Full Circle Magazine FR

Everybody loves listening to music. However, no one particularly likes managing their music collection. That's where music player applications come in. From organizing your music collection to automatically retrieving the album art, they make our lives much simpler. The most famous, of course, is the iconic iTunes. However, Linux has its own bevy of feature-filled music players, some with innovations that surpass their Mac and Windows counterparts. This article is the story of the three front runners, Linux's musical trio – Amarok, Banshee and Rhythmbox. Scratching the Itch According to a Wikipedia entry, Amarok was originally created by Mark Kretschmann to provide a better alternative to XMMS – a free music player that was popular during that time. On December 15, 2004, Aaron Bockover made both an announcement and a confession in a seemingly innocuous blog post. “I’ve never been 100% satisfied with the audio player selection in GNOME,” he wrote and went on to announce a new project called 'Remix Player' which we know today as Banshee. He also listed his grievances with the current options and most readers concurred with his sentiments. Thus, Banshee was created, like most software projects, to scratch an itch. So our entire musical trio came into being because their developers wanted something better. There may be several differences among them, but Amarok, Banshee and Rhythmbox have similar origins.

Tout le monde aime écouter de la musique. Cependant, personne n'aime vraiment gérer sa collection de musique. C'est ici que les applications de lecteur de musique entrent en scène. De l'organisation de votre collection de musique à la récupération automatique de la jaquette, elles rendent nos vies beaucoup plus simples. Bien entendu, la plus connue est l'emblématique iTunes. Cependant, Linux a son propre éventail de lecteurs de musique remplis de fonctionnalités intéressants ; quelques-uns sont novateurs et dépassent leurs homologues Mac et Windows. Cet article est l'histoire des trois acteurs de premier plan, le trio musical de Linux : Amarok, Banshee et Rhythmbox.

Se gratter où ça démange

D'après un article dans Wikipedia, à l'origine, Amarok était la création de Mark Kretschmann qui voulais fournir une meilleure alternative à XMMS, un lecteur de musique gratuit, libre et populaire à l'époque.

Le 15 décembre 2004, Aaron Bockover a fait une annonce et un aveux à la fois dans un billet de blog qui paraissait inoffensif. « Je n'ai jamais été totalement satisfait avec le choix du lecteur audio dans GNOME », écrivit-il avant d'annoncer un nouveau projet appelé « Remix Player », connu aujourd'hui sous le nom de Banshee. Il a également énuméré ses griefs portant sur les options à l'époque et la plupart des lecteurs partageaient ses sentiments. Banshee fut donc créé, comme la plupart des logiciels, afin de gratter là où ça démangeait.

Ainsi, chaque membre de notre trio musical est née parce que leurs développeurs voulaient quelque chose de mieux. [Ndt : Rhythmbox fut inspiré par iTunes.] Ils sont tous différents, de plusieurs façons, mais les origines d'Amarok, de Banshee et de Rhythmbox sont similaires.

The User Interface As an Ubuntu user, I am curious to see KDE's offering – Amarok. However, I am in for a rude shock, an aesthetic outrage that is Amarok's User Interface (UI). The default UI has a business-like gray tone which is rather an eyesore. It's a 3-column UI – the first column acts as the content browser and has a search bar, the second is Amarok's jewel, the context browser (more about it later,) the last column is the playlist manager. The playback controls on the top are fairly straightforward – a large pause/play button, a track progress bar, two arrow buttons pointing to the next and previous tracks and a circular volume dial. The 'shuffle' and 'repeat' button, however, are conspicuously (and most inconveniently) absent. To conclude, Amarok's UI, while certainly not beautiful, is still fairly usable. Now to the GNOME contenders – Banshee and Rhythmbox. Banshee's UI is simple and elegant. It is a 2-column interface, with the second column being divided into 3 panes. The first column acts as a navigator, it shows the 'Libraries' for music, videos, audiobooks and podcasts, along with 'Online Media'. The second column shows album art in the form of square tiles. Not only does this make finding your favourite song effortless, but also makes Banshee the most beautiful music player application. Another pane allows you to choose the artist whose songs you wish to hear. The last pane displays the songs from the album you selected. Written down badly like this, the UI sounds confusing but is actually extremely intuitive. The playback controls include a pause/play button, forward and back buttons for the next and previous song. A slide-down volume control, a search bar, a small but easy to use repeat button at the bottom, and a shuffle option integrated with the forward button cover all the basic features.

