Today is day 2 of my “10 Days of Ubuntu 10.10 Feature Requests” series. See the series introduction here.
Day 2 – A Music Player That Doesn’t Suck
There are plenty of enemies to be made when discussing Linux music players, but I hope most everyone is in agreement that Rhythmbox is hardly a suitable replacement for Windows Media Player <gasp!> let alone something like iTunes. The interface is clunky and ugly, the lack of proper device syncing is unacceptable, and playlist management is nothing short of torture.
There is currently strong momentum to have Banshee replace Rhythmbox as the default player in Ubuntu, but this couldn’t happen until at least 10.04. Out of fairness, I should also mention that there has been a recent spurt of work on Rhythmbox (see here, here, and here for example) despite the fact that the lead programmer has left the project.
Now I’m not a huge fan of Banshee (mostly because of its inability to monitor music folders, although that is hopefully changing) but it’s certainly an improvement upon Rhythmbox. Personally, I believe that Songbird will be well worth a look by the time 10.10 rolls around. At present there are some key missing features – CD ripping, for example – but by early next year Songbird’s feature set will be impressive. It’s even built on Gstreamer, although its non-GTK+ GUI could complicate it’s adoption as a default player.
Regardless, I hope the Ubuntu team realizes that the music player world has evolved dramatically over the last several years. You can bet that most people trying Ubuntu have used iTunes or Windows Media Player 11, both of which make Rhythmbox look outdated by leaps and bounds. Further compounding this is the fact that after the web browser, the desktop music player is arguably the most-used piece of software for a typical PC user.
Regardless of which music player is ultimately selected as the default, the next 12 months need to see improvement to the out-of-box Ubuntu music experience. New users should be given a great default option, because not everyone wants to try out 15-20 possible music players just to settle on one that doesn’t do half of what iTunes does.
(Disclaimer: I am not an iTunes fan, and haven’t used it since version 7.2. – so please don’t accuse me of favoritism. I simply appreciate the fact that the iTunes interface is uncluttered, easy-to-use, and visually appealing.)
<< Day 1 – A Great Package Management (Add/Remove Software) Experience
Day 3 – Improved Visual Aesthetics >>
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What do you think on Amarok? And what do you think about the fact that Ubuntu usually skips very well written apps (like Ubuntu or K3b) just because those are based on Qt?
By Fabio Varesano | September 21, 2009, 5:34 pm |Most of the people that want just something simple are very happy with like vlc.
By Lennie | October 1, 2009, 4:41 pm |Err… (Rhythmbox) “the lead programmer has left the project.”? He made a new release less than two weeks ago.
The problem with replacing a current choice (whether music player or something else) because of a lack of features, is that the proposed alternatives lack a different set of features.
For some people the features RB doesn’t have are important. For other people, gapless playback (missing in Banshee iirc) and CD ripping (missing in Songbird) are important.
You’re just trading one set of dissatisfied users for another set of dissatisfied users). Regardless of what you pick, there will be a pile of people clamouring for a change. If they changed to SongBird in 10.10, what happens when lots of people want you to change to Banshee in 11.04, are you going to swap apps again?
– James, former Rhythmbox maintainer
By James Livingston | October 1, 2009, 5:54 pm |Thanks for the comments, James. I agree that feature parity is a significant aspect of distro software decisions.
Part of the reason I chose to examine possibilities for Ubuntu 10.10 is that too many FOSS writers focus solely on current versions of software, when distros really need to be looking toward the future. When I compare Rhythmbox, Banshee, and Songbird, I want to know which project has a clear vision going forward. Which project has a roadmap with a specific timeline. Which project promises innovation with both features and design, instead of just playing catch-up with existing music programs.
When I examine available Linux music players using that criteria, I have a hard time justifying Rhythmbox as the best long-term investment. Feature parity between these three music players is close – so all things being equal (as they likely will be a year from now), which one offers the best long-term plan?
My vote lies with Songbird.
By Tanner | October 1, 2009, 6:56 pm |Songbird, at least the one in the linux mint repository, doesn’t respond to keyboard multimedia keys. This is one of the must-have features for me, so my vote is for Banshee to replace Rythmbox.
