Besides moving to the Unity interface, one of Ubuntu‘s other big moves in 11.04 Natty Narwhal will be the replacement of the default music player, Rhythmbox, with another popular media player, Banshee. This is actually because the Rhythmbox development team has announced that while they might push out one more version, it’s the end of the road for this popular music player (PLEASE NOTE: This situation only lasted a couple of Ubuntu versions, and Rhythmbox is again being developed, and is once again the default music player).
We’ll have a general look around the new default player, as well as cover everything you’ll need to know if migrating from Rhythmbox.
Those upgrading won’t have to worry about Rhythmbox being uninstalled, and any installing a new system can always install Rhythmbox as well, and even uninstall Banshee if so desired. But Banshee is a worthy successor, and is very much like Rhythmbox anyway, just with more bells and whistles. Not just that, if you’re planning on trying it out on your current system, it can import all your Rhythmbox playlists to make the transition less painful.
At first glance, Banshee is almost identical to Rhythmbox, except that it displays album covers in the browser. But besides having all of the features of Rhythmbox and some of its plugins, Banshee is a full media player, able to play video as well as all sorts of audio.
Setting it up is easy, as it will automatically scan your ~/Music folder’s contents (you can of course change it to wherever you store your music via Banshee‘s preferences; whenever you want to force a scan, go to Tools > Rescan Music Library).
Importing Rhythmbox Playlists
You can then import your Rhythmbox playlists via Media > Import Media… (if you also have Rhythmbox installed); the Import Playlist… option you’ll also see is for importing individual playlists you may have saved, which would be the case if you’re migrating settings into a fresh install.
When you import your Rhythmbox playlists, you might find the tracks listed in alphabetical order (by band), instead of the order you previously had.
Just click above the track names (on “Name“) and it will cycle through different methods of arrangement, including the original setup you had saved in Rhythmbox. Actually, you can do it with “Artist” and “Album” as well, with it arranging tracks alphanumerically by artist or album, then the reverse order, followed by the original custom layout.
Importing Your Rhythmbox Covers
Your Rhythmbox covers may be something else you wish to import. For many, it won’t matter at all, as the covers Banshee fetches are quite adequate. But if you find some of your old covers are better, or you went to some effort to find better covers than Rhythmbox offered (or couldn’t find at all), and don’t want to waste those, you will find all your covers in /home/yourusername/.cache/rhythmbox/covers. (Note that the period (.) before “cache” denotes it is a hidden folder, so you will need to enable viewing of hidden files and folders if you haven’t already done so).
Simply locate the desired cover – which is easy, since they are named in alphanumerical order by band, followed by album title – and drag it on the cover you see in the bottom-left while a song is playing. If you don’t see a cover, you’ll just have to go to View > Show Cover Art to enable it (currently the default is to have it off, but I imagine that will soon change).
You’ll probably want to know where your covers will be from now on, so the location is nearby at /home/yourusername/.cache/media-art. Note that your covers will no longer be listed in the logical order you’re used to.
While there currently doesn’t seem to be a way to import Rhythmbox‘s album art easily, you might find many are better than what Rhythmbox found anyway, so you’ll probably only need to replace a few covers, notably those Banshee can’t find either. Also, if your music folders contain cover art with names like cover.jpg, then Banshee will probably use those instead of looking for them.
When Banshee can’t find a cover for you, or you just want a better one than the one that’s offered, simply search online, save the picture, then drag it onto the cover in Banshee‘s bottom-left, and it will save a copy in its art folder.
Where’s the Shuffle Button?
Banshee might at first glance seem devoid of a shuffle button for mixing up the order of tracks played, but it actually has a much better one than what you’re used to in Rhythmbox. In fact, you can look at it more as a shuffle menu, as you can not only enable it, but chose the method of shuffling.
All you need to do is click the little down-arrow at the end of the Next button, and a menu will drop down. From there, pick anything other than Shuffle Off.
You will notice the Next button is now a Shuffle button (actually, it’s a Next button that shuffles), and you can choose to shuffle by song, artist, album, rating and score via the menu.
And Where’s… ???
As you can see with the seemingly hidden shuffle button, all you need to do is look around a bit, and you’ll soon find your way around. If you’re migrating from Rhythmbox, some things might be named different, and found in different menus than you’re used to, but you’ll get there. Banshee will probably surprise you with a few cool features, and you should find you can do everything you did in Rhythmbox. If there’s still something missing in comparison, then it was probably a Rhythmbox extension that gave it to you, and you’ll probably be able to find the same as an add-on for Banshee.
