VLC is the most popular ‘free and open source’ media player. Since, VLC can play a variety of formats – it’s recommended to have it on a GNU/Linux distributions. VLC is simple and easy to use and it has a lot of features – for simple users as well as for advanced users.
In Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (precise pangolin), a media player is installed by default but you can’t expect the default media player to play all kind of popular multimedia formats. So the VLC i.e All In One music player is required! VLC 2.0 is the latest stable release, which is already there by default, in Ubuntu 12.04 package repository.
Installing VLC on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS
Open Ubuntu Software Center and search for VLC and install it in a couple if click, or you may use Synaptic Package Manager (if you prefer package manager over software center, but you will have to install it first because it’s no longer a default application in Ubuntu).
Or you could install it in one command (open a terminal : Ctrl+Alt+t) –
sudo apt-get install vlc
Note : You must have proprietary media codecs/packages installed, in order to play various music/movies files. Better checkout this post explaining the common things to do after a fresh install of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.