Banshee 1.0 Alpha 1 (0.98.1)

  • Release Date: March 13, 2008
  • Source Tarball: banshee-1-0.98.1.tar.bz2 (http://banshee-project.org/files/banshee/banshee-1-0.98.1.tar.bz2)
  • Release Information: NEWS (http://banshee-project.org/files/banshee/banshee-1-0.98.1.news), sha1sum (http://banshee-project.org/files/banshee/banshee-1-0.98.1.sha1sum), ChangeLog (http://banshee-project.org/files/banshee/banshee-1-0.98.1.changes)

  • If you are running openSUSE 10.3 there is a 1-Click Install available:

    1click-install-button.png (http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Banshee:/Preview/openSUSE_10.3/banshee.ymp)

Feature Rundown

Better, Faster, Stronger

Major performance improvements make this the fastest Banshee ever. The entire program has been re-written with an emphasis on speed and size. Search, browse and manage even the largest music libraries without batting an eye. The new Banshee also has greatly improved memory usage, better start-up time, and a more responsive interface that scales impressively with large music collections.

Album Browser

Introducing the Album Browser. Visually browse and filter your music collection by artist and album. Complete with album artwork, the Album Browser gives you a new and beautiful way of exploring your music.

Artist/Album Browser on Left Artist/Album Browser on Top
The Browser Shown Positioned to the Left of the Track List and Above it.

Play Queue

The play queue lets you queue songs you want to listen to
The play queue allows you to create an ad hoc list of songs you want to hear right now. You can queue up a bunch of songs that fit your mood for the moment and let Banshee run through them. Just hit the q key and the currently select song(s) will be added to the end of the queue. Search for songs, queue them up, and move on - you'll be hearing them soon.
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By default, your queue stays with you even if you restart Banshee. And when your queue is empty, Banshee resumes playing where you left off.

Powerful Search

Banshee now lets you search like never before. Type a word, and Banshee will search across the default columns (artist, album, title). But specify particular fields with genre:Audiobook or rating>3, and the power of smart playlists is only a / press away. Check out the user guide for all the details on fields and operators you can use.
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Banshee supports a very extensive user search language, which is actually based on the XESAM user search language. The search language is very similar to that which is supported by Google and other major search engines and desktop search applications, such as Beagle.

Better Last.fm Integration

If you have a Last.fm (http://last.fm/) account, you can share your listening habits through Last.fm, create and listen to custom radio stations, and mark songs as loved or banned to affect your profile and what songs are recommended to you. Most importantly, you'll be listening to and exploring tons of new music.
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Further, the plugin provides a view of recently played and recently loved tracks. Each track can be selected and will take you to new levels of exploring the song on Last.fm, Wikipedia, or through 'similar to' and 'fan of' stations based on the song or artist. The ability to add and sort stations by name, play count or type makes the extension even more useful and highly integrated into Last.fm and make it even easier for you to discover new bands and songs that will keep your music library fresh every day. Banshee can tune any radio station, like "recommended" "personal" "loved" "neighbors" "group" "tag" "fan" "similar". In the screenshots we are making a custom radio station based on the tag for "rock". Press Save and you're ready to tune in.

Equalizer (EQ)

Screenshot of equalizer dialog

The new 10-band equalizer with preamp allows you to save and load equalizer configurations to your ear's content. Your music has never sounded better.

Keep On Playin'

Banshee now keeps playing from the playlist or source you choose, even while you browse to other playlists, check your podcasts, or see what's on Last.fm. The playing source is shown bold in the source list.

Dependencies

  • Mono 1.2.2 (.NET 2.0 Profile / gmcs)
  • SQlite 3.4
  • Gtk# 2.8
  • GStreamer 0.10.3
  • NDesk DBus (ndesk-dbus) 0.5
  • NDesk DBus GLib (ndesk-dbus-glib) 0.3
  • Mono.Addins (mono-addins) 0.3.1
  • TagLib# (taglib-sharp) 2.0

Please note that for openSUSE, all of the dependencies above can be found in the openSUSE Build Service, and are linked into the Banshee:Preview project. Even if you build from source, if you wish to avoid building the entire dependency chain above, add the Banshee:Preview repository (http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Banshee:/Preview/) to your repository list.

