is a
Free Audio Player for
GNU /
Linux Operating System s, that is built upon
Mono and
Gtk# . It uses the
GStreamer multimedia platform for encoding, and decoding various music formats, including
Ogg Vorbis ,
MP3 and
FLAC . Banshee can play, import and burn audio
CD s and synchronize music with several portable media players, including Apple's
IPod and
Creative Zen players. Music stored on the iPod can be played without synchronization, and album art stored in the Banshee library is transferred to the iPod. Support for
MTP and
PlaysForSure devices, as well as the
Rio Karma player is planned for the near future.
Using a plugin-capable architecture, Banshee is highly extensible and customizable. Current stable plugins include:
- Audioscrobbler: Adds the capability of reporting played songs to a user's Last.fm playlist.
- Podcasting: Enables Banshee to subscribe to podcast feeds, which are updated on a regular basis. There is also a "Find new podcasts" feature which utilises Podcast Alley .
- and other DAAP-compatible music software. The current version of Banshee is only partially compatible with iTunes 7, allowing iTunes to open a Banshee library, but not vice-versa.
- Metadata searcher using Musicbrainz : Automatically retrieves missing and supplementary metadata for library items, including album art.
- Music Recommendations using Last.fm : Recommends music based on the currently playing song.
- Mini-Mode plugin: Provides a small window with minimal playback controls and song information.
- Multimedia keys support in GNOME : Banshee can be controlled via multimedia keys as configured through GNOME.
- Radio: Provides support for streaming internet radio stations.
- Notification Area Icon: Adds an icon to the notification area in GNOME.
Helix Banshee is a version of Banshee, included in
SLED and available in
OpenSUSE (non-OSS media). It is based upon the Banshee core, but adds support for the
Helix framework for playback and transcoding, in addition to GStreamer. Helix Banshee does not modify the core of Banshee in any way, it simply builds upon it via Banshee's extensible plugin framework.