By C | October 1, 2009, 7:50 pm |I think Banshee is shaping up really well. As soon as they have folder monitoring down it would be perfect. (IMHO)
By matt | October 1, 2009, 9:43 pm |I’ve been a fairly happy user of rhythmbox for a while now. I rip CDs and have an MTP mp3 player. I also use Banshee on one of my computers and Rhythmbox on the other (no good reason for this, just felt like I’d take a look at Banshee). I was quite shocked to see this sort of attitude towards Rhythmbox, esp. in terms of what is perceived as a missing feature-set, or uglyness.
I find that it looks… er… fine? It’s supposed to play music, and I mostly just use the search and select an artist and / or album I want to listen to, then press play. The most I see of it is the little icon.
In terms of missing features, the rant you link to lists missing features in Banshee, not Rhythmbox. I don’t really know what Rhythmbox doesn’t do that Banshee does. They both appear to have a pretty good feature parity. I actually kind of prefer Rhythmbox’s less cluttered UI.
I guess all I’m saying is that I’d like a little more info for why Rhythmbox isn’t as good as Banshee or Songbird, especially since all I’ve seen is people talking about features which Banshee and Songbird DON’T have. I mean maybe it’s just one thing that’s causing everyone to dislike the player (maybe a lot of people plug in their iPod or something, click a button and something goes wrong? They hate it from that moment on?).
By Sunny Kalsi | October 1, 2009, 9:49 pm |I hope they don’t adopt Banshee. It is overrated.
Now Exaile 3.0 is out, that is the best music player experience I have had on Linux.
I wrote an in-depth review of various music players for Gnome although that was before Exaile 3.0 was released. My experiences with Banshee were less than satisfactory.
By Charlie | October 2, 2009, 3:30 am |Sorry, forgot to link Exaile:
http://www.exaile.org/
Anyway, as of 3.0, it’s got good features, is lightweight, is easy to use, and (importantly) it’s robust.
Outside of Songbird (which I have not yet tried) it’s the only music player I can say that for. The rest all have issues to vary degrees.
By Charlie | October 2, 2009, 3:34 am |My vote lies with Songbird too. It’s going to be the de facto multimedia client (yes, including video) at least for me. I have tested the other players but can’t afford the GUIs. They seem so obsolete.
By bruno | October 2, 2009, 8:37 am |Ubuntu can’t use Qt/KDE apps due to size constraints, for one thing.
By Travis Watkins | October 2, 2009, 4:29 pm |Even if that was not the case these apps use completely different infrastructure and look and work very differently. Although much work has been done to integrate the two and sometimes you can’t even tell the difference from a screenshot it becomes obvious when you start actually using the app.
I think that whichever one is chosen, it would be good if they put some effort behind that decision.
* pick Rhythmbox, and do some work fixing the things people complain about.
* pick Banshee/Songbird, and then work on adding the missing features that RB had.
* decide they’re all no good, and start a new one.
Given how much people argue and complain about music players, the various Linux companies put very little effort into developing them. I know Novell hired abock (Banshee maintainer) but I don’t think he’s been doing a lot of Banshee work of late, and bnocera (Totem maintainer) is employed by RH but he does a lot of other things too.
By James Livingston | October 2, 2009, 6:08 pm |No doubt Rhythmbox is not ideal, but it’s not bad either. The problem is that most people have modern-ish iPods and Rhythmbox’s current plugin for that is lousy. The Banshee one is quite actually, even if it may require that you recopy all your music in the library over. (This isn’t necessary but it may make things run smoother for syncing–at least this has been my experience.)
I would definitely NOT recommend Songbird as default. Yes, it has some useful features like adding/deleting cover art as metadata, but it’s bloated and has no GTK integration. (The very useful notification icons of Banshee and Rhythmbox are, well, very useful!)
By molecule-eye | October 3, 2009, 5:17 am |I use Songbird and Exaile. I think Exaile should be the default.
I also do not want Banshee as the default as it depends on Mono. I think we should carefully watch how many eggs we place in the Mono basket.
By Modnar | October 4, 2009, 11:56 am |Songbird is such a bloated mess, I can’t imagine why anyone would want to use it.
