Our Raspberry Pi Zero W board is a Linux computer that allows us to do almost whatever we want as we had a Linux desktop computer in front of us. So, to upload music to our Raspberry Pi Zero W, we can use the old fashion way of using USB devices and transfer a huge amount of songs and playlists. On the other hand, we can use the following command to directly download songs from YouTube:
Youtube-dl <youtube-link>
If you see any error messages, it is probably because you do not have youtube-dl installed. You can do this easily by typing the following command:
sudo apt-get install youtube-dl
Now, you should be fine and ready to download music from your YouTube account directly to your Raspberry Pi Zero W. youtube-dl software have many options and you might want to view details about it using the manual page. To open and read any manual page in a Linux system type the following command:
man <command>
In our case, the <command> is youtube-dl.
On the other hand, if with any way you transfer your music on your Raspberry Pi Zero W, you can play the music with some players such as vlc or Audacious. VLC is a well-known video player, but it has something that you might now know. It can be started from the terminal and play without a graphical user interface. When all we have is a terminal, sometimes it is useful to go and read the manual page and find whether a common program can be used otherwise. To start vlc from the terminal, you can type the following command:
vlc <options>
Here, the options can be relevant to the song that you want to play, the video, or even the playlist. For example, to start the vlc with GUI and play a song type the following command:
vlc <song name>
The result of the preceding command is as follows:
However, if you want to start vlc by only using the terminal and without opening any GUI, you can type the following command:
cvlc <song>
The result of the preceding command is as follows:
man vlc
Lastly, Audacious is another cool music player with graphical user interface or GUI and is capable to change various themes. The following screenshot shows what the default theme will look like:
