To install:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nuvola-player-builders/beta
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nuvolaplayer

This is what you will see on the first run:

Being a Grooveshark fan, the first service that I clicked on is, of course, Grooveshark. This is what you will see. You can perform a search and add songs to your playlist. Everything is just what you see in the browser.

The same goes for Google Music, Hype Machine and 8 Tracks.

Note: Although Google Music is only for US citizens, with a simple US-based VPN connection, you (those who do not reside in US) should be able to activate Google Music service with your Google account. Once the service is activated, you won’t need a VPN to access your music anymore.

System tray icon with Player Control

Nuvola Player also comes with an app-indicator (or system tray icon) with the ability to control your music. You can Pause/Play the current song and go Next/Previous song in the playlist. There is even a Thumb Up/Thumb Down button.

Conlcusion

Nuvola Player is basically a browser wrapper that contains links to various cloud services. There is nothing new that you can’t do on your normal browser, but the convenience of having several cloud music services at your fingertips and the ability to run separately as a native app make it a winner.

What do you think? Is this kind of music player suitable for you? Or you prefer the good old Rhythmbox and Amarok?

Nuvola Player

What you get with Winyl

There are a few cool things you will notice about the layout. First, there is not the usual menu bar. Winyl replaces the menu with an icon. You can click on the icon to get to the menu options. It makes for a much cleaner look.

The same change goes for audio adjustments and the cover art display. The cover art does not auto download, so you may need to find it elsewhere on the web. Here is a screen shot of the equalizer popup window that shows up when you click on the music note at the top of the right sidebar.

Other than that, the layout is pretty self explanatory. You have your library in the middle.

The right sidebar either displays the cover art

or the playlist and genre options.

There is a star-based rating system similar to iTunes.

There is a smart folder option in the right sidebar. There is an option to choose random playlists based on 25 most played songs or 5 random albums. This helps mix up your music. I know I have many gigabytes of music and mostly listen to a few albums. Using a random play option, you may play some golden oldies you downloaded and forgot about.

Why Winyl is so great

The main reason you would want to use Winyl is that you are probably not super happy with iTunes or Windows Media Player. If you were not in the market for a new player, you probably wouldn’t have read this far. ;-) Being tethered to a service can be a problem for those people who may not acquire their music in the legalist of ways. Is iTunes looking and collecting information for big brother? Who knows for sure.

Skins

Also, there are different skins. The skins can change the look to make you feel more at home when switching from iTunes or Windows Media Player. Here is a look at a couple of the skins. You will see what I mean.

Luna Black Skin

Windows Media Player Skin

iTunes Skin

Conclusion

When you are searching for a music player, you have specific needs. Most people seem to like simple over fancy. The other reason is, a lot of people are looking to break away from iTunes or Windows Media Player for one reason or another. Winyl offers a great transition application because of the skin options that are pretty close replicas of the applications you are looking to break free from.

What are your reasons to look for a new desktop music player?

Download Winyl

1. PlayerPro

PlayerPro Music Player is a powerful music and video playing app for Android. The app has a wide variety of features including:

• different options to browse your music
• automatic download of album artwork
• read album and artist reviews
• download song lyrics
• change user interface and player skin
• alternate between grid or list views
• audio effects using 5 band graphics equaliser (DSP plugin for older devices)
• display music stats including ratings, play counts, last played, and last added
• create smart playlists
• a variety of lock screen and home screen widgets

Additionally, the music formats supported by PlayerPro include mp3, ogg, flac, wma, wav, m4a, mp4.

This is a solid app that has worked flawlessly for me. Sound quality is perfect and this can even be changed using the equaliser settings.

Unfortunately, you need to upgrade to the full version of PlayerPro after the initial 5 day trial period.

PlayerPro

2. PowerAMP

PowerAMP is one of the most popular alternative music playing apps for Android users. It plays a wide variety of audio formats including, mp3, mp4/m4a (including alac), ogg, wma, flac, wav, ape, wv, and tta and it has an extensive feature set including:

• 10 band optimized graphical equalizer
• crossfade and gapless playback (something not available in all the other players)
• auto-download of missing album art
• lock-screen and home-screen widgets
• tag editor
• visualiser
• granular customisation options.

Many users like this player because it is powerful with a number of customisation options and the sound quality is impressive. However, I personally find the UI a little too cluttered.

The free version is only valid for 15 days.