By Andrew | October 5, 2009, 11:47 am |i do not want a linux clone of windows media bloatware player (same for itunes)
i do not want mono reinstalled in my pcs so i will never use banshee
By Mikko | October 8, 2009, 5:33 pm |I moved from RB to Banshee when I found out that RB didn’t connect covers in my iPod.
Then it also messed up some metadata.
I am not sure if I reported it as a bug.
I am not that satisfied with Banshee as I find the GUI rather cluttered. And you can’t remove, replace stuff.
I did like the layout of Rythmbox, and I might return to it.
I agree with the author that Songbird looks promising. It is one project that I return to from time to time. I do how ever feel that the project is not progressing fast enough.
One thing I would like though, is for Open Source software to become something you pay for. Most of us like the idea of free and open, but even those of us who program, find it hard to get into a project as big as RB, Banshee, Songbird etc.
I’ve written this many times on other forums as well, I don’t mind paying for software. I believe that having “making money” as one motivation to create software is a good motivation. Another one is of course that people uses your software.
Having a company that is thinking commercial behind the software is also not a bad thing. Then we know that we will be getting the most important – what people want – features first, then _maybe_ nice to have features later. Now I feel that those nice to have features comes first.
I must applaud those who do this type of work for free without any thoughts regarding making money, but I do believe that having a solid company structure behind it is the right way to go.
I’ve seen a few OpenSource/Free promising projects stall because of lack of motivation. When you know that there are $$ on the way to your bank account, I believe that projects will last longer.
Just my $0.5
T
By Trond Husø | November 30, 2009, 5:07 pm |Another good post, Tanner! I agree with you re: songbird vs. Rhythmbox. Pretty much the only thing the latter does better is support for podcasts — something Songbird has foolishly decided not to focus on for the time being, even though they had previously promised it in an upcoming release. The Songbird devs have also made some questionable decisions with the UI in the 1.4 release (Good God is it ugly!). That said, though, Sognbird’s my player of choice. On Windows and Linux.
By Micah | December 24, 2009, 2:53 am |What will always be a problem with the “out of the box Ubuntu music experience” is exactly that Ubuntu can’t play mp3s and other proprietary formats without some random package.
For a newbie, this is difficult to solve, and he will simply turn away from Ubuntu. I think Ubuntu *really* has to allow packages that aren’t purely open. Consider Arch Linux.
By Andre | December 30, 2009, 5:12 am |i like exaile. Anyone know how to configure it behind a proxy..?
By prayag | January 17, 2010, 4:06 am |The landscape just clouded over. Songbird is abandoning Linux. http://www.ubuntugeek.com/songbird-halts-major-support-for-linux.html
By Don | April 3, 2010, 11:09 am |I like rhythmbox. I don’t understand the harsh criticism. The only lacking feature so far is i-pop, pad, -phone,… support. As soon as this is fixed, I can see no reason for dumping rhythmbox. The user interface is simple and pretty. They should stick to rhythmbox and improve it.
By kikl | May 2, 2010, 2:58 pm |I use Audacious. I want something that works like WinAmp without all the stupid features that have been stapled on in the last 5 years… but I’m far from the average user.
My music collection is already meticulously organized and tagged using MP3Tag (on Windows… there are plenty of taggers for Linux, but I can’t be bothered to figure out which one works like MP3Tag, which I think is as close to perfect as that kind of utility can get (it works pretty well in Wine, too).
I want a simple, small player that doesn’t try to do things for me. I’m not opposed to more features, but only if they are unobtrusive. I used to like Amarok, but since version 2 started shipping it’s gone from full-featured but clean to a confusing and ugly UI (at least IMO).
The problem is that too many players try to be like iTunes, which I found to be overbearing to use. It wants to hold your hand, and I don’t need or want my hand held. I realize I’m not its audience, but a program designed for the non-technical doesn’t need to be a pain for expert users either.
I want something simple that sits in the corner and does its job. When I want to listen to an album, I drag-and-drop the appropriate folder onto it. It doesn’t try to organize my music. It doesn’t try to sell me things. It doesn’t want to do things it can’t do well (like WinAmp and videos). It doesn’t ask me to rate my own music. It just plays, and everything it does is geared towards… playing music.
