All posts tagged ‘Music’

File Under: Software & Tools
Jun
13
2008

Screaming-Fast Banshee Media Player Hits 1.0

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BansheelastfmThe Linux jukebox media software, Banshee, has reached stable 1.0 status. Banshee often takes a backseat to Amarok in the Linux music player world, but if you’re using GNOME the latest version of Banshee blows Rhythmbox (the default music player in many distros) out of the water.

The biggest news in Banshee 1.0 is the massive speed improvements. Banshee isn’t technically a native Linux app since it uses .NET and runs as a managed app via Mono (F-Spot, the default photo organizer in GNOME, also uses .NET). In the past the overhead has made Banshee a bit slower than other options — especially with large music libraries.

But 1.0 is much snappier and performed as well as Rhythmbox in Ubuntu 8.04 with some 25,000 MP3s. In addition to the speed gains, Banshee 1.0 packs in a number of new features. Among the improvements are:

  • album browser with cover art (one downside, there’s no GUI support for adding your own album covers, everything is automated)
  • Better last.fm integration — one of Banshee’s standout features, this is about the best last.fm integration you’re going to find.
  • Video searching and playback
  • Optional auto-rip on insert
  • Shuffle by song, artist or album
  • Mini mode
  • Podcast support

Banshee unabashedly borrows much of its feature set from Apple’s iTunes, but cuts out the Apple Store bloat, so if you’re looking for the features of iTunes without the DRM nastiness, Banshee makes an appealing choice.

Depending on which Linux distro you use, it might take some time for the Banshee 1.0 release to hit your repositories, but the Banshee download site has packages for most major Linux distros, including the latest versions of Ubuntu and Fedora.

[via Desktop Linux]

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File Under: Software & Tools
Jun
4
2008

Pandora Puts Streaming Music on the Desktop

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Fans of the streaming music service Pandora have been clamoring for a desktop version of the service pretty much since Pandora launched. The company has finally delivered — Pandora has taken the wraps off its new desktop application.

While many were hoping for a Mozilla Prism-based app, Pandora opted to use Adobe’s AIR platform, which shouldn’t come has a huge surprise given that the web player was already Flash-based.

The new AIR-based Pandora desktop app is essentially just the Flash web app dumped into the AIR runtime. There’s some rather large ads, but otherwise it behaves just like the web-based Pandora.

The new AIR app has a couple of notable advantages over running Pandora in your browser. For one thing, there’s no more accidentally closing the Pandora tab or window and, even better, it cuts down on the amount of memory your browser uses.

Other nice features include a number of menu options available through the Dock menu (though, regrettably, not the thumbs up/thumbs down controls).

Although it’s a beta release for now, the app worked just fine in my testing. Personally I primarily use Pandora via my Squeezebox, so the AIR app is of limited usefulness, but if you’ve been looking to free Pandora from the browser the new AIR app is exactly what you’ve been wanting.

Of course there are some other ways to get Pandora out of the browser. You can create your own Prism-based Pandora app without too much trouble and for Mac users there’s always Pandora Boy.

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File Under: Multimedia
May
1
2008

EFF Scolds Microsoft for Leaving MSN Music Fans Out in the Cold

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The Electronic Frontier Foundation thinks Microsoft ought to do more for the MSN Music customers who were recently, and rather abruptly, cast out the door. Although the EFF stops short of threatening legal action, in an open letter to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer the EFF says that Microsoft needs to issue a public apology, provide refunds or replacement music files and launch a “substantial” publicity campaign to make sure its customers know their options.

The controversy stems from Microsoft’s recent decision to shut down the authorization servers that work with the DRM music files purchased through MSN Music. By doing so, all the music that customer’s legally purchased through the MSN Music store will be trapped on a single computer.

While it’s certainly possible to burn CDs of your music files and re-rip them sans DRM, that’s probably not what most people had in mind when they purchased a product known as “Plays For Sure.”

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File Under: Multimedia, servers
Mar
25
2008

Is That a Terabyte of Music in Your Pocket?

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PockettunesIt’s odd to me that the iPhone doesn’t include native support for receiving streaming audio. That seems like a natural application for a wireless-enabled portable music player. But I’m sure the boffins at Apple know what they’re doing.

There’s a variety of uglyish hacks to make the phone play streams. I haven’t tried any of them: I’m a Treo user. Do weigh in if you’ve had success or near-success with any of these.

Meanwhile, I’ll tell you how my Treo 650 and I rock.

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File Under: Mobile, Multimedia, Software & Tools
Mar
10
2008

Dot.Tunes Streams iTunes Music to Your iPhone/iPod Touch

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dottunes.jpg

Dot.Tunes is a media server that can parse and stream your iTunes library to remote PCs and other devices — even your iPhone or iPod Touch.

If you’re looking for a simple way to stream your music, Dot.Tunes delivers. The app won’t win any beauty contests, but it’s cross-platform (Windows and Mac) and setting it up is easy enough.

Just grab a copy of the app from the site and install it. Once you give up an e-mail address for registration, Dot.Tunes will ask you for your iTunes XML file. The app uses the XML file to pull in your iTunes library information and, once it has that, all you need to do is select the artists/albums/playlists you’d like to stream.

As with most third party apps utilizing iTunes data, Dot.Tunes won’t work with iTunes Store purchases — damn that DRM — but otherwise it had no trouble parsing my music collection. I only tested the streaming over a local connection, so I can’t speak for its speed, but that will depend heavily on your ISP’s upstream speed anyway.

Continue Reading “Dot.Tunes Streams iTunes Music to Your iPhone/iPod Touch” »

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