PowerAMP

3. Winamp

Winamp has been around on desktops since the 90s and now this veteran music playing app is available on Android. In addition to the standard features of all the music players such as artist information, playlist support, lock-screen and home-screen widgets, this app has a number of advanced features including:

• streaming from desktop Winamp player
• multi-language support
• wireless & wired sync with the desktop Winamp app
• free music downloads

This is a free app that has a lot of great features and wireless sync is an especially useful option if you already have Winamp on your computer. However, unless you already use the desktop version of Winamp, a lot of the apps advanced features may not be particularly useful.

Winamp

4. MixZing

MixZing has all the features of the the other music apps, including a graphic equaliser, a tag editor, lock-screen and home-screen widgets, and playlist support. In addition, this app records the music you are listening to and provides you with relevant recommendations. Unfortunately, the app does not have a queuing feature and continuous feature which limits its usefulness.

To use MixZing without ads, install the upgrader app.

MixZing

5. Google Music

The Google Music player is not like the other apps I have mentioned in this list. It has all the standard features of the other players and can play most of the music files on your device, however it is a music streaming service which streams music uploaded to the Google Music Beta service. Hence, this app lacks a lot of the advanced features of some of the other apps, but if you have stored your music on the Google Music servers this app is essential to stream your songs to your Android device. Of course you should keep in mind that streaming requires an active data (3G or wifi) connection and if your connection is weak sound quality may suffer.

Google Music

Conclusion

I find that PlayerPro strikes the best balance between simplicity, feature-set, and sound quality. Hence, it is my music playing app of choice. However, if you want easy music management and syncing I would recommend the Winamp Android app and desktop app combination. Lastly, do you have music stored on Google Music? Well in that case you should also install the Google Music app in addition to whichever other music playing app you choose to use.

Image credit: chanelcoco872

Get the app

Just about any Linux distribution with online repositories will have this package available, normally as just mpg123. Ubuntu users can find it in the Software Center or from the command line with

sudo apt-get install mpg123

In the event that your distribution does not have binaries available, you can download the source code here.

The Basics

A single track can be played in a simple and pretty obvious way, just mpg123 followed by the filename, as in:

mpg123 MySong.mp3

Which will play the single track from start to finish with output something like this:

Playlists

You can also use shell wildcards to send mpg123 several files at once. The simplest example is to use the above method, but replace the filename with a quick and easy *.mp3.

mpg123 *.mp3

To set your playlist to shuffle mode, just add a -Z in there

Optionally, you can use normal bash redirect characters to feed mpg123 a list of filenames.

ssh username@my-remote-machine-address
mpg123  -Z  -@  < myplaylistfile

The -@ flag tells mpg123 to treat the following input as a playlist (it’s the shortened form of –list), and the < is a standard bash redirect to pull the text out of the file and use it as mpg123‘s input.

Remote Play Control

This isn’t exactly a “feature” of mpg123, it’s more like a side effect, but for this author, it’s the most handy thing about this application. You see, regular readers or Linux pros probably already know about SSH, the fantastically useful remote shell application with 1001 uses. Since SSH gives you a shell on a remote machine, you can run programs on that remote machine. As mpg123 is just another shell application, the normal rules apply. If you SSH into a machine and run mpg123, it will play out that machine’s speakers.

This is great for me. If I’m sitting on the porch with my netbook on a fine summer day, I can SSH into my desktop (which is hooked up to a home theater) and run a mpg123 to start my music without ever leaving the chair, or being forced to deal with the low-quality underpowered netbook speakers. Just SSH into the machine and run mpg123 as if you were sitting at the keyboard, as in

ssh username@my-remote-machine-address
mpg123  -Z  --@  < myplaylistfile

Conclusion

If you like tag-based music libraries, album art, device synchronization, and other fancy features – mpg123 is clearly not a solution for you. In fact, I doubt there are many people who’d want to use this as their primary music player on a day-to-day basis, but there are certainly times when it comes in handy. We’ve explored just a few of them, and I’m sure our readers can come up with quite a few more. If you’ve found a great use for mpg123, please let us know in the comments.

1. Faster User Switch

If you happen to share a computer with one or more individuals, switching users is very important. This little plasma widget makes it easy to select a currently logged-in user and switch to that account. It can display user avatars, their names, or both. It is a nice widget to add to a panel for easy access. It also provides a quick interface for starting new user sessions.

2. Kbackup

Kbackup has been around for a long time, but it just received an update. With it you can quickly and easily backup any directory on your computer, specify where you want the backups to go, and have them archived in the folder or device of your choice. This app is lightweight, simple, and does exactly what it says.

Packages for Kbackup are available in Ubuntu repositories and other Linux distributions.

