RPi 3 Can't Play MP3 and Some WAV Files

Question

My Raspberry Pi 3 does not play mp3 files, including example.mp3 that came preloaded. When I execute aplay /home/pi/Sounds/example.mp3, I get the following:

Playing raw data '/home/pi/Sounds/example.mp3' : Unsigned 8 bit, Rate 8000 Hz, Mono
aplay: set_params:1233: Sample format non available
Available formats:
- S16_LE

Most wav files can be played without incident. However, trying to play some of them results in the following:

Playing WAVE '/home/pi/Sounds/flint_phone.wav' : Unsigned 8 bit, Rate 11025 Hz, Mono
aplay: set_params:1233: Sample format non available
Available formats:
- S16_LE

Answer 1

aplay cannot play .mp3 formatted files. For this, I use mpg321. You can install it with sudo apt-get install mpg321 and it works just like aplay:

mpg321 /path/to/example.mp3

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As for the .wav files that aplay won't play, they were most likely either corrupt or were incorrectly converted from another format.

Answer 2

For me, mpg321 also didn't work. However, omxplayer did:

sudo apt-get install omxplayer

and then omxplayer /path/to/example/mp3.

Good discussion on the subject: https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=241346