Listen Over Rythymbox

zopio · 2008-11-30 00:09:40

I have to say that while I use cmus (terminal music player written in C - give it a shot if you haven't) these days for my jukebox needs, I MUCH prefer Listen music player over Rhythmbox. I find the layout of Listen to be much more intuitive, especially with the inclusion of the playlist queue in the same window as the music library, as well as a dedicated pane for playlists, and a number of other features that Listen boasts such as dynamic playlist generation, last.fm integration, statistics for all music played such as most played tracks and artists, lyrics and wikipedia lookup, and a much better means of displaying album art.

The things that kill me about Rhythmbox are the fact that the album art stretches dynamically based on the width of the left pane, the playlist queue can't be viewed simultaneously with the library, and the song progress bar stretches across the entire application, which is an enormous waste of space.

I've never understood why Ubuntu goes with Rhythmbox over Listen, and this seems like a great opportunity for #! to one-up its parent.

corenominal · 2008-11-30 01:14:12

To be honest, I like Rhythmbox because it plays my music and it is rock stable. I guess using a stable application is not conducive to experimenting with others hmm So, now that you mention it, maybe I should start looking into some alternatives. I will start with Listen; I know it is now the default music player in Xubuntu, so it must be worth a look.

Thanks for the recommendation smile

zopio · 2008-11-30 01:26:42

Hmm -- didn't know that Listen was the default music player in Xubuntu. Interesting. All I'm saying is that I've used all of the following GUI music players for some period of time...

--Banshee
--Rhythmbox
--Amarok
--Listen
--Exaile

...but Listen is the one that I use in the end. The one caveat is that it doesn't have built in ipod/media device support, which Rhythmbox does, so I suppose that's something to think about. But in the end if the purpose of a Jukebox is to play and organize music rather than transfer it to a device (and there may be plugins for this on Listen, I haven't looked), then Listen stands out in my mind as the clear winner.

rizzo · 2008-11-30 01:52:10

zopio wrote:

The one caveat is that it doesn't have built in ipod/media device support

...and there's the killer for most people. Hate em or love em, they are popular little things.

anonymous · 2008-11-30 01:58:35

Theres gtkpod if you need to manage you iPod anyways.

corenominal · 2008-11-30 02:13:35

zopio wrote:

The one caveat is that it doesn't have built in ipod/media device support, which Rhythmbox does, so I suppose that's something to think about.

I am not sure this is much of a caveat. My understanding is the iPod support in Rhythmbox is fairly limited. It can read from devices, but that is about all. Please correct me if I am wrong.

rizzo · 2008-11-30 02:41:35

Rhythmbox can add music but can't edit playlists in any way. gtkpod is the best for this type of thing and amarok does a reasonable job as well.

corenominal · 2008-11-30 03:12:57

omns wrote:

Rhythmbox can add music but can't edit playlists in any way.

I stand corrected smile Thanks omns.

Regarding Listen, I am at this moment listening to "The Strokes - Is This It" with it. The interface is interesting. Hmm.

rizzo · 2008-11-30 03:32:10

In regard to Listen, there hasn't been a new release since Feb 2007, which may explain the lack of ipod support. I see there is a 0.6 release in the making but no date as yet for a planned release.

zopio · 2008-11-30 04:33:02

I did fail to acknowledge that there isn't a planned release cycle for Listen, but I used it for about a year an didn't encounter any problems (beside one issue with filenames over 140 characters long which just extended the right side of the window off of the screen slightly). Aside from that it's very stable and, in my opinion, features a much more elegant layout than Rhythmbox.

As for the iPod/media issue, I'll do some research on plugins for Listen, but didn't find anything after a cursory glance. Anonymous is correct in saying that gtkpod is a pretty suitable app for comprehensive ipod/media device management.

Also, the Strokes are amazing. First Impressions of Earth is their best album yet, in my opinion. Give it a listen.

zopio · 2008-11-30 05:46:13

I just took a moment to look back at Rhythmbox, Banshee (1.4), and Listen just to get a sense of their GUIs and overall look/feel.

Banshee 1.4, which does appear to have come a long way, is looking great in its latest 1.4 incarnation, to the point at which I'd call it a slightly grown-up and slightly more feature-heavy rhythmbox. Banshee 1.4 looks even more like Rhythmbox if you click View > Browser on Top (in fact, the window layouts look the same if you select this option). Unfortunately, like Rhythmbox, there's still no way to view the play queue side-by-side with the music library.

I'll continue exploring alernatives and reporting my findings, if for no other reason to reaffirm the notion that Rhythmbox is the way to go.

zopio · 2008-11-30 12:15:10

Also, a quick note on the ipod/media device support issue:

This is something that I've looked into recently as I own Zen Vision: M 30GB mp3/video player device, and wasn't even aware that it's supported by Amarok, Banshee, Rhythmbox (to a lesser extent), and GTKpod on Linux, as opposed to the single creative-supported application that is alleged to support it on Windows.

In the end, I hate to say it, Amarok had the most comfortable GUI for copying music to/from the device. I found that GTKpod would not copy files recursively in a folder -- it would only copy music files if you opened the music directories individually and copied the twelve to fourteen files therein over to the device. Amarok was much more friendly in this operation, allowing me to copy the contents of entire folders recursively without opening them.

It seemed that Banshee featured this same functionality, but I experienced sporadic freezes (every 2000 songs or so) in loading my music library, which became annoying and ultimately a deal-breaker for this piece of software.

