingerprint and/or MusicBrainz text search
• Configurable button (e.g. "View Album" linking to the MusicBrainz release page)
• Seek, pause/resume, and idle state detection
• Discord rate-limit aware — deferred updates are flushed automatically
• Persistent MPD connection with automatic reconnect

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How It Works

flowchart TD
    A([Start]) --> B[Load config]
    B --> C[Connect to MPD]
    C --> D{MPD state?}

    D -->|Stopped / idle| E[Show idle presence]
    E --> D

    D -->|Playing or paused| F{Track changed?}

    F -->|No| G{Paused or seeked?}
    G -->|Yes| H[Update timestamps]
    G -->|No| I[Flush pending update\nif rate limit passed]
    H --> D
    I --> D

    F -->|Yes| J[Fetch album art]

    J --> K{Try methods\nin config order}
    K --> L[AcoustID fingerprint\nlookup]
    K --> M[MusicBrainz\ntext search]

    L -->|Found| N[Resolve cover art\nfrom Cover Art Archive]
    M -->|Found| N
    L -->|Not found| M
    M -->|Not found| O[Use MPD placeholder]

    N --> P[Set cover URL\n+ release page button]
    O --> P

    P --> Q[Push single\nDiscord presence update]
    Q --> D

Loading

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Configuration

Create a file named MPD-Presence.conf in the working directory:

# MPD connection
host        = localhost
port        = 6600
password    =               # leave empty if no password

# Path to your music folder (must end with /)
music_folder = /home/user/Music/

# Logging level: none | info | debug
verbose     = info

# Album art lookup method order (comma-separated)
# fingerprint = AcoustID chromaprint (more accurate)
# search      = MusicBrainz text search (fallback)
method_order = fingerprint,search

# Optional Discord buttons (leave blank to use auto "View Album" button)
Button1Label =
Button1Url   =
Button2Label =
Button2Url   =

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Dependencies

Library	Purpose
libmpdclient	MPD communication + Chromaprint fingerprinting
discord-presence	Discord Rich Presence (Modern C++ rewrite)
libcurl	HTTP requests (MusicBrainz, AcoustID, Cover Art Archive)
nlohmann/json	JSON parsing

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Build

mkdir build && cd build
cmake ..
make

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Running

./MPD-Presence

The process will run in the foreground. Stop it with Ctrl+C or send SIGTERM.

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Album Art Resolution

When a track changes, the following sequence runs before the presence update is pushed:

1. If fingerprint is listed first and a Chromaprint fingerprint is available, query AcoustID for matching release IDs.
2. For each release ID returned, check Cover Art Archive for a front image.
3. If no match is found (or fingerprint is not configured), fall back to a MusicBrainz text search using artist + album + date.
4. If nothing resolves, the default mpd placeholder image is used.

Results are cached in memory for the lifetime of the process so repeated lookups for the same track are free.