Support – FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

If you have questions after downloading Banshee from our home page, read below.

Features

Cover art for Banshee is sourced from various places, including embedded artwork in the audio file, the folder the file is located in, Rhapsody, MusicBrainz linking to sites like Amazon, and Last.fm.

Please consult the user guide for information on how to properly group and sort compilation albums.

For information on third-party extensions and installation, please refer to the Extensions section.

Banshee utilizes GStreamer for audio and video decoding and encoding. It can use any codecs installed for GStreamer, with a few exceptions.

Banshee is compatible with both Windows and OS X. Please refer to the download page for further information.

Last.fm released a new API for programs to use. The new API only allows paid subscribers to stream. The old API was supposed to be turned off, but it hasn’t happened yet. Apps still using the old API may still be able to stream for free. We do not have plans to switch back to the old API.

Hardware

Banshee supports iPhones and iPod Touch devices starting from the 1.7.5 release.

Banshee supports a variety of devices, but it is recommended to test your specific device to see if it is compatible.

MTP Devices

• Creative brand devices, such as the Zen V Plus, are available in the market.
• Many Sansa brand devices
• There may be additional items – list is not exhaustive.

Mass Storage Devices

• Various Android phones, including the Nexus One, G1, Galaxy, Droid, and Pulse.
• Nokia N900
• Palm Pre

iPods and most iOS devices can be used with Banshee. It is advised to exclusively manage your iPod with Banshee or not at all, as Apple often updates the database format used by their devices through iTunes upgrades. Importing music from an iPod managed with iTunes should work without issues.

Technical / Infrastructure

Banshee stores its configuration files and library database under ~/.config/banshee-1/. The library database, named banshee.db, is a SQLite 3 database.

If you are encountering errors indicating that your database disk image is malformed, you have the option to either attempt to recover the database or create a new one.

To recover, exit Banshee and execute the following commands:

If the recovery process is unsuccessful, you can delete (or preferably backup) the database file and re-import your media. Please note that this may result in the loss of your ratings and playcounts.