Installing Plugins
To install additional features, you can just search for “banshee” in Synaptic. You’ll be presented with a bunch of extensions, including support for visualisations (banshee-extension-openvp), an alarm with variable volumes (banshee-extension-alarm), a radio stream recorder (banshee-extension-streamrecorder), support for displaying lyrics (banshee-extension-lyrics), and much more. There is even a plugin that changes your desktop wallpaper to the album art of the currently playing track (banshee-extension-coverwallpaper).
The Context Pane
One cool feature of Banshee is the Context Pane, which basically adds a section at the bottom that lets you view other data, like lyrics, YouTube videos, and even the Wikipedia page! You can be forgiven for thinking it is overkill, but it actually comes in handy, though you might not want it visible the whole time.
Obviously it will show you lyrics (if it finds them, though it looks to more sources than Rhythmbox, which is a pleasant surprise), but the Wikipedia option is actually quite neat, as it will automatically look up the band currently playing.
The initial viewing area isn’t that huge, and can’t be customised by dragging any borders (more on that in a second), but most of the time, this will do fine for a quick bit of info.
The YouTube plugin is another that is a great feature, yet also appears limited in its appeal due to the size, however the pane can actually be expanded via a hidden button. In the seemingly blank area above the plugin icons/buttons on the right side of the context pane, if you hover your mouse cursor there, you will see a small button appear with the tooltip “Make the context pane larger or smaller“.
Use that toggle button to enlarge the context pane, and shrink it back again.
When you find a clip you want to play, click it to play it in the context pane, or click the down-arrow to the right of it and choose either to “Play in Banshee…” or “Play in Web Browser…“.
Now, there is one more way to expand your viewing area, which makes playing it in Banshee even more valid an option, and that is by selecting “Now Playing” in the top-left, instead of “Music” or one of your playlists. The context pane will then take up the bulk of Banshee.
And you can then go one better by clicking the Simplify button that will now be present above the context pane. This will hide the menu bar, as well as the left-hand pane. Click the button again to toggle back to the previous made.
(At the time of writing, playing YouTube clips inside Banshee doesn’t seem to work, so unfortunately I can’t illustrate what that would look like, but the size seems adequate, and for now at least the option to play the selected vid in a web browser works).
To hide the context pane, next to that little hidden toggle button you’ll find another that will “Hide context pane“. To show the Context Pane again, simply go to the View menu and click Context Pane.
You might not be impressed, especially if you just want a music player, but you have to admit it will catch on with those used to doing it all (ie: looking up info and YouTube vids while playing music) in the one place, namely their smart phone.
And don’t forget to keep an eye out for extensions for the context pane, as there are already a couple out there, and soon there should be a whole heap to choose from.
(Note: to enable or disable any plugins, go to Edit > Preferences, and in the Extensions tab scroll down to Context Pane and either tick or untick the desired add-on).
*****************
As you can see, Banshee is quite a full-featured media player, and will be even more so as more extensions are developed. And if you’re making the move from Rhythmbox, the transition should be a lot easier than you imagined.
☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻
Did this information make your day? Did it rescue you from hours of headache? Then please consider making a donation via PayPal, to buy me a donut, beer, or some fish’n’chips for my time and effort! Many thanks!
Buy Ubuntu Genius a Beer to say Thanks!
Ubuntu Genius's Blog 
I don’t like the fact that it’s based on Mono, a Microsoft technology.
I had no idea about that! I assumed it was all open source. To me it isn’t far from being Rhythmbox, though is apparently inspired by Amarok.
Mono is an open source implementation of the .NET Framework. While the Windows implementation of .NET is indeed by Microsoft, Mono is being developed independently.
In any case, a pretty ridiculous reason to not like Banshee (or any other piece of software, for that matter).
Agreed. I mean, Microsoft did actually create some technologies, not just steal them and buy up companies, hehe, but open source derivatives shouldn’t be anything to shun, since they’re not under MS control, and are being developed independently. And I say just look to how well Banshee works for you, then decide. Personally, I’m happy with Rhythmbox, but when that eventually disappears, the move to Banshee will be a happy one. Actually, it’s all set up, and the only reason I use Rhythmbox is because it pops up at login. Once more plugins make Banshee hard to resist, then it will be time to say goodbye to Rhythmbox.