3. Converseen

This nifty little application is a must for anyone who works with a great deal of images. It is a pure Qt app, rather than a KDE one, but that means it still integrates perfectly with KDE. With Converseen you can convert batches of images to any format, any size, any resolution, and to any naming scheme you want. It allows you to make multiple changes on the fly and then save the new images wherever you want. Best of all, Converseen supports just about every image format you can imagine.

4. Muon Package Management Suite

The graphical package manager frontends for KDE have always felt a bit like second-class citizens to Synaptic for GTK. Muon comes very close to evening the playing field. With it you can search, update, install, and receive update notifications for packages with ease. Muon Software Center provides a more visual approach to installation, similar to Ubuntu Software Center. Based on QApt, the entire application suite is lightweight and fast, without some of the hiccups of other frontends.

Muon is available in many Linux distribution repositories.

5. Clementine

Not everyone was in love with the new interface and features of Amarok 2 that came with KDE 4. For those who still love the old Amarok 1.4 look and feel, Clementine is a Qt music app, inspired by that code tree with quite a bit of its own unique features. Features include lyrics, artist bios, tabbed playlists, Wii remote support, visualizations, iPod, iPhone, and mass storage USB support, album cover art, Internet music (Last.fm, SomaFM, Magnatune, Jamendo, and Icecast), and music format conversion.

You can download Clementine for Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, or the source code for other operating systems.

There are plenty of other great apps hiding on KDE-Apps.org. Many are updated regularly and well maintained. If you have a favorite third-party KDE app, feel free to share it in the comments section. Also, if you would like to read a review of any app, make sure to suggest it to MakeTechEasier.

Recommended reading:
5 Intriguing KDE Apps

2Player is an Android music player with integrated support for devices on your home network. It allows you to play your computer’s music collection on your phone; play from your phone onto your DLNA television; or even directly from your Windows 7 computer to your XBOX 360.

Unlike other music streaming software that require you to upload your music files to the cloud, 2Player works directly using the DLNA network protocol to move music from your media server devices, onto your media renderers, wherever they may be. While it may sound complicated, it is surprisingly easy to use.

Install the 2Player app from the market (market link)

Launch the 2Player app. You should see the following interface.

The top dropdown is where you select the music source (play from) while the bottom dropdown bar represents the target (play to). If there are no DLNA or UPNP network devices available, you can only choose the local device.

When “local device” are chosen for both the source and target, the app will become a local music player.

The magic happens when you have network devices connected. You will be able to choose from the different devices and stream music from one to another. For example, you can stream the music from the computer in your room to the PS3 in your living room, or just play the music from your Android device to your Home stereo system.

2Player is free to download/use. However it is licensed under the “Good Karma License”.

The Good Karma License is based on the following premise: that human beings are – more often than not- decent.

Here’s the deal: I won’t mine your personal data, expose you to literally thousands of ads for things you don’t want, or try to trick you into downloading a “free” application that is nothing but an elaborate ruse to make you pay for the “Pro” version. Instead, I’m going to give you a fully functional trial version of the software, for you to use as you see fit. In exchange, I expect you to pay for a license if you like and use my program.

It’s a simple proposition. I trust you to do the right thing, and hopefully, we all end up a little better off as a result.

The developer has certainly made it easy for anyone to use the app. The “Good Karma License” will cost you US$2.91. You have got the fully functional app in your device, it is really your call whether you want to buy the license.

I would. Would you?

Image credit: chanelcoco872

Installation

Banshee is included in Ubuntu repository, so you can easily install it via the Ubuntu Software Center, or if you prefer the commandline:

sudo apt-get install banshee

One thing though, the package in the repository is not updated. To get the latest version, use the following PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:banshee-team/ppa

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install banshee

On the first run, it scanned my hard disk for all music and video files and added them to its library. While it has done a good job identifying the meta tags of the songs and classify them accordingly, there are several instances where it incorrectly dumps the songs to the unknown artist/unknown album folder (even though the songs are well-tagged).

As a media player, there is nothing to complain though. It plays all my mp3, ogg, avi and mp4 file properly. It even comes with an Audiobook, Podcast and Radio functions.

Features in Banshee

The default installation of Banshee comes with support for Amazon MP3 store, Miro Guide, Internet Archive and Last.fm. Rhythmbox doesn’t come with Amazon MP3, Miro Guide and Internet Archive, but it supports Jamendo and Magnatune, which Banshee doesn’t. Banshee still has an edge here since Jamendo and Magnatune can be extended via plugins..