Having a good, full-featured, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink player is probably needed because of things like iTunes, but it goes against the grain of the general Unix philosophy of apps that do one thing, but do it well. Most of these super apps try to be all things to all people, but in my experience they tend to do everything sort-of-good and nothing great, along with all the other disadvantages of overly complex software.
By ConceptJunkie | May 14, 2010, 7:29 am |I have never complained before about software being bloated. Songbird is bloated and slow.
By MikeR | May 21, 2010, 11:50 pm |I used Rhythmbox for several years.But i still feel it a urgly player. I install the plugins for ape files. But still there are many ape it can not play.(for several apes it can play)
By congpeiwen | July 2, 2010, 10:14 pm |I’m now trying guayadeque
Rhythmbox isn’t too bad for what it is. However, it does have it’s issues. As far as media players go, I can’t stand Itunes. Windows media player is ok once you get beyond the look and feel. Still the most customizable media player on the planet is winamp by a long shot. So when I want music, I prop open my laptop running Windows 7 and use Winamp. I wont touch Itunes, or Windows Media Player. Windows 7 seems decades ahead of Ubuntu so I only use Ubuntu on a desktop pc as a toy to play around with. Afterall, that is what Ubuntu 10.10 feels like, a toy OS. Beyond desktop configuration,and surfing the internet, what else can you really do with it? over half of the apps available don’t even work, or are extremely buggy, or are overly resource intensive causing system instability. Sure, you can play games via Wine, you can watch dvds assuming your intuitive enough to find the codec, and then there is the warning how some countries consider it copyright infringement to even download the codec(ridiculous). Don’t get me wrong though, for a free OS, there is none better in my opinion than Ubuntu. But it has a long way to go still before it can compete with the big boys on the block, Windows 7, and OSX respectively.
By Anti Elitist | February 10, 2011, 2:49 am |OK this may seem discriminating but I really don’t like Windows Media Player 11 or Itunes that much.
By Daniyal Arain | April 27, 2011, 2:40 am |I recently made Ubuntu my main OS and I am in love with the Rhythmbox – I mean who doesn’t likes controlling your music from anywhere – It is integrated with the volume bar. Such a relief for me.
I am really loving it.
I have read your previous Day too.
And I agree with those small things.
But really It didn’t bothered me that much – though they need to be fixed.
Your website is cool :).
Although, it supports all other media formats like DivX, MPEG, MP3, OGG, AAC, AVI, MP3, MP4, WMV and so on, Amarok would not play WAV, FLAC, ASF, WMA, downloaded podcast MP3s, and it would not play audio CD. It supports iPod playback and update and detects iPod upon startup. While Amarok is feature-rich, it is found to be buggy and not reliable enough for everyday use. That’s too bad, because if it were less prone to freeze and crash, Amarok would have been in my top three, thanks to its extensive music management capabilities and other features, such as downloading album art and lyrics, and its attractive and themeable user interface.Amarok can be displayed with a WinAmp or iTunes-style interface. click here:”http://ubuntumanual.org/posts/360/best-of-the-lot-my-top-5-media-players-for-ubuntu”
By Abhilash | July 2, 2011, 4:24 am |Ok this entry might be really old but just in case
I was pretty disappointed with the popular music players in Linux, I absolutely hated Amarok, banshee, Rhythmbox, I come from windows and I LOVED my aimp2, it was easy to use, it was light, it worked.
I had been just playing files with Audacious but I discovered Clementine today and thus far I have to say it’s just what I’ve been looking for. I’m going to read about Exaile, but I have to say Clementine is the music player for me. I won’t say I’m impressed by it, but that’s exactly what i need, a music player that doesn’t try to impress me, but one that does its job, which is play me some music.
+1 for Clementine
By name | November 24, 2011, 7:40 pm |@NAME – thanks for the tip about Clementine. I was reminded of how much Linux music players suck when trying to find one that could play m4a podcasts properly. Clementine FTW.
By Will | December 20, 2011, 12:14 am |