Rhythmbox

Infobox Software
name = Rhythmbox



caption = A screenshot of Rhythmbox 0.11.5
developer = GNOME Team
released = 18 August 2001
frequently_updated = yes
programming language = C
operating system = Linux, Solaris, BSD, other Unix-like
language = Multilingual
genre = audio player
license = GPL
website = [http://www.gnome.org/projects/rhythmbox/ http://www.gnome.org/projects/rhythmbox/]

Rhythmbox is an audio player that plays and helps organize digital music. Originally inspired by Apple's iTunes, it is free software, designed to work well under the GNOME Desktop using the GStreamer media framework. It is currently under active development.

Features

Rhythmbox offers a growing number of features, including:

Music playback

Playback from a variety of digital music sources is supported. The most common playback is music stored locally as files on the computer (the 'Library'). Rhythmbox supports playing streamed Internet radio and podcasts as well. The Replay Gain standard is supported.

Searching and sorting of music in the library is supported. Playlists may be created to group and order music. Users may also create 'smart playlists,' ones that are automatically updated (like a database query) based on a customized rule of selection criteria rather than an arbitrary list of tracks. Music may be played back in shuffle (random) mode or repeat mode.

Track ratings are supported and used by the shuffle mode algorithm to play higher-rated tracks more often.

Music importing

* Audio CD ripping (requires the optional Sound Juicer package)
* Comprehensive audio format support through GStreamer
* iPod support (experimental)

Audio CD burning

Since the 0.9 release, Rhythmbox can create audio CDs from playlists.

Album Cover display

Since the 0.9.5 release, Rhythmbox can display cover art of the currently playing album. However, rather than reading the embedded ID3 tags for album artwork, the plugin searches the internet to find corresponding artwork.

Song Lyrics display

Since the 0.9.5 release, Rhythmbox can provide song lyrics of the currently playing song (as long as they are stored in a lyrics database like leoslyrics).

Last.fm Support

Since the 0.9.6 release, Rhythmbox can submit played songs info to your Last.fm account (known as "scrobbling"). Since release 0.9.7 it can also play Last.fm's radio streams.

Jamendo Support

Since the 0.9.6 release, Rhythmbox can browse and play all the Jamendo free (as in freedom) music library

DAAP Sharing

Version 0.10.0 supports DAAP sharing

Integration

Rhythmbox has been extensively integrated with a number of external programs, services and devices including:

* Nautilus file manager context-menu integration (off by default in version 0.8.8), "hover mode" playback in Nautilus
* XChat, via an XChat plugin. [http://tim.codestorm.net/projects/xchat-rhythmbox/ Rhythmbox XChat Announcer (Perl)]
* [http://jon.oberheide.org/projects/pidgin-rhythmbox/ Pidgin-Rhythmbox] automatically updates the Pidgin user profile with details of the currently playing track
* Gajim and Pidgin include options for automatically updating the user status with details of currently playing track [http://code.google.com/p/musictracker/]
* [http://www.kuliniewicz.org/music-applet/ Music Applet] (previously known as the Rhythmbox Applet), a GNOME panel applet that provides Rhythmbox playback controls from within the panel
* Shuffle, a gDesklet providing an interface for Rhythmbox resembling an iPod ShuffleFact|date=August 2007
* Rhythmlet, another gDesklet that retrieves album art locally or from Amazon.com, has configurable display strings, playback controls, editable ratings and a seek bar
* SideCandyRhythmbox, a gDesklet-based Rhythmbox control and SideCandy display
* Rhythmbox XSLT allows the music library to be viewed as a web page
* Drivel inserts the name of the track Rhythmbox is currently playing into a LiveJournal blog entry
* Rhythmbox Tune Publisher publishes the currently playing Rhythmbox track to Jabber via the User Tune protocol (used by the Jabber World Map)
* Blue Remote allows Rhythmbox to be operated from a Bluetooth-enabled phone
* FoxyTunes, a Mozilla Firefox extension that provides Rhythmbox playback controls from within the web browser
* Plugins for browsing and listening to Creative Commons licensed albums from Jamendo and Magnatune.

Devices

Rhythmbox uses the Linux Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) to detect player devices.

References

See also

*Banshee
*Comparison of media players

External links

* [http://www.gnome.org/projects/rhythmbox/ Rhythmbox website]