Smart playlist

This is one small feature that makes sorting your music library a breeze. With the smart playlist, you can create a new playlist based on a set of rule. For example, you can create a smart playlist to include all songs with the jazz genre. In the future when you add new songs to your library, it will automatically add the song to the playlist.

Extensions

The best part about Banshee is the availability of extensions to further its functionality. The default installation of Banshee comes with extensions like BPM (Beats per minute) detection, DAAP Sharing, Importers for Amarok, Rhythmbox and iTunes, Library Watcher etc. If that is not enough, you can install the banshee-community-extensions. This will give you even more extensions created by the community (and not curated by the Banshee developers).

The Banshee community extensions include features like:

• Alarm Clock – use Banshee to wake up or go to sleep to a selection of your own music.
• AppIndicator – Use the new application indicator area available in Ubuntu.

• Awn – Sets the current album cover as banshee icon in awn.
• ClutterFlow – A CoverFlow clone that allows you to browse your album collection.
• Cover Wallpaper – Sets the current playing album cover as the GNOME desktop wallpaper.
• LCD – Display track info on a LCD using LCDproc.
• Lirc – Control Banshee via a normal (infrared) remote control. Requires LIRC.
• Live Radio – Another way to discover internet radio stations.
• Lyrics – Fetches and displays lyrics for the current song.
• Magnatune – Listen to streamed music from Magnatune.com.
• Mirage – Adds playback shuffle-by-similar and Auto DJ fill-by-similar modes, based on songs’ acoustic similarity.
• Radio Station Fetcher – Fetch radio stations from shoutcast.com and xiph.org.
• Stream Recorder – Record internet-radio streams.
• Telepathy – Browse your IM friends’ music library, download or stream their tracks and share what you’re listening to.
• Ubuntu One Music Store – Browse, preview and download songs from the Ubuntu One Music Store.

You can install the banshee community extensions via the Ubuntu Software Center, or via

sudo apt-get install banshee-community-extensions

Music store

In the current version of Ubuntu, the UbuntuOne Music store is tightly integrated with Rhythmbox so you can buy music within the media player and get it synced to your Ubuntu One account. In Banshee, you can purchase music via the Amazon MP3 store. The UbuntuOne Music store is only available if you install the community-extensions and activate it in the Extension section. If Banshee is to become the default media player in Ubuntu, I am sure the UbuntuOne Music store will be integrated to the core in future version rather than having to extend by extensions.

Sync with mobile device

As smartphones like Android and iPhone are getting more and more popular, it is also important for media players to be able to facilitate the transfer of music to/from the mobile device. It is a good thing that Banshee can detect mobile devices like Android, iPod, iPhone etc. out of the box and sync your music and videos to/from them. Files are transcoded on the fly (if required), so you don’t have to worry about any format compatibility issue. You can also choose to sync your entire library, or just one playlist.

Conclusion

Back to the question: Is Banshee good enough to be the next default player in Ubuntu? My answer is Yes. Personally I don’t like using Rhythmbox because it is terrible at organizing my music library. Banshee sure does it better. And with a huge community supporting it, it can only get better.

What do you think?

Luckily, it is not difficult to get your playlist across the cable to your phone. Here are four ways that you can use to sync iTunes music to Android.

1. Sailing Media Sync

Sailing Media Sync can sync your iTunes music, playlists, podcasts and photos from iPhoto or Aperture onto your Android device. It is currently available in two versions: free and premium. The free version copies all your media files every time it performs a sync. It does not keep a record of what has already been sync. Depending on the size of your media library, the whole syncing process can take a long time. On the other hand, the pro version costs $22 and it can intelligently updates your phone, resulting in a faster sync.

The usage is simple. Plug in your Android device with the USB cable and turn on USB storage mode. Sailing Media Sync will automatically detect the device and prompt you to perform a synchronization. You can select from the list whether you want to sync music, podcast and photos.

Sailing Media Sync is available for Windows and Mac.

Download Sailing Media Sync

2. iTunesMyWalkman

iTunesMyWalkman is a open source application that helps you to synchronize the contents of iTunes playlists to your mobile phone or other portable device, including Android phone.

There are several advantages in using iTunesMyWalkman.

1. It works on Mac 10.4 Tiger. Most applications only work on Mac Leopard and above, so it is good to see that iTunesMyWalkman plays well with Tiger too.

2. It includes iTunes scripts and Folder Actions so it can automatically detect your Android phone and synchronize your music and playlist right within iTunes.

3. It is able to re-encode your music on the fly to save space. This is useful if you have a small storage space in your phone, or that your phone does not only support the media format in iTunes.

