Setting up the Music Player Daemon (MPD) can be easy and fast with a little help. Here’s what to do to get it going after installing it (with apt, emerge, pacman etc):

rm /etc/mpd.conf
(just in case)
vim /etc/mpd.conf
(put in it and change to suit)
music_directory        “~/music”
playlist_directory    “~/music/playlists”
db_file                “~/.mpd/db”
log_file            “~/.mpd/log”
error_file            “~/.mpd/error”
pid_file            “~/.mpd/mpd.pid”
state_file            “~/.mpd/mpdstate”
user                “youruser”
bind_to_address        “127.0.0.1″
port                “6600″
(save it and close)
mkdir ~/music
mkdir ~/music/playlists
(if you need to)
touch ~/.mpd/mpd.pid
mpd –create-db
(if this doesn’t work, check the user in mpd.conf)
mpd

To get it to run on bootup: (for Arch linux)

add mpd to /etc/rc.conf to have it on boot up.
(in the DAEMONS line)