Monday, June 1, 2009

Banshee 1.5.0 released!

Intro After six months of work by more than 30 contributors, we have released Banshee 1.5.0 (aka 1.6 beta 1)! We have an astounding 95 people listed in our developer credits now! As I recently tweeted, we are also lighting up bugzilla. So far in 2009, # bugs: 950 commented on, 501 closed, 428 filed, 171 with new patches attached! Release Information This is a beta release, debuting a lot of big underlying changes. It also has tons of fixes, polish, and performance improvements. Some feature highlights:
  • BPM Support With Banshee 1.5.0, you can autodetect the BPM of songs in your library, or you can manually set it by tapping the beat. Then, you can sort, search, or make smart playlists based on BPM.
  • Automatic Scoring As you play songs in Banshee 1.5.0, it will automatically assign them scores (0 - 100) based on if/when you press skip.

    BPM and Score columns
  • Rhythmbox Migrator Banshee 1.5.0 can import your Rhythmbox collection, including ratings, play counts, and playlists.
  • Separate Library Locations You can now specify separate library locations for your music, video, and podcast libraries.
  • Creative Commons Integration A new column displays Creative Commons licensing info where applicable (and properly tagged). The license can be edited in the track editor (see below). There is also a new default Last.fm station for songs tagged 'Creative Commons'.

    Track editor, showing BPM and License URI
See the 1.5.0 release notes to read about and see screenshots of the dozens of enhancements and fixes! Get It! Since this is a beta release, we are not distributing this through the same channels as our stable releases. Visit our download page or talk to your distro to see if they have a beta channel for Banshee. Digg It!