The previous post in this series discussed configuring the desktop to integrate with Google applications.

Being able to play music while working is one of the nice perks of modern computers. On Linux, there are several different applications you can use for it.

A couple of them are very basic media players that don’t really organize anything — VLC, Mplayer, and a few others like that. There are a couple others that do iTunes style organization such as Amarok and Rhythmbox. I’ve had a little experience with Amarok, and while I really love how it looks and the potential features, I can never seem to get it to work correctly. Rhythmbox, though, is slightly more simple but has proven to be very reliable.

To really maximize the usage of Rhythmbox, there are a couple small things that need to be done first:

• Enable mp3 support (mp3 is not natively supported, since the codec is licensed)
• Hook up to last.fm, for internet radio
• Configure Rhythmbox and its plugins

Enabling mp3 support

When you first load Rhythmbox, it should load uneventfully. But, if you were to try and play an mp3 from your collection, it will complain.

Fortunately! This is a very easy fix now. It will alert you that it does not currently have that format supported, and will automatically search for the necessary libraries. It will probably show you 2-4 options, one of which should be called “Fluendo”. Select that one.

That should do it!

Hook up to last.fm

You need a last.fm account (they’re free), so you’ll need to register a last.fm account. Once you’ve got that, over in Rhythmbox, click on the last.fm item in the left-side list.

You’ll have to provide your account credentials from last.fm and then connect.

If you are a first-time last.fm user, this may seem a little confusing. What you’ll want to do is actually log on to the last.fm website FIRST, type some artists / songs that you like into the suggestion window, and then go back to Rhythmbox and select “Personal Radio”. The more artists you enter, the more variation in songs you’ll get.

I haven’t investigated this feature in too  much depth yet, but I get the impression that it actually uses the artists present in your music library to find suggested songs for you to hear.

There is also a generic “Radio” option you can select, but I haven’t really had a chance to play with it.

Configuring Rhythmbox

Most of the options in the Configuration are pretty typical. There is one you’ll definitely want to check though:

Under the “music” tab, check “Watch my library for new files.” The default location for music, ~/Music, is probably fine. The default options for library structure are good (unless you’re really anal-retentive about organization.

The “preferred format”, which defaults to .ogg, is a choice you’ll have to make. Ogg and MP3 are comparable in file size and in quality as well — .ogg is an open source format, and mp3 is a licensed format. You can really go either way, functionally, and if you plan on sharing your music with non-Linux users, .mp3 may be the ideal way to go. But if you want to fully immerse yourself in the Linux world, you may want to do .ogg instead.

If you’re a web nerd like me, check out my modification to the RhythmToWeb plugin.

Using Rhythmbox

Assuming you have “Watch my library” selected from earlier, all you need to do to fill up Rhythmbox is to start the program, and start copying files into the /music/ folder. As they are copied, Rhythmbox will add them to its library automatically.

Rhythmbox lets you create playlists and “automatic playlists” which are like smart playlists in iTunes.

important – if you are used to iTunes and how it copies music directly to your music folder, be aware that Rhythmbox does not do this, You need to copy them there manually.

Up Next

Firefox Win: integration with Google Reader, Adobe Flash 64bit, Google Gears 64bit, Bookmark syncing with the cloud

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