So, after about a year or so of using the various gtk2-based forks of XMMS, someone in #gentoo-dev recently recommended rhythmbox. This is a sucky post because I can not even remember why I was asking for alternatives in there. I think it was because I was lamenting that audacious doesn’t play my last.fm streams.
Anyway, whoever that person was is now my hero. I love that it’s a music management application as well. OK, I just went to my public last.fm page, as linked above, and um, wow. I did not realise I’ve listened to that much Michael Jackson lately. Actually, I did not realise that rhythmbox was interfacing with last.fm constantly to report that, either. So, in the few minutes it’s taken to write this post, I like it even better.
I realise that rhythmbox is something to get used to (it took me a bit), and that it’s not a straight up replacement for the xmms type applications (nor am I trying to sell it in this post as such). I’m only expressing my own appreciation for it. It also seems to be firmly a gnome application, so that limits the potential audience for it.
Rhythmbox? Oh my 🙁 Why would you put yourself though that, a wonderful music program like Amarok is out there?
It does Last.fm, streams, podcasts, interfaces with various media players, and more!
Try it out!!
Also Banshee is worth giving it a try, if you want to stick with GTK-applications. It provides ripping and burning-support and has stuff like auto-generated playlists , last.fm-support, recommendations via last.fm etc. pp.
Exaile is also to be considered. It’s still a bit buggy but has given me much better results than Rhythmbox so far. It’s similar to Amarok but uses GTK+ instead of Qt.
http://www.exaile.org/