Banshee Music Manager

Banshee Music Player

Banshee, http://www.banshee-project.org, is a music manager for GNOME written in Mono.  Banshee organizes all of your music on your computer as well as your digital audio player.   Banshee supports ripping music from CDs, burning music to disc, listening to internet radio, Podcast support, and digital audio player support, including transcoding.

Importing Music

The first time you run Banshee, you will be prompted to import your digital music collection.  You can import digital music files including OGG, FLAC, MP3,  or WAV.  Banshee will then sort your music based on artist, track name, track number or album.  Clicking on one of the columns will make Banshee sort in that order.  To import music at a later date, click "Music", then "Import" and choose the location on your hard drive to import your music.

To import music from an audio CD, insert the CD in your CD-ROM drive.  The left hand side of Banshee on the side menu will display a CD icon, and if you are connected to the internet, connect to Musicbrainz to look up the title and song names and display that as well.  Click on the CD icon on the left bar to display the songs on the CD.  Click on "Import CD" in the upper right hand corner and Banshee will import the songs in to your collection in the file format you've chosen in your Preferences.  To choose the file format (OGG, MP3, FLAC or WAV), click "Edit", then "Preferences" and choose from the drop down menu towards the bottom.

Playing Music

To start playing a song, double click on the song or hit the play button in the upper left corner.  Once the song if finished, Banshee will play the next song.  You can also rate the song one to five starts depending on how much you like the song, and sort by rating, or build a smart playlist based on the rating.  Smart Playlists can be a very powerful tool to build custom playlists.  To learn more about Smart Playlists, visit the Banshee User Guide.

Podcasts

Banshee supports subscribing and listening to Podcasts.  Choose "Podcasts" on the left hand side menu.  To subscribe to a Pdocast, click on "Menu" then "Subscribe to Podcast".  Enter the URI of the Podcast you would like to subscribe to.  Banshee will then begin to download the latest Podcast, and show all available dwonloads for the URI in the bottom pane.  Click on the checkbox to download additional Podcasts. 

Burning Music

To burn music to CD, insert a blank CD-R into your CD-RW drive.  Banshee will display an icon on the left hand side menu.  From your music library, drag and drop the music files you would like to burn to CD.  Click on the blank CD and review the files you want to copy.  When ready to burn, click on the Write CD button in the upper right hand corner.  Banshee will automatically transcode your files such as FLAC, OGG or MP3 to WAV during the burning process to create an audio CD.  When complete, Banshee will eject your CD and you will be able to listen to it in a CD player.

Internet Radio

Banshee can also play internet radio streams.  Banshee comes with over 20 internet radio stations pre-programmed.  To being listening, click on "Radio" on the left hand side menu, and then double click a station to begin listening.  To add a station, click on the "Add Station" in the upper right hand corner.  Assign the station to a Station Group, Enter the name of the station in Station Title, copy the URI in to the Stream URL, enter a description, which is optional and click save to add your station.  Double click the station to start listening.

Digital Audio Players

Banshee has support to manage your digital audio player, such as an iPod or Creative Nomad.  Plug your DAP in via USB, and it will appear in the left hand side menu.  You can drag and drop songs from your music library on to your DAP by highlighting the songs in your library and dragging them over the icon in the side menu. To learn more about digital audio players, visit the DAP page on the Banshee User Guide.