Oh, and now I understand the Microsoft link: .NET Framework. Thanks for clearing that up.
It’s not a ridiculous reason at all. Mono is sponsored by Novell, who also helped develop moonlight, a crippled version (behind) of Silverlight. Novell signed a patent agreement with Microsoft which protects them from the untested (and widely dismissed as FUD) claims that Linux infringes Microsoft patents. Mono allows apps developed in .NET to run on Linux, and is at risk of attack on a whim by Microsoft , see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono_%28software%29#Mono_and_Microsoft.27s_patents
Rhythmbox is an ugly boring piece of software, but it does at least sound good and it’s pretty quick. Banshee’s only in Natty because it plays video, which is a bit like choosing a spork because it’s a spoon and a fork. There are some great ideas in Banshee, but like every other Mono app I’ve ever used in Linux apart from Tomboy, which isn’t a big app, it’s really quite slow.
Like the spork analogy, hehe… so the memory usage issues and/or slowness have to do with Mono? I installed it after I heard it was gonna be the new default player, and I actually haven’t had a problem, though I don’t doubt if you put it in a race with Rhythmbox, the latter would win. Let’s hope the increased user base means more development, and performance issues are ironed out. As for Rhythmbox, I never minded it being “ugly” or “boring” (I tend to look it as “simplistic” or “minimalist”), especially since so much is hidden under the hood, especially after installing some plugins. Let’s hope we see a bunch of plugins for Banshee surface that will make it even more desirable.
Maybe “ridiculous” was an exaggeration, but I still think that at the end of the day, you pick the software that works best for you, regardless of which language or framework is used in its development.
Having said that, I would never pick Mono for one of my own projects, for all the reasons you stated, but if some piece of software is useful but developed on Mono, I’m not going to let that stop me from using it. It will be interesting to see what happens in the future with Mono though, now that the entire Mono team @ Novell has been fired.
Finally, I found Banshee quite slow too – it struggled with my large-ish library, and for some reason didn’t use most of my existing album art – so I’m currently using Clementine, which I’ve found quite clean and quick. Not sure what is best to sync music to my iPhone though – haven’t tried that yet.
sudo apt-get remove banshee
Hit Enter key
Enter your password.
Then…
sudo apt-get install rhythmbox
Hit Enter key
Why? Simple Banshee is slow and it uses a lot of hardware resources on my old Pentium Dual Core 2140 processor, 1GB RAM, Intel GMA 950 computer. On the other hand rhythmbox runs very well. If your computer system is an AMD Phenom X3/Intel I3 and above with 4GB RAM Banshee will run probably very well.
Hehe, yes, this article was obviously meant for those who want to embrace Banshee, not those like yourself who are happy to stay with Rhythmbox. But your gripe is noted! And agreed that on lesser systems Banshee can be a drag, but probably most PCs in use out there can handle it. And at least Banshee will see a lot of development, unlike Rhythmbox, which is a dead project.
I cannot import Music and Video from my CD or DVD to my computer.
I don’t have idea…
I’d like to help, but I’m going to need a bit more info (when asking for help online, it pays to put as much info as possible, because a generic “such-and-such doesn’t work” invariably leads to people who’d like to help asking you questions rather than giving you answers). I assume you’re using Banshee, so give me detailed info, and I should be able to help. Cheers
Did you miss the memo, that novel is dead, mono is there with them, and everyone that hasn’t lived under a rock lately knows that no one should DEPEND on mono, that m$ is dropping .net ( or so I hear) and that RMS among other people GET the risk and are saying do NOT depend on mono, do not make apps with it and keep it out of linux altogether. Groklaw has made it very clear as well on all topics related to the disease mono. Missed that memo too ? But then lest we all forget, the myriad of saint like behaviors from Microsoft, so well,, we should all trust them and their ilk. Dripping with sugar here….
I feel for those that program in it for a living, but KEEP IT OUT OF OUR LINUX.OH wait, its headed that way..thanks!
Go Genie!
Down with tomboy, fspot, banshee gnome-do blah adnauseum.