In the end I found Amarok to be the most useful ipod/media device app for linux, followed by:

2) GTKpod
3) Banshee
4) Rhythmbox
5) Exaile (in which the 'devices' tab was unable to show up, without any explanation, despite the fact there was no mention of this issue in any forum thread I was able to find. Very odd.)
6) Listen (no plugin for ipod/media device support, but amazing otherwise).

I suppose that this, in and of itself, kind of nullifies Rhythmbox, as you said, corenominal, as a potential caveat to the inclusion of Listen.

Last edited by zopio (2008-11-30 12:38:59)

ShaqArif · 2008-12-01 16:58:15

But with Amarok, you end up bringing in a load of KDE libraries, do you not?

Exaile by all accounts is quite similar to Amarok but is more suited for GNOME. Good review here:
http://www.linux.com/feature/59380

Personally, I would love to have mpd working out of the box...

OK, it's not the easiest thing in the world to set up, but it has amazing flexibility. There are a tonne of clients, including GTK, Web, Command Line and anything else you can think of:

http://mpd.wikia.com/wiki/Clients

Should be something there for everyone - a favourite of mine used to be Sonata.

xray7224 · 2008-12-01 18:36:55

i like songbird its nice and has an easy interface for new people to linux, it doesnt have to many fetures you get lost but there is enough. Also i think it comes with a default theme which kindof fits in to the rest of Crunchbang.

should take a look smile

ShaqArif · 2008-12-01 18:55:24

Songbird doesn't have too many features?!? It has a web browser built in!

I tried it a while ago and found it very resource intensive. Yes, the default theme fits in with #!, but that's the only thing that does...

Hanna · 2008-12-01 18:57:29

I prefer Exaile, it does what I want. On the other hand what I want isn't much (mostly just playing the mp3s in my hard drive), so I can't really say whether is good or not.

I was interested to try Listen, but it didn't work until I removed from stock.py (/usr/lib/listen/stock.py) this:
Try: icons.add (SHUFFLE, gtk.IconSet (gtk.icon_theme_get_default (). Load_icon ( "stock_shuffle", -1, gtk.ICON_LOOKUP_USE_BUILTIN)))
except gobject.GError:pass Except gobject.GError: pass

At first sight I don't really find it that interesting music app.

Last edited by Hanna (2008-12-01 18:58:28)

swj · 2008-12-01 22:40:19

For any of you real minimalist out there that prefers the Ipod Shuffle, you may be interested in this. ;)

This little program enables iPod shuffle users to finally get rid of all that iTunes or other complicated playlist management stuff.

Works flawlessly for me...1GB Shuffle.

http://shuffle-db.sourceforge.net/

zopio · 2008-12-01 23:46:27

ShaqArif -- Yes, Amarok loads about 50MB of KDE libraries, and isn't something that I would normally load on my system. I pointed this out simply because I wanted to examine available ipod/mpd (media player device) solutions and see what stood out in my mind.

Also, what you're saying about mpd is correct -- it's a highly flexible platform, but I was never able to fully install it on 8.04 Hardy (or Linux Mint 5, Elyssa), as there were a number of setup issues that the OS inherently experienced with it. cmus, however, is a powerful and lightweight command-line-and-terminal-only client that I discovered in lieu of MPD (fabulous little program). The caveat is that it's written solely for terminal use, and doesn't have a GUI front-end.

xray7224 -- I agree with ShaqArif about Songbird -- in its current Beta incarnation it's a bit resource heavy (although this could change in their 1.0 release -- the songbird website claims performance improvements for 1.0), and is a bit too similar to rhythmbox in its music player functionality to justify a change.

Hanna -- Exaile was also my primary music player for a while, and I really do like the layout (this is probably tied for second as my favorite gtk music player), but in the end the side-by-side play queue and music library won my heart. There's something about Listen that just feels inherently beautiful and well-designed to me, and it's hard to describe beyond what I've already put forth.

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#1 2008-11-30 00:09:40

Listen Over Rythymbox

#2 2008-11-30 01:14:12

Re: Listen Over Rythymbox

#3 2008-11-30 01:26:42

Re: Listen Over Rythymbox

#4 2008-11-30 01:52:10

Re: Listen Over Rythymbox

#5 2008-11-30 01:58:35

Re: Listen Over Rythymbox

#6 2008-11-30 02:13:35

Re: Listen Over Rythymbox

#7 2008-11-30 02:41:35

Re: Listen Over Rythymbox

#8 2008-11-30 03:12:57

Re: Listen Over Rythymbox

#9 2008-11-30 03:32:10

Re: Listen Over Rythymbox

#10 2008-11-30 04:33:02

Re: Listen Over Rythymbox

#11 2008-11-30 05:46:13

Re: Listen Over Rythymbox

#12 2008-11-30 12:15:10

Re: Listen Over Rythymbox

#13 2008-12-01 16:58:15

Re: Listen Over Rythymbox

#14 2008-12-01 18:36:55

Re: Listen Over Rythymbox

#15 2008-12-01 18:55:24

Re: Listen Over Rythymbox

#16 2008-12-01 18:57:29

Re: Listen Over Rythymbox

#17 2008-12-01 22:40:19

Re: Listen Over Rythymbox

#18 2008-12-01 23:46:27

Re: Listen Over Rythymbox

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