Rhythmbox

Features

Rhythmbox offers a significant 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 ReplayGain standard is also supported. Rhythmbox also supports searching of music in the library.

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.

Gapless playback

Enabling the crossfading backend option with a duration of 0.0 switches Rhythmbox into gapless playback mode for music formats that support it. Gapless playback is not enabled by default.

Music importing

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. The plugin can search the internet to find corresponding artwork, and as of 0.12.6, can read artwork from ID3 tags. If an image file is saved in the same directory as the audio track this is used instead.

SoundCloud

Rhythmbox can browse and play sounds from SoundCloud, via built-in SoundCloud plugin.

Song lyrics display

Since the 0.9.5 release, Rhythmbox can provide song lyrics of the currently playing song with pressing ctrl-L. (as long as they are stored in a lyrics database).

Audio scrobbling

Rhythmbox can submit played songs info to a remote scrobbling service. This information is used by the remote service to provide user specific music recommendations. Rhythmbox currently supports 2 scrobbling services:

Music can be scrobbled to both services at the same time.

Jamendo support

Beginning in the 0.9.6 release, Rhythmbox was able to browse and play all the Jamendo free (as in freedom) music library. The integration was discontinued in 2011 due to technical issues.

DAAP Music sharing

Rhythmbox supports sharing music and playing shared music on local network via DAAP sharing plugin. The plugin uses libdmapsharing to provide this feature.

Devices

Rhythmbox uses the Linux udev subsystem to detect player devices.

Podcasting

Rhythmbox can subscribe to podcasts from the iTunes Store, Miroguide.com or by manually providing a podcast feed URL. Subsequently new podcasts are automatically downloaded and available from the Library under the section Podcasts.

Web Remote Control

Rhythmbox can be controlled remotely with a Web browser, via inbuilt Web remote control plugin.

Plug-ins

Rhythmbox supports Plug-in, they can be written in C, Python, or Vala, there are nearly 50 third party plug-ins for Rhythmbox including a 10 Band audio Equalizer, and many official plug-ins including:

1. Cover art search
2. Audio CD Player
3. Last.fm
4. Context Panel
5. DAAP Music Sharing
6. FM Radio
7. Grilo media browser
8. IM Status
9. Internet Radio
10. Song Lyrics
11. Magnatune Store
12. Media Player Keys
13. Portable Players (generic, iPod, MTP)
14. Notification
15. Power Manager
16. Python Console
17. LIRC
18. Visualization
19. Send tracks
20. Replay Gain
21. Zeitgeist
22. MediaServer2 D-Bus interface
23. MPRIS D-Bus interface
24. Browser plug-in to integrate Rhythmbox with iTunes
25. and a CD/DVD burning plug-in based on Brasero

Integration

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