:)
ttyl
I’m guessing this was meant for one of the other repliers who defend Mono? Me, I don’t know or care about all that, just write articles like this, so people used to Rhythmbox don’t freak out when they see Banshee is the new default player. I’m also guessing you fee a lot better having got all that off your chest, hehehe!
What about podcasts? My primary use of rhythmbox is as a podcatcher app. I want to migrate my podcast subscriptions and existing podcast library to banshee. How do I do that?
Have you tried the Rhythmbox Migrator? I can’t actually test this, since I don’t have any podcasts, but while I have seen plenty of mention of needing to manually add them to Banshee one at a time, I have not seen anyone mention the plugin for migrating from Rhythmbox. That worked for my various playlists, so all I can suggest is trying to import from Rhythmbox. If you’ve already done that, and only got your playlists, then I’m afraid I haven’t seen an answer yet. All the best!
[…] https://ubuntugenius.wordpress.com/2011/04/21/good-bye-rhythmbox-hello-banshee-migrating-your-music-t…Share this:TwitterFacebookLike this:LikeBe the first to like this post. […]
I think Rhythmbox is simple, easy & powerful. I installed Banshee BUT it’ll take time to be into it. I just can’t get off RHYTHMBOX at the very moment. See you in Heaven Rhythmbox :(
Yeah, while I have no problem with Banshee, I can’t see any reason to stop using Rhythmbox. Not like it will need a security update or anything, but one day there will probably be so many cool plugins for Banshee, I’ll make the switch. But till then, Rhythmbox is more than adequate.
If only Rhythmbox has a built-in 10 band equalizer i would be very contented using Rhythmbox..
Banshee often crashes… It stops playing after several hours of playing music unlike rhythmbox…
Every iteration of Banshee I’ve tried crashes when I connect my plain jane iPod Classic. Rhythmbox works.
it’s doesn’t import radio(
I noticed gripe is noted on some comments about not moving to Banshee……Well then here is another… I have yet to have banshee install from apt-get and continue to work as well as rhythmbox and although I use to dig around to find an answer, I simply do not have the time now to find out why an app that is replacing a default item is acting up… My opinion – its still not on par with running as stable as Rhythmbox…just my two cents.
You’re preaching to the choir, as I will continue to use Rhythmbox, since it is less of a resource hog. And after upgrading to 11.10 and Banshee now failing to completely load, I’m glad I never got rid of Rhythmbox. I think I’ll eventually have to do an article about getting rid of Banshee in favour of the other, since there are probably people out there with fresh vanilla installs that still have grief when trying to use Banshee.
Wow, excellent write up. Thanks for posting this, it helped me migrate from an old box I was replacing with another one running a fresh install of 11.10, used as my media/home theater pc.
I agree with the other negative comments. I *want* to like Banshee, I really do. The problem is that it just does not do the things I need in a music player. IMO, Ubuntu should only commit to Banshee when it is stable and *at a minimum* does everything that Rhythmbox does. Banshee will not connect to my forked-daapd server (period) and It is not stable (crashes after a time running). I uninstall it or, at least, do not use it on my Ubuntu installs.
I agree with the comment that an audio player and a video player do to have to be the same program in order to have a ‘good’ Ubuntu install. I am very happy using VLC (or mplayer or xine, etc.) as my video player and Rhythmbox as my music player. As I see it, the needs are different enough when listening to music as opposed to watching a video that 2 separate programs still makes sense to me.
Rythmbox is back in 12.04 as default media app HA
Cool! Not like it ever left my system, and I’ll keep Banshee as a backup, but great to know they’ve done an about-face on a rather silly decision. Only problem is last time I heard, Rhythmbox was a dead project, so no more updates.
I had a terrible time with importing playlists:
http://jamesisin.com/a_high-tech_blech/index.php/2011/08/banshee-its-library-and-importing-playlists/
Banshee parses links instead of storing the links-in-path, so /home/[user]/Music/[shortcut]/song.flac becomes /media/[mountpoint for shortcut]/song.flac which is wrong. There are other oddities but this one just has me scratching my head.
It’s true that Banshee has a lot more bells and whistles than does Rhythmbox, but Rhythmbox works pretty consistantly and this is why it’s a better application: Banshee stumbles pretty regularly.
Example: if I play files in order within a playlist in Banshee it tends to start a song, play it briefly (maybe even a couple of seconds), and then restart that track from the beginning again and play it through. Same playlist in random won’t have this trouble.