4. It is able to sync your camera pictures to your hard disk or iPhoto.

Note: If you have a large media library, it will be very slow the first time you perform the synchronization.

iTunesMyWalkman is available for Mac Tiger and above.

Download iTunesMyWalkman

3. Dazzboard

Dazzboard is different from all other apps. It is a web app that works within your browser (Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari).

Before you can use it, you have to download and install a plugin from the Dazzboard site. After the installation, you can visit the website again and it will prompt you to launch the web app.

Within the app, you can select the music/video/photo/playlist from either device (your computer and Android phone) and transfer to and fro from each device. in Windows, you can even sync your Android applications to your desktop.

Dazzboard is available for Windows and Mac.

Download Dazzboard plugin

4. DoubleTwist

This article won’t be completed without DoubleTwist. DoubleTwist is a great media player that many even touted it as the “iTunes for Android”. After you have installed it in your computer (Windows or Mac), it will automatically import your iTunes music and playlist. When you connect your Android phone to your Mac, it can detect your phone and give you an option to sync your media content.

Double Twist is available for Windows and Mac.

Download Double Twist

Premium software

While this article is about free tools, there are several premium apps that can sync iTunes music to your Android phone as well.

1. TuneSync – TuneSync allows you to sync your iTunes playlist wirelessly. There are two parts to TuneSync, an Android app and a desktop app. The Android app costs $4.99 (there is a lite version though) while the desktop app is free to download. TuneSync works on both Windows and Mac.

2. iSyncr – Other than the usual syncing, iSyncr also supports smart playlist, song ratings, play counts, podcast and videos. iSyncr also comes in two parts: Android app ($2.99) and a desktop app (free). iSyncr is available for Windows and Mac

3. The Missing Sync – At $40, this is one hell of an expensive app. However, it is also the best synchronization app out there. Things it can sync include calendars, Fliq notes, SMS messages, contacts, music, photos, videos, docs, podcasts and call history. It also supports wireless sync.

What do you use to sync iTunes music to your Android phone?

Like KDE’s Plasma desktop, Amarok has the ability to display widgets. It is divided into the three columns. The left column is the music browser, which displays the user’s local collection or the Internet music library of his or her choice. The right column shows the current playlist, and the center column can hold a number of widgets. Users must click the wrench icon at the bottom to add, remove, or reorder widgets.

1. Albums

The Albums widget provides users with the most recently added albums when nothing is playing, and when a song is playing, the widget displays the current artists albums. You can navigate through the list of songs for quick access to any other songs by the artist currently in your collection.

2. Current Track

Current Track shows the Album cover, title, artist’s name, Last.fm love button, position marker, play count, score, last played, and track rating.

Right click on the album cover and click “Display Cover” to see the largest available version of the image. Click “Fetch Cover” to download cover art from Amazon. Most of the time this works just fine for big industry artists, but there are some instances where it will display the wrong art or find none at all. In those cases, you can click “Set Custom Cover” to add your own. In addition, click “Tools” and “Cover Manager” at any time to download covers for all of your albums or edit any current ones.

The rating system has a 5-star scale, and each star has a 1/2 setting. You can change your rating of a song at any time, and when no song is playing, the Current Track widget will display top-rated tracks.

3. Lyrics

Rather than having to search the Web for song lyrics, Amarok has a built-in Lyrics widget. Whenever a song starts to play, just click on the Lyrics button to display the widget. Click the configure button in the top right corner to change font style and size. If no lyrics are found, you may have to search the Web, but you will only need to do it once. Simply copy the lyrics you find, click the Edit Lyrics icon, and paste them right into the widget.

4. Photos

One of the features that I just recently discovered is the Photos Widget. While a track is playing, it will run a slideshow of photos from Flickr. In most cases, it will accurately display pictures of the currently playing artist. In some cases, particularly with rappers or singers who have improper nouns as their stage names, you will have to do some configuring.

Click the configure button and add additional keywords that will help Amrok search Flickr for the right photos. You can also set the slideshow animation type and the number of photos to display.

5. Videoclip

The Videoclip widget harnesses the power of YouTube to offer quick links to videos of the song you are currently playing. Because almost every song is on YouTube, you are certain to find something, although it may not always be an official music video.

Once you select a video, it will play within the widget window. To play fullscreen, double click on the video or right click, and then click “fullscreen”. If you click on the link rather than the video thumbnail, it will open the video in your web browser.

6. Wikipedia

Want to know more about your musician? The Wikipedia widget does just what the name implies: displays the Wikipedia entry for the currently playing band or artist. Like the other Internet-based widgets, it assumes that a Wikipedia article actually exists for the person or band you are playing.