L'interface utilisateur

En tant qu'utilisateur d'Ubuntu, je suis curieux de voir ce que KDE propose - Amarok. Cependant, je suis tombé de haut, car l'interface utilisateur (IU) d'Amarok est esthétiquement scandaleuse. Le IU par défaut est d'un ton de gris qui fait très sérieux et est plutôt une forme de pollution visuelle. C'est une IU en 3 colonnes : la première est le navigateur de contenu et comprend une barre de recherches, la seconde est le bijou d'Amarok, le navigateur de contexte (j'y reviendrai plus tard) et la dernière est le gestionnaire de listes de lecture. Les commandes de lecture en haut sont plutôt simples : il y a un gros bouton pause/play, une barre de progression du morceau, deux boutons fléchés qui pointent vers les pistes suivantes et précédentes et un bouton de volume circulaire. Les boutons « aléatoire » et « répétition » brillent par leur absence, qui est, en fait, un gros inconvénient. En bref, l'IU d'Amarok, tout en étant assez affreuse, est quand même plutôt utilisable.

C'est le tour maintenant des concurrents sous GNOME, Banshee et Rhythmbox. L'IU de Banshee est simple et élégant. C'est une interface à deux colonnes, sont la deuxième est divisée en 3 volets. La première colonne a des fonctions de navigateur : il affiche les « Bibliothèques » de musique, vidéos, livres audio et podcasts, ainsi que les « Média en ligne ». La deuxième colonne affiche les pochettes sous forme de carreaux carrés. Trouver votre chanson préférée ne nécessite ainsi aucun effort, mais, en outre, cela fait de Banshee l'application musicale la plus belle. Un autre volet vous permet de choisir l'artiste dont vous voulez écouter les chansons. Le dernier volet affiche les chansons de l'album que vous avez sélectionné. Mal décrit comme cela vous avez l'impression que l'IU est déroutante. Les contrôles de lecture comprenne un bouton pause/play, des boutons avant et arrière pour les chansons suivante et précédente. Un contrôle de volume qui glisse vers le haut/bas, une barre de recherche, un petit bouton de répétition, facile à utiliser, se trouve en bas et une option aléatoire intégrée dans le bouton « avant » permettent toutes les fonctionnalités de base.

Rhythmbox has a nice, clean and perfectly understandable UI. It has a 2-column UI, very similar to Banshee. The main difference is that Rhythmbox places much less emphasis on the cover art. The album art is relegated to a small corner at the bottom of the player. Rhythmbox, however, has the most comprehensive music playback controls of the trio – a play/pause button, forward and backward buttons, a repeat button, a shuffle button and an option to simplify the music browser visibility with just a single click. The icons are well designed and convey their purpose clearly. The aggregation of all the controls in a single place saves users time and puts the focus back on the music, extremely well thought out. Internet Integration In the midst of the controversy over Napster and digital piracy, we often overlook an important fact: the Internet is a fount of free and legal audio in the form of podcasts and Internet Radio streams. A true 21st century music player should take advantage of this reality.

Amarok certainly taps into the power of the Internet. Choosing the 'Internet' option in the browser column reveals a variety of Internet music sources - a podcast directory, Librivox for public domain audiobooks (works like a charm), Magnatune, an online music store that believes in 'Fair Trade' , the hastily named yet surprisingly good 'Cool Streams' – a collection of select radio streams that spans all genres, Jamendo.com – a digital platform for artists to showcase their creations, and, of course, the ubiquitous Last.fm – for recommendations and discovering new music, a central tenet of the Amarok philosophy. Banshee also has an impressive list of built-in Internet applications: the Amazon MP3 store to buy music legally, the comprehensive 'Miro Guide' to help you find new podcasts (of particular note are the shows under 'Linux and Free Software'), the Ubuntu One Music store, a great alternative for those who don't want to use Amazon's music store, the enormous Internet Archive, which has everything from movies to audiobooks to full concerts, all in the public domain. And finally, seamless Last.fm integration allows you to scrobble your tracks and receive recommendations from the comfort of Banshee itself. Rhythmbox also offers some Internet integration features, though less than the others. Last.fm integration is present. The 'Radio' tab offers some Internet radio stations, again spanning several genres. An interesting inclusion is Libre.fm – a website that aims to provide a Free Software alternative to Last.fm. However, Rhythmbox lacks both a podcast directory and an online MP3 store. In terms of Internet integration it is definitely far behind the others and needs to catch up.

