Ubuntu – How to migrate from Banshee to Rhythmbox

bansheemigrationmusicrhythmbox

As it has been decided, Ubuntu Precise 12.04 will feature Rhythmbox as the default music player. I am aware, that it does not mean that I will not be able to use Banshee, nevertheless I would like to switch to it.

I have been a Rhythmbox fan for a long time, but after the switch to Banshee in Natty I decided to give it a try and completely migrated to it. However, I am not very happy with it, it lags for me a lot and has some other issues.

I would like to export all Banshee data to Rhythmbox. That includes:

  • Music library
  • Playlists
  • Preferably playcounts and ratings
  • Radio stations
  • Cover pictures

What should I do to move all this data to Rhythmbox, get it to work as the default music player, and smoothly switch completely to it?

Best Answer

My two cents, applicable to Banshee 2.3.3 / Rhythmbox 2.95:

  1. Music library: just specify your Music folder to Rhythmbox and it will be imported
  2. Playlists:
    • Dynamic Playlists: as far as I know you will have to re-create them. Not fun, with additional complication due to the different feature sets of each player.
    • Static Playlists: just export them as .m3u in Banshee and re-import them in Rhythmbox
  3. Playcounts and ratings
    • Playcounts: I don't know
    • Ratings: create a dynamic playlist for each of the stars (i.e. create "rating1,rating2,rating3,rating4,rating5" dynamic playlists, then export them as .m3u, then import them in Rhythmbox. I just tested it, both players use filenames relative to ~ , so you will be fine.
    • One solution to both would be to implement #538549 - Use of ID3v2 Popularimeter for Rating (maybe Play Count)
  4. Radio stations: I don't know
  5. Cover pictures: while not a "migration" option, Rhythmbox 2.9x/3 does a better job at handling cover art. Try it by enabling the Cover Art and Cover Art Search plugins in Edit / Plugins. In my case (cover art stored as .jpg in the folder, or as ID3), they are recognized just fine

Hope that helps! Good luck :)

Related Question