Final Thoughts

Amarok is a powerful music player with most of the standard features, such as playlists, album art, and collection/library management. What sets it apart is its extensibility. The widgets that come installed are impressive, and the ability to add more makes Amarok an application worth giving a try. Amarok is free and open source software, released under the GPL and is part of the KDE software compilation.

Getting Exaile

To install Exaile, Ubuntu Lucid users can click here or use the Ubuntu Software Center to fetch the exaile package. For other distributions, check the Exaile website.

Multiple Playlists

This is a feature I can’t believe is missing from so many media players. Exaile allows you to keep several playlists open at the same time and drag files between them. This is immensely useful for those of us who like to create playlists for compilation albums or specific occasions.

Smart Playlists

Exaile supports compound search filters so you can generate playlists based on certain criteria on the fly. If I want a random selection of 10 songs from all VAST albums, except Music for People, I could specify that like this:

And each time I load this playlist into Exaile, the contents are generated on the fly.

File Browsing

Of all the annoyances I have with music players, there is none more infuriating to me than the program’s insistence on reorganizing my music into its own arbitrary library. I know many people like to browse their music based on tags, and that’s all well and good, but I have my files sorted on disk for a reason. Any music player that does not allow me to access my music based on disk location as easily as by tag is immediately junk to me. Exaile understands this, and leaves a perfectly functional file browser handy.

Stream Browsing

Even a huge music collection can’t have everything you’ll ever want to listen to, so it’s handy to have stream support built right into your player. Exaile has an extensive list of streams built in, and you can add your own with the Add Station button at the top.

Speed

Exaile isn’t the fastest player out there, not by a long shot, but when compared to many of the larger players it seems to fly. In my experience, it’s much faster than Amarok and Songbird and better integrates into the Gnome desktop.

Conclusion

For me, Exaile is faster than Amarok, more useful than Audacious, smarter than VLC, and better organized than Rhythmbox. I can’t claim it’s my dream player, but it’s the closest thing I’ve yet found. For what it is, I’ll pay Exaile the highest compliment I’ve given a music player in years: it doesn’t suck.

If you’re curious about the software that has failed me, the following music player programs have all been tried and rejected for one reason or another: Amarok, Audacious, Songbird, Rhythbox, XMMS, VLC, and Banshee. Amarok had it closest, then broke itself with later versions.

If you’ve used Exaile or would like to share your complaints with music players, sound off in the comments below.

First a little perspective – I LIKE to listen to music, especially when I’m at work or riding the bus on the way back home. But, I don’t really like any of the radio stations that play in my area and then there are those times when I just want to listen to a particular song and waiting for my favorite online radio station to play it, just doesn’t cut it.

Times like these are when I miss my desktop at home the most because that is where I store all my music collection. I’m sure you all will agree with me on this and if you’re a music lover, I’m also pretty sure you must have faced this problem yourself.

Today, I found a solution for this problem. AudioBox.fm !

AudioBox is an online cloud based audio streaming service for your own music. What that means is that they provide you with space on their servers to upload your music and then listen to it using an awesome full featured web application.

The best part about AudioBox is that you don’t even need to install any application on your computer/mobile to stream songs from their site. It all works using an HTML 5 based web application.

Uploading Music and Getting Started

AudioBox offers up to 1 GB of space FREE for you to store your music. Just Sign Up, pick the free plan, choose a username and password you’re good to go. One short email confirmation and you’re all set to upload 1 GB worth of music to AudioBox’s cloud.

Once you’re inside AudioBox, launch the music player by clicking the Cloud Web Player link on the top of the page.

This will take you to an iTunes like HTML 5 application that lets you upload music to AudioBox’s servers and play it at your convenience.

Click the Upload Media button in the top left corner of the page to upload your music files. Once all your music has been uploaded, you can start playing by simply clicking the play button, or double clicking the particular song that you want to listen to. AudioBox works almost like a real desktop based music application.

The free version of AudioBox lets you stream music to a desktop only using your web browser but if you upgrade your plan, you also get the ability to stream music to a mobile device like the iPhone.

Have you ever felt the need to listen to a song your desktop when you’re away from it ? Does AudioBox sound like the application that’ll solve your problem ? Let us know in the comments.

Image Credit: RossinaBossioB

Remove all iFuse related files

If you have previously installed ifuse in your system, you need to remove it and its related files. If you did not install ifuse before, you can ignore this part and skip to the next section.

sudo apt-get remove gvfs-backends ifuse limobiledevice-dev libplist0 libplist-dev libiphone0 libiphone0-dev limobiledevice0 libgpod4 libusbmux0 libusbmux-dev gtkpod gtkpod-common

You also need to remove the jonabeck repository from your apt list.

sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Delete the jonabeck PPA from the sources.list file. Save and close.