Additional Notes, Features and Musings For all the talk of dehumanizing technology, I have yet to see a software project that is not anthropomorphic in nature. Our musical trio is no exception. The three music players have their own unique features, philosophies and whims. In my brief yet searching acquaintance with them I stumbled upon a few. Did you know Amarok, the big friendly wolf, craves human feedback? How do I know this, you counter? Well, under the 'Help' option in the menu, Amarok has two surprising options – 'Show Feedback Icons' and 'Send a comment to the developers'. Clicking on either gives you a chance to send your feedback to the developers, either in the form of a happy/sad emoticon or a fully fledged comment. More importantly, Amarok asks for your email address so that the developers can contact you back, an impressive commitment to improvement indeed. Amarok's feedback icons are an idea that should be picked up by all FOSS developers, it is a simple yet powerful step towards a better next version. Apart from feedback, Amarok also has a philosophy: it aims to be your companion in your music journey, rather than a mere tool. Amarok's powerful context browser shows you the lyrics of your current song, Wikipedia entries of the artist, album and song, even tabs for you to rock out on your own. Last.fm integration provides recommendations for new music you might like as does the 'Similar Artist' applet. 'Rediscover music' is definitely a philosophy well proved by Amarok, helping users find new music and learn more about the music they already have. Banshee and Rhythmbox have similar 'context panes' for lyrics and Wikipedia entries, but activating them requires some effort.

Banshee, meanwhile, has the annoying tendency of suddenly hanging when too great a demand is made of it. Euphemistically called 'memory issues', they interfere with an enjoyable listening experience. These need to be addressed soon lest Banshee become a distant memory in the minds of audiophiles. Being able to listen to music uninterrupted is of tantamount importance. In fact, Banshee's erratic performance was the reason I switched loyalties to Rhythmbox about three months back. Banshee also has some skeletons in its closet, namely its reliance on Mono – an open source framework to allow Microsoft .NET to run on Linux. Critics fear that Microsoft can cripple Mono with patent suits which in turn will lead to an early demise for Banshee. In a sense these critics are the real banshees with their warnings of death. However, regular Banshee contributor David Nielsen ridiculed these fears and called them 'completely unfounded'. He argued that even Microsoft today deploys Mono. Banshee maintainer Bertrand Lorentz added, ”If there are any patents they would be on specific ways to implement certain features, so any other media player with a similar feature would be as much at risk as Banshee.” After sifting through the evidence, even I am of the opinion that we are being too alarmist in the case of Mono.

That leaves us with Rhythmbox, in which I see traces of an awed adolescent fan. Its idol? Apple's iTunes. The official project website, almost simpering, informs users that Rhythmbox is 'inspired' by iTunes. When I asked the entire community where Rhythmbox surpassed iTunes, I did not receive a single reply (at the time of writing). Of the three music players, Rhythmbox is probably the project that needs to innovate the most, a good UI can take it only so far. Conclusion So which music player is the best? Objectively speaking it's Banshee. Not only is the UI beautiful and easily understandable, but also it is packed with features. The seamless Internet integration will be much appreciated by users. The only criticism I have is of the resources the program consumes and the frequent 'blackouts' when it hangs. However, if your computer is fairly modern, Banshee will probably hang less often. I have to admit, though, I was very impressed by Amarok – its features, philosophy and the inbuilt feedback options. If Amarok acquires a beautiful UI to cloak its powerful music player features, and provides users the sorely needed 'shuffle' and 'repeat' buttons, it may well become the undisputed king of music players. Rhythmbox is the perfect choice for those who want to only listen to their music collection. It doesn't hang and has perfect playback controls. However, in terms of features and Internet integration it still lags far behind the other two.

Summary – Amarok The Good • Powerful context browser that provides song lyrics, Wikipedia entries and more • Great Internet integration options Inbuilt feedback options ensure better next iterations • Advanced playlist creation options Best album art retrieval The Bad • An ugly default UI • Lack of 'shuffle' and 'repeat' buttons can be extremely frustrating • Using the volume dial can be slightly inconvenient, sometimes even confusing Website: http://amarok.kde.org/ Summary – Banshee The Good • Beautiful and intuitive UI with emphasis on album art • Great Internet integration options • Context pane works well and enhances the music listening experience • Simple and comprehensive playback controls • Stunning 'Now Playing' screen with a 'Simplify' button The Bad • Resource hungry program, hangs very frequently • Certain features like the context pane require some effort to activate Website: http://banshee.fm/ Summary – Rhythmbox The Good • Clean and simple UI • Comprehensive playback controls aggregated in one place • Libre.fm is an interesting Free Software inspired alternative to Last.fm • One click 'Simplify' button allows you to quickly change the UI to fit your needs The Bad • Limited Internet integration • Lack of features as compared to Banshee or Amarok • Reliance on Last.fm for album art retrieval • Album art is not displayed to its full advantage Website: http://projects.gnome.org/rhythmbox/ The Winner of this Software Showdown is Banshee.