Tag Archives: Linux

Using iTunes in the past, at times I was reminded of Churchill’s quote about democracy:

…it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

Yes, iTunes sucks,^[1] just not as much as every other music player I’ve tried.

Anyhow, I’m hopeful that Rhythmbox will continue to improve with upcoming updates (as its primary alternatives^[2] aren’t that appealing to me).

Ideally:

• Play music files, ideally MP3, OGG, and FLAC.
• Non-proprietary and non-binary library database.
• Tag editing.
• Smart playlists.
• Responsive interface that gets (and stays) out of the way.
• Basic metadata tracking (Last Played, Number of Plays, etc.).
• Automatic album art and lyrics fetching.
• Automatic handling of Music/Artist/Album directories.
• iPod Touch communication.

Rhythmbox has most of the above, but not all, and some not all that well.

I have a combination of mpd and ncmpcpp working fine, but it lacks some niceties.

[1] Reasons for suckage:

1. Over-commercialization
2. Privacy issues
3. It’s not a music player. It’s a media player
4. Actually, it’s not even that: it’s a Media Consumption Store Terminal. (See #1.)
5. Social networking?!
6. Crappy new icon ;)
7. And, well, it isn’t available on Linux. ;)

[2] If it weren’t for the pesky C#/Mono innards of Banshee, I would be more willing to try it out.