Historically, Banshee has fostered development of a number of projects and bundled their source code instead of depending on external builds. Many of these dependencies have matured and grown into well maintained projects on their own, and we are now depending on them externally. We waited to remove the bundles long enough to allow for distributions to ship packages to reduce the pain of building Banshee

Alpha Release Disclaimer

This is the first release in the Banshee 1.0 series. This Alpha 1 release does not have feature parity' with previous Banshee releases (the last being Banshee 0.13.2). This means there are a number of features in this release that users may have come to know and love in Banshee that are missing for the time being.

However, although this is an Alpha release, it is quite stable and has many great new features and performance improvements which will be detailed later. It has also been designed to be both installed and run in parallel with previous Banshee releases, so you can test the release out without breaking your stable Banshee setup.

Currently Missing Features

  • This release does not contain any hardware support
    • No audio CD support
    • No CD burning
    • No iPod support
    • No USB Mass Storage support
    • No MTP device support
  • Additionally, a number of plugins have not yet been ported to the 1.0 architecture
    • Podcasting
    • DAAP/iTunes Music Sharing
    • Internet Radio
    • Recommendations
    • Mini Mode
    • Bookmarks
    • Batch Cover Art Fetching

Do not despair, these features will be added back before the final 1.0 release. Many hardware related features are projected to land in the Alpha 2 and 3 releases of Banshee 1.0. We expect releases in quick succession leading up to the final 1.0 release.

No Conflicts

This new release is not backwards compatible with previous Banshee releases, however, it will not conflict or cause any problems with any previous release you may have installed. If a Banshee library is located from a previous release, it will be copied and migrated to work with the new version.

Previously, all paths and packaging used the banshee project name. We are now using the banshee-1 project name to avoid any packaging, installation, or user-data conflicts with previous releases of Banshee. For instance, the following file/data related things have changed:

  • Packaging/Installation
    • Installation path changed from $(prefix)/lib/banshee to $(prefix)/lib/banshee-1
    • Application launcher changed from $(prefix)/bin/banshee to $(prefix)/bin/banshee-1
    • Application icon name changed from music-player-banshee to media-player-banshee
    • DBus service changed from org.gnome.Banshee to org.bansheeproject.Banshee
  • User Data Access
    • GConf Root Key changed from /apps/banshee to /apps/banshee-1
    • Application data directory changed from ~/.config/banshee to ~/.config/banshee-1 (note, the ~/.config base directory depends on XDG settings for the user)

These changes mean you can have installed and use both older Banshee releases (0.13.2 and older) and new Banshee releases (0.98.1 and newer) without worrying about packaging or installation problems or user data conflicts. Keep in mind however, that this release is not backwards compatible with older releases. If library changes are made in this new release, they will not be reflected if you run an older release.

Community

Contributors For This Release

The following people directly contributed to the release of this version of Banshee. Without their help, there would be no release!

Aaron Bockover, Alan McGovern, Alexander Hixon, Gabriel Burt, James Willcox, Michael Monreal, Ruben Vermeersch, Scott Peterson, Sebastian Dröge, Will Farrington

The release notes and screenshots for this release were crafted by:

Aaron Bockover, Gabriel Burt, Jorge Castro, Josiah Ritchie, Scott Peterson

Contributors In Past Releases

Alan McGovern, Alexander Hixon, Alexandros Frantzis, Alp Toker, Aydemir Ulaş Şahin, Ben Maurer, Bertrand Lorentz, Bill Dawson, Bob Copeland, Bojan Rajkovic, Brian Nickel, Chris Lahey, Chris Toshok, Chris Turchin, Christian Krause, Christopher James Halse Rogers, Dan Wilson, Dan Winship, Daniel Munkton, Eric Butler, Fredrik Hedberg, Hans Petter Jansson, Igor Guerrero Fonseca, Ilya Konstantinov, Ivan N. Zlatev, James Willcox, Jan Arne Petersen, Jason Conti, Jeff Tickle, Jorge Castro, Juri Pakaste, Ken Vandine, Larry Ewing, Lauri Kotilainen, Michael Monreal, Miguel de Icaza, Mike Urbanski, Nathan Palmer, Oscar Forero, Patrick van Staveren, Pepijn van de Geer, Ruben Vermeersch, Sebastian Dröge, Tim Yamin, Trey Ethridge, Will Farrington

Reporting Bugs, Joining the Community

If you encounter any bad behavior with this release, please do not hesitate to file bugs (http://bugzilla.gnome.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=banshee&version=0.98.1)!

We welcome new contributors - developers, translators, artists, writers, support gurus - to join our community. Join us!

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