Refresh your system.

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

Installing iFuse (for Ubuntu Karmic only)

Add the iFuse PPA to your repository:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:pmcenery/ppa

Update your system

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

If there is a need, restart your computer.

Install the relevant packages

sudo apt-get install gvfs gvfs-backends gvfs-bin gvfs-fuse libgvfscommon0 ifuse libgpod-dev libgpod-common libimobiledevice-utils libimobiledevice0 libimobiledevice-dev libplist++1 libplist-utils python-plist libusb-1.0-0 libusb-1.0-0-dev libusbmuxd1 usbmuxd

Update: I have removed libiphone0 libiphone-dev from the above packages since they are not longer needed.

When the installation is done, go to System -> Users and Groups

Click on the key icon to unlock.

Click the Manage Groups button. Scroll down till you see the fuse entry. Select it and click the Properties button.

Check the box beside your username and click OK.

Close all windows and restart your computer.

You can now plug in your iPhone/iPod Touch and see it appears in your Rhythmbox and Nautilus.

That’s it. Let us know in the comments if this works for you.

Image credit: pennacook

MusicBee is a Windows only media organizer that allows you to keep your music collection in place. It comes with plenty of useful features and its iTunes-like interface makes its easy to use.

After the installation, Musicbee will prompt you to import tracks from Windows Media Library or iTunes. You can also manually add all the folders that contain your audio or MP3 files.

Now that you have added all your folders in Musicbee, you can browse and navigate around just as you do in Windows explorer. MusicBee has an impressive explorer pane from where you can browse to a desired folder containing your albums and audio clips.

Find Music From the Web with MusicBee

You can search for available tracks and audio songs on FluxBlog, Streogum and SoundBites right inside Musicbee. Just click the Web panel in the explorer pane and double click any website. The music or radio blog will load right inside Musicbee and you can search for any available audio track. When any website loads in Musicbee, the application automatically searches for embedded audio and mp3 files. MusicBee goes further and creates auto playlists whenever you visit any music website or blog.

You can select any file for playback and can even download the song in your computer. This solves the problem of using dedicated download managers for bulk downloading mp3 files. The utility also supports managing podcast subscriptions and listening to favorite radio channels (e.g last.fm).

Create Playlists and Watched Folders and Tag Songs

You can create watched folders in MusicBee so that when you add new songs and media, these folders are automatically scanned and the newer files are added in the MusicBee explorer window. Playlists help you create groups and sets of songs that you listen often. Custom playlists can be created and each song can be tagged which makes organizing a large number of songs an easy job. The playlists can be found under “playlists” located in the explorer window .

A large number of tags are already made available in MusicBee and you can create custom tags on your own. The tags can be extracted by looking at the metadata of the album, lyrics or artist. Other features include looking up missing album arts and lyrics of a song or album.

Advanced Features of MusicBee

If you are a music jerk and need something special, MusicBee has all the rich inventory. You can bulk edit songs, search and replace duplicate audio files and automatically scan songs without any tags. It also allows CD ripping and thus you can rip an entire CD into a single album file with an inbuilt cuesheet.

The impressive thing about MusicBee is that you can import and synchronise music from portable devices such as usb drives, iPods, iPod Touch and iPhone devices. Tracks with abnormally high volume can be normalized to even out volume levels. Need to convert songs from one format to another? MusicBee has an answer for that as it can convert files without losing metadata and your assigned tags.

MusicBee is also a fully fledged browser. Just paste any web address in the address bar and you can browse the internet and read or surf through websites, create bookmarks etc.

What do you think about MusicBee? Do let us know through a comment.

If you are looking around for new options of Web radio, here are 6 of them that you can consider.

1. Deezer

The first one I came across was Deezer. It has playlists, radio stations and full albums to listen to. Deezer really lets you explore new music in all kinds of different ways. What I liked most about this site is the options; it isn’t just radio or playlists.

Deezer is laid out in a way which gives you plenty of way to start. Right in the center of the homepage are a few of the featured albums or radio stations. As you move down the page, you are presented with more options like featured playlists, songs topping the charts in different countries and a few featured webradios

2. Pandora

Pandora is one I have used a lot. The main reason I use Pandora so much is the app for my Blackberry. Having all of the basic functions and all of my stations with me where ever I am has been really great. When I am at my desk or on my laptop, I don’t always want to have my browser open.

