How to play music files directly from folders?

You can achieve this with a Nautilus script.

First install a ruby package

sudo apt-get install ruby-1.9.1

Then copy this text into a text editor and save the file in ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts. Call it something like 'Play'.

#!/usr/bin/env ruby1.9.1
require 'find'

PLAYER = "banshee"
PLAYER_OPTIONS = ["--play-enqueued"]

def play *f
    IO.popen [PLAYER, *PLAYER_OPTIONS, *f] do |io|
        io.read
    end
end

def is_audio f
    begin
        io = IO.popen ['file', '--mime-type', f]
        op = io.read.split(' ')
        r = op[op.length-1] =~ /audio/
        io.close
        r
    rescue
    end
end

files = []

ARGV.each do |f|
    if File.directory? f
        Find.find f do |f|
            files << f if is_audio(f)
        end
    else
        files << f if is_audio(f)
    end
end

play(*files)

Open ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts in the file manager, right click on the file, click properties and make it executable.

You can now right click on some files and select scripts -> Play to play all of the music files you have selected.

Well, this end up working for me:

http://mundogeek.net/nautilus-scripts/#nautilus-play-banshee

:) Yupi.

This is probably silly answer but I just right clicked and selected "Open With Other Application... " then I selected my music player which is Audacious. Only drawback is that now every folder has an option to open with Audacious but I'm ok with that.