How to play .mp3 songs randomly by searching for them recursively in a directory and its sub directories?

Question

Once I am in the directory containing `.mp3` files, I can play songs randomly using ``` mpg123 -Z *.mp3 ``` But if I want to recursively search a directory and its subfolders for `.mp3` files and play them randomly, I tried following command, but it does not work. ``` mpg123 -Z <(find /media -name *.mp3) ``` `(find /media -name *.mp3)`, when executed gives all `.mp3` files present in `/media` and its sub directories. How can I get this to work?

Accepted Answer

```
mpg123 -Z $(find -name "*.mp3")
```

The $(...) means execute the command and paste the output here.

Also, to bypass the command-line length limit laalto mentioned, try:

mpg123 -Z $(find -name "*.mp3" | sort --random-sort| head -n 100)

EDIT: Sorry, try:

```
find -name "*.mp3" | sort --random-sort| head -n 100|xargs -d '
' mpg123
```

That should cope with the spaces correctly, presuming you don't have filenames with embedded newlines.

It will semi-randomly permute your list of MP3s, then pick the first 100 of the random list, then pass those to mpg123.

How to play .mp3 songs randomly by searching for them recursively in a directory and its sub directories?

Solution

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