Update to a Command Line MP3 Player for Windows

November 23rd, 2020 – It appears that the cmdmp3 software now plays .wav files.  I didn’t do anything special to enable this, so it must pertain to something changing in Windows’ multimedia subsystem.

If the .mp3 functionality works on your machine, you might try playing a .wav.  Now, back to the original blog post.

In 2009, I was tinkering with the Windows multimedia subsystem and I wrote a short program to play MP3 audio files from the command-line ( cmdmp3.exe ).  I created a second program that was a GUI application ( cmdmp3win.exe ) for those who didn’t want the console window to show.

Unfortunately, something about the old Microsoft C compiler that I use seems to trigger various anti-malware programs.

I adapted the two programs so that they would build under the MinGW GCC compiler this morning.

The sources and executable files for these programs can be found at:

http://www.mailsend-online.com/wp/cmdmp3new.zip

The Github repo for the sources is here:

https://github.com/jimlawless/cmdmp3

// cmdmp3
// A command-line MP3 player for Windows
// (console-mode version)
//
// License: MIT / X11
// Copyright (c) 2009, 2015 by James K. Lawless
// jimbo@radiks.net  http://jiml.us
// See http://www.mailsend-online.com/license2015.php
//
// To build, use the following MinGW command:
//    gcc -o cmdmp3.exe -lwinmm cmdmp3.c

#include <windows.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>

void sendCommand(char *);

int main(int argc,char **argv) {
   char shortBuffer[MAX_PATH];
   char cmdBuff[MAX_PATH + 64];
   printf("cmdmp3 v2.0\n");
   printf("Command-line MP3 player\n");
   printf("by Jim Lawless - http://jiml.us\n\n");

   if(argc<2) {
      fprintf(stderr,"Syntax:\n\tcmdmp3 \"c:\\path to file\\file.mp3\"\n");
      return 1;
   }
      // Get the shortened path because the MCI string interpreter uses spaces
      // as a separator.  If spaces appear in the commands, parts of the filename
      // would be interpreted as paramters to the given command.
   GetShortPathName(argv[1],shortBuffer,sizeof(shortBuffer));
   if(!*shortBuffer) {
      fprintf(stderr,"Cannot shorten filename \"%s\"\n",argv[1]);
      return 1;
   }
   sendCommand("Close All");

   sprintf(cmdBuff,"Open %s Type MPEGVideo Alias theMP3",shortBuffer);
   sendCommand(cmdBuff);

   sendCommand("Play theMP3 Wait");
   return 0;
}

   // Send a string to the Media Control Interface
   // If an error occurs, display it and the string
   // that produced the error.
void sendCommand(char *s) {
   int i;
   i=mciSendString(s,NULL,0,0);
   if(i) {
         fprintf(stderr,"Error %d when sending %s\n",i,s);
   }
}


The command line to compile each is as follows:
gcc cmdmp3.c -lwinmm -o cmdmp3.exe

gcc cmdmp3win.c -lwinmm -mwindows -o cmdmp3win.exe

To play an MP3 file with either, enter:
cmdmp3 mp3filename

or
cmdmp3win mp3filename