Tuesday 1 March 2011

Software Review: Banshee

Banshee is a music player that will be included with Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty), instead of Rhythmbox. In my opinion, Banshee is much better: it's got a more aesthetic layout, it crashes much less often and has useful plugins like Wikipedia and last.fm


Banshee can have the browser hidden or shown, depending on your preference

Banshee's current release is 1.8, the same one in the repositories, so open Software Centre and search for "banshee". You'll need the first hit, so click it and press install. Once that's done it can be launched from Applications > Sound and Video > Banshee Music Player.
Once Banshee is running, you can even set it to show in the volume control; just go to the preferences and click "Show Banshee in the sound menu".

The forté of Banshee however, comes with the extensions in the preferences. There is already a huge range of options and there'll be more to come with the next Ubuntu release. Rather than telling you which to choose I'll leave it to you to see what works best.

Rating: 9/10

http://banshee.fm/

4 comments:

  1. Try Guayadeque next

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  2. A couple of years ago in an effort to get away from Itunes I started using Media Monkey to manage my Mp3 collection.
    When I started using Ubuntu a couple of months ago I found that Rhythmbox would not read standard Mp3ID tags, Banshee has that ability.
    Banshee is releasing a Windows version, however Banshee is lacking in features compared to MM. So,for now I continue to use Windows and MM as my main music software

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  3. That's interesting about Rhythmbox, I've never had that problem. Is Media Monkey a Windows only application?

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  4. Yes, Media Monkey is Windows only. It's free for the basic software (the version that I use). For about $30 you can register for the "Gold" version which enables ripping CD's. For CD ripping I use EAC, also a Windows program, which I understand runs well under WINE. My CD ripping activity has fallen quite a bit in the last year and now I purchase individual Mp3 tracts through Amazon. Banshee is nicely integrated with the Amazon Mp3 store.

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