Pandorabrowse (Windows) and Pandoraboy (Mac) allow such access.

What I do not like about Pandora is it play mostly well known groups. Also when you “thumbs up” several songs, it really narrows the amount of songs it plays.

3. Grooveshark

Grooveshark is a pretty cool site for finding new groups. The site and player has a iTunes feel to it. When you type a query into the search bar, it pulls up a window with a long list of possible matches. The selections had a pretty wide variety with a lot of groups I had never heard of. When you find an album you want to listen to, you can add either a single song or the entire album to your playlist.

Signing up for a free account gives you options to save songs, playlists and share the song via email, Twitter, Facebook and a few others.

4. Imeem

Imeem is a little different than the others in the way it pulls up the results. If you were to type in the artist Tricky into the search bar, it pulls up a bunch of individual songs with the word or artists with tricky in it. From this window, you can click the blue bar at the top of the list and add all of the songs in the results to a playlist. The playlist plays in a pop out window.

5. Playlist

Playlist is a great site for sharing music with friends. You can share an entire playlist of songs you have randomly chosen. Other sites typically let you share a single song or artist. On Playlist, you can see other people’s playlists in their entirety. You can also create a playlist of your own while listening to other people’s playlists. This is done simply by clicking the add tab to the right of the song playing. It will add that song to your list.

6. 8tracks

8track is another great site to share playlists with people. Much like some of the other sites, it is very easy to share your musical selections with others via social media. With 8track, it is easy to find and listen to random playlists. When you search for a particular artist or tag, it will pull up mixes created by others which include that artist or style of music. I really like this because you are not getting one artist, you are getting several all with similar styles but in the same genre. It is really easy to find new music this way.

Overall, I still use Last.fm and Pandora the most because of the mobile and desktop application options. I know I would use the others more often if such options were available to me. (My Blackberry 4.5 OS isn’t supported… I need an upgrade ASAP)

What sites do you use to discover new music?

Image credit: onkel_wart

If you have previously installed Amarok 1.4, remove it.

sudo apt-get autoremove amarok

Open your sources.list

gksu gedit /etc/apt/soources.list

Add the following line to the end of the file.

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/kubuntu-members-kde4/ubuntu intrepid main

Update the repository and install Amarok 2

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install amarok-kde4

Amarok 2.0 brings a lot of fresh changes. The most noticeable difference is the user interface. The UI has been completely redesigned and have a totally different look from Amarok1.4. The play control buttons are bigger and are position at the top instead of the usual bottom. The main screen is now split into 3 columns instead of the usual 2. The centre column is now make up of an information pane where you can add widgets to it .There is also different workspaces where you can organize your widgets nicely.

There are several useful and interesting widgets that you can use. Albums, Current Track Info, Lyrics, Wikipedia are a few examples.

Things that have improved in Amarok 2 include the addition and a tighter integration with the various online music services. You can now access Ampache, Last.fm, MP3Tunes, Jamendo, Librivox, Magnatune, OPML directory and shoutcast.

The new improved dynamic playlist in Amarok 2.0 added a biased factor to the songs that you played. You can easily configure it to match the title, artists, album etc or loosely match with the song’s meta data. I really love this feature. It’s just like the Genius feature in iTunes, but with more controllability and predictability.

Another feature that I found useful in Amarok 2.0 is the Advanced search that allows you to filter and mirco search your music collection. There are times when I have craving to listen to a particular song. With over 1000 songs in my database, it is a really difficult task to locate the song I want. This advanced search feature has enabled me to find that song quickly and easily.

Scripts Manager

The script manager in Amarok 2.0 is of a completely different architecture from Amarok 1.4. This means that all the version 1.4 scripts cannot be used in Amarok 2. Currently, the script database only have a limited few scripts that are of little use. Hopefully, as  Amarok 2 becomes more mature, there will be a lot more scripts available.

Cross Platform

Other than Linux, Amarok 2 is also compatible with Mac and Windows. However, the current Mac and Windows versions are still in testing stage and they do not work as well as the Linux version. If you are the adventurous type, you still can download and install it in your system. Note that you will experience frequent crashes and some unknow side effects, so do it at your own risk.

Overall, majority of the changes in Amarok 2 are refreshing. The interface has become more elegant, much simpler and more user-friendly without losing any of its functionality. Some of the newly addons feature such as search filtering and widgets are interesting and useful. I would hope to see better integration and connectivity with my iPhone so that I can stream/transfer music easily.

What do you hope to see in the new release of Amarok 2.0?