Banshee is a cross-platform open-source media player, called Sonance until 2005.[3] Built upon Mono and Gtk#, it used the GStreamer multimedia platform for encoding, and decoding various media formats, including Ogg Vorbis, MP3 and FLAC. Banshee can play and import audio CDs and supports many portable media players, including Apple’s iPod, Android devices and Creative’s ZEN players.[4] Other features include Last.fm integration, album artwork fetching, smart playlists and podcast support. Banshee is released under the terms of the MIT License. Stable versions are available for many Linux distributions, as well as a beta preview for OS X and an alpha preview for Windows.
Banshee was the default music player for a year in Ubuntu and for some time in Linux Mint, but was later replaced by Rhythmbox in both distributions.[5][6][7]
Banshee uses the SQLite database library.
Table of Contents
Plugins[edit]
Banshee’s plugin-capable architecture makes the software extensible and customizable. As of 2012[update] stable plugins include:
Audioscrobbler: Adds the capability of reporting played songs to a user’s Last.fm playlist, and play last.fm radio stations (user’s library, tags, similar to, etc.).
DAAP music sharing: Allows sharing of music libraries with iTunes and other DAAP-compatible music software. The current version of Banshee is only partially compatible with iTunes 7, allowing iTunes to open a Banshee library, but not vice versa.
iPod manager: Allows the transferring of songs, videos, and album art to and from the device.
Metadata searcher using MusicBrainz: Automatically retrieves missing and supplementary metadata for library items, including album art.
Music Recommendations using Last.fm: Recommends music based on the currently playing song.
Mini-Mode plugin: Provides a small window with minimal playback controls and song information.
Multimedia keys support in GNOME: Banshee can be controlled via multimedia keys as configured through GNOME.
Notification Area Icon: Adds an icon to the notification area in GNOME.
Podcasting: Enables Banshee to subscribe to podcast feeds, which are updated on a regular basis.
Radio: Provides support for streaming Internet radio stations.
Cross-platform support[edit]
Compared to the Linux builds, which have stable releases, the Mac OS X builds are considered beta quality, and Windows builds are alpha quality (and, as of April 2013, two versions behind the other platforms). During Google Summer of Code 2012 Banshee has seen substantial improvements to its OS X support[8]
The first alpha release of Banshee on Windows was Banshee 1.9.4, released on February 23, 2011.[10][11]
Release history[edit]
Version
Release date
Significant changes
1.0
June 5, 2008
Album Browser
Play Queue
Now Playing section
Video support
Audio CD support
CD Ripping / Burning
Podcast support
Integrated Next/Shuffle button
Device support (MTP, iPod, Mass storage)
Mini mode
Automatic cover art
1.2
July 29, 2008
10-band Equalizer
Internet radio
Music recommendations
DAAP client
Playlist importing
Compilation album support
Manual reordering of playlists and play queue
Amarok migration
1.2.1
August 12, 2008
1.4.1
November 10, 2008
Improved device support
Support for the HTC Android G1
Support for Mac OS X
New track editor
New rescan library tool
1.4.2
January 20, 2009
1.4.3
March 4, 2009
Improved MTP support
Device playlist sync
1.6.0
March 31, 2010
Rhythmbox migrator
Beats Per Minute detection
Automatic scoring
Creative Commons licensing information column
Separate library locations for music, videos and podcasts
Gapless playback
Album grid view
YouTube extension
Equalizer presets
Nokia N900 support
Sync device from playlist
Type-ahead Find
Optional cover art in lower left corner
Editable cover art
Separate library for audiobooks
Library-folder watcher
eMusic Importer/Downloader
iTunes importer
Supports searching and streaming from the Internet Archive
Support for Pulse and Droid phones
Uses Last.fm 2.0 API
New Shuffle mode
Auto DJ
Support for webOS devices
Support for Samsung Galaxy phones
1.6.1
May 7, 2010
1.8.0
September 29, 2010
Ability to connect to remote DAAP servers
iPod and iPhone / iPod Touch support
No more HAL dependency
User manual
Amazon MP3 Store and downloader
Miro podcast directory
Bulk metadata fixup extension
Improvements for Audiobook support, layout
1.8.1
January 28, 2011
2.0.0[12]
April 6, 2011
2.x major-number release
Artist/Album Browser Track Actions
‘Play After’ Queue Options
User Interface Improvements
Ubuntu One Music Store and SoundMenu Extensions
Subtitles
2.0.1
May 2, 2011
2.2.0
September 21, 2011
2.2.1
November 1, 2011
Support for the following Android devices: New Devices Supported: Motorola Atrix, Notion Ink Adam, Samsung Galaxy Ace, Samsung Galaxy S2, Xperia X12
Support for the Barnes & Noble Nook
Support default internet radio stations
Various bug fixes (108 fixed since 2.0.0)
2.4.0
March 2012
Support for UPnP
DVD video support
Additional search filters
Improvements to the interface
2.4.1
May 31, 2012
Various bug fixes (12 fixed since 2.4.0)
2.6.0
October 3, 2012
Significant improvements to the OS X release
Updated to use Last.FM scrobbling API 2.0
AAC transcoding profile reenabled
Device-scrobbling support to LastFM (only Apple devices for now)
Support for the following Android devices: Samsung Galaxy Nexus
Various bug fixes (59 fixed since 2.4.0)
2.6.1
April 16, 2013
Various bug fixes (15 fixed since 2.6.0)
Minor enhancements to filetype handling and device support
2.6.2
February 18, 2014
Various bug fixes (23 fixed since 2.6.1)
AppData file for inclusion in opensource appstores
2.9.0
October 8, 2013
Port to GTK3
Symbian device sync support (i.e.: Nokia N95)
Various bug fixes (37 fixed since 2.6.0)
2.9.1
March 18, 2014
GStreamer 1.x support
New GStreamerSharp (managed) playback backend now default
New MediaPanel UI (inherited from the old Meego frontend)
Various bug fixes (35 fixed since 2.9.0)
3.0.0
TBA
Last stable version of the 2.9-series
Color
Meaning
Red
Old release
Green
Last stable release
Helix Banshee[edit]
Helix Banshee was a version of Banshee, included in older versions of SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop and openSUSE. It was based upon the Banshee core, but with a plug-in to add support for the Helix framework for playback and transcoding, in addition to GStreamer.
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