There are others.
Yeah, I’ve heard of all sorts of odd behaviour with Banshee, but those who don’t like it generally dislike the memory usage. That import disaster is a new one to me, as is the song restarts, but I won’t say I’m surprised, hehe. I love Rhythmbox, and only ever open Banshee to show others. Looks like lots of work still needs to be done to make it stable.
It’s true that Banshee is (a lot) slower than Rhythmbox; and it’s true that it uses more memory while running. It could be pointed out that this is to be expected (somewhat) since Banshee also has more bells and whistles. For me it’s really the dysfunctional behaviors which stop the show.
Just commenting to say that Ubuntu Genius has good taste in music
Thanks buddy! Nothing like a nice bit of Symphonic Black Metal to relax to! Hehe…
hi there! i have a question for you… how did you get the banshee dark skin? I have looking for about an hour for a solution to do this… can you explain how did you do it? thanks ;)
Hi. OK, it’s not actually a skin for Banshee, but a system-wide theme – actually, probably 2 different themes, one for the “window” and one for the “border” (titlebar). These are GTK+ and Metacity themes, which used to be easy to change in earlier versions of Ubuntu using Gnome 3 (System > Preferences > Appearance > Customize). Now, with Ubuntu using Unity as the desktop environment, with some using Gnome 3 Shell instead, and others yet like me sticking with tradition and using Gnome 3’s version of “Classic” (Fallback-Mode), it can be somewhat confusing how to change them.
You will need to install gnome-tweak-tool (sudo apt-get install gnome-tweak-tool, and if you can’t find a launcher for it, just run gnome-tweak-tool via Alt+F2 or the terminal [if I recall correctly, I had to make my own launcher for it]). Once you have “Advanced Settings” (which is what the program is called), on the left click on Theme, and GTK+ theme is where you change the overall look, and Window theme is where you change the border/titlebar. You can also change cursor and icon themes there.
Where do you get themes? Google GTK and Metacity, and go to http://www.gnome-look.org and browse through them there (which is where I get all my themes). Just note because of this thing of old Gnome 2 moving onto 3, the current weirdness is that my old GTK2 themes are still listed and applicable for the Window theme, but for GTK+ theme I had to get and install GTK3 themes. Also, if you decide to try Gnome Shell, it is where you change those specific themes.
Also, installing them used to be simple: drag the archive (themes come packed in .tar.gz format) on the Appearance app and viola! Now you will need to manually install them, but it is as easy as extracting the archives and moving each folder into .themes in your home folder – it’s that simple. Sometimes you may want to rename the folder if the creator’s name was part of the archive name, or whatever (most do that, hehe), but other than that, you shouldn’t even need to log in and out again – the next time you open “Advanced Settings” the new themes will be there ready to use.
So go to Gnome-Look, look for GTK2, GTK3 and Metacity (should be categories for those on the left) and look through the thumbnails (plenty of nice dark and black themes), click on likely pages and check out the screenshots, download the archive, extract it, move it to ~/.themes, and change them with “Advanced Settings” (gnome-tweak-tool). Have fun!
PS: While I use Gnome 3 Classic, this should also apply to Unity. Only the flashy Gnome-Shell themes won’t work in Unity or Classic, only Shell.
Actually, the titlebar theme was an Emerald theme for Compiz-Fusion, whereas Metacity uses GTK+ themes.
[…] Good-bye Rhythmbox, Hello Banshee: Migrating Your Music to Ubuntu’s New Default Music Player from …. This entry was posted in Tips & Tricks + Tutorials, Tutorial. Bookmark the permalink. Post a […]
Wow, fantastic blog structure! How lengthy have you ever been running a blog for?
you make running a blog look easy. The entire glance of your web site is magnificent, as
well as the content!
Thanks, I’ve installed and it is perfect – better than Rhythmbox.
I love Banshee but it does not restart if I have my ipod connected to the computer. What can be done to fix this if anything?
Sorry, all I can suggest is starting a thread at the Ubuntu Forums, as I had a quick look around and couldn’t find this specific problem (it’s usually just Banshee taking forever to try to synch with the device). If someone has had the same problem, and found the solution, they’ll be able to help. I’d check and see if Rhythmbox is any better, and there is also gtkpod to try (http://www.gtkpod.org/wiki/Home). Best of luck!