After I

installed
Foresight-Linux on my old Laptop today, to take a look at the new
GNOME 2.22, I could also get a glimpse on the new version of
Banshee. The New Last.fm-Radio integration looked just great, though it seems not yet to be rock solid, in the 0.13.x release. After happily playing a bit with this feature, I already had discovered some nice new tracks.
Comming back to my normal computer and checking my newreader, I found out that
other people are happy with that feature too and that there is already a new alpha release of Banshee. The release (1.0 Alpha 1) just came out today and is bringing even more
great features. From
the initial article I finally landed on the
»official blog entry« and the
release notes.
That all looks so great, that I think Banshee will be my default music-player, as soon the stable version of 1.0 is out. They finally implemented the new Artist/Album browser, I always missed too. I also learned today that the
search-field in Banshee is much more powerful than I would have guessed.
So, better to stay tuned on the music player issue, Rhythmbox is finally getting some serious competitors...
Link to the Changelog Overview.