Lsongs
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What is LSongs
Lsongs is a music manager and All-in-one media player which lets you rip, play, burn and share your digital music collection.It is very intuitive and easy and even the biggest newbie will find it easy to manage his own music collection.The Lsongs open source project was started by and is maintained by Linspire, a Linux distribution based on Debian GNU/Linux.It is written in Python and released under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
Features
- Get Music
Import and convert an unlimited number of audio tracks from your CDs in popular formats like OGG, MP3 or WAV. (See Ripping Audio CDs) Download MP3s and OGGs from online sources. With Lsongs, there is no DRM (digital rights management) of any kind, so you're free to do what you like with your music!
- Organize & Manage
Organize your entire music collection with simple-to-use tools, including a powerful search engine, playlists, and editable ID3 file tags. Lsongs displays artists, song titles and even CD cover artwork of your favorite music!
- Listen
Listen to MP3s, OGGs, audio CDs, or hundreds of streaming Internet radio stations with this all-in-one music player. Lsongs supports OGG, WAV, MP3, MP4Aa and other common music formats.
- Share your Music
If you have multiple PCs on your home network and enjoy listening to music on your computer, music sharing will make your life easier. With Lsongs, you can share your music with other computers running Lsongs, or iTunes, or Listen to music from other computers running Lsongs.
- Burn CDs
Do you want to quickly create custom music CDs of your favorite songs? With Lsongs, it's one-step easy to create CDs from your playlists without requiring additional CD-burning software. CD burning is fast too, because Lsongs uses the fastest CD-burning speed supported by your computer. Play CDs back in your car, on a stereo system, or on a computer!
- Use MP3 Players
Lsongs supports most Creative Nomad, Dell Digital Jukebox and Apple iPod music players, as well as a number of common file-based players.
Lsongs Interface
The Lsongs interface is simple and intuitive. There are three basic areas used to manage your music collection: Music Sources, Song Information and Controls.The Source area is where various sources of your music are displayed (ie: local files, CDs, MP3 players, network, etc.). The Song Information area is where the Artist, Album and Song Information are displayed. The Control area of the interface is how you control the program.
Detailed view of the Lsongs interface:
Known Issues
- Visualizer shows a black screen and is not implemented.
- No "back" button: There is no way to go back while browsing through the streaming music sites (shoutcast). The back arrow was buggy in prior versions, so it was disabled.
- Large libraries (e.g. 3000 or more songs) can cause slow performance as the database updates itself.
- The "music store" is largely non-functional from within Lsongs. It is recommended to use lbrowser to visit www.mp3tunes.com
- Lsongs is not under active development/maintaince. If you want to help, see the Lsongs SourceForge site
Frequently Asked Questions, Hints and Tips
These Tips/FAQs were originally at the old linspireguide.com site.
Bookmark radio stations
Did you notice the book icon that appears in the information display window to the right when listening to a radio station?
Click on it to bookmark the station. You can then tune into it later using the "My Stations" button at the top of the screen. Because Shoutcast (Lsongs' source of internet radio) wants you to visit their home page, they periodically reset the stations and your bookmark will stop working.
How can I make Lsongs the default audio CD player?
Edit the file /etc/autorun/autorun.conf and change the line that starts with "cd-audio=..." to: cd-audio = "/usr/bin/lsongs", --caption, "lsongs";
I don't want Lsongs to start when I insert an audio CD .
Edit the file /etc/autorun/autorun.conf and change the cd-audio argument to an empty set of quotes "" instead of lsongs. That line should now look like this: cd-audio = "";
How to import tracks from audio CDs
Start Lsongs, insert the audio CD, click on the CD-icon (under Source), check all the tracks you want to transfer to hard disk, right-click on the CD-icon and choose 'Import Tracks'. The tracks are automatically converted to MP3 format.
When I click on a song there is a false start for a short interval, then it starts okay...
That is a bug in the arts sound driver, not lsongs. One solution some people have had success with is to edit the file
/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/Lsongs/LsongsDevices.py
and change "arts" to "alsa". You mileage may vary.
How do I change a track's Genre?
Do a "Get Info" on a track - you can edit the Genre there. If you select multiple tracks, then use "Get Info", you'll be able to change attributes in bulk. I believe that title, artist, album and rating are the only fields directly editable in the track view.
The selection of genres available in Lsongs doesn't match what I am trying to do very well. Can it be edited?
No, these are defined by an ad-hoc standard - ID3v1 defined 80 genres, WinAmp added another 46. Most players and other tagging formats use the same list. For instance, in MP3 files, the "genre" is encoded as a number from this list, not the genre name itself.
iTunes supports additional user-defined genres, however, they aren't stored in anything but the iTunes database and are not attached to the files themselves, so they don't survive when the files are copied to a player or another computer.
What language is Lsongs written in?
Lsongs is written in Python. It is NOT based on Rhythmbox!
Is it open source?
Yes. After install you will find the source in /usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/Lsongs
What file types is Lsongs compatible with?
Lsongs is compatible with: mp3, ogg, wmv, and wav
What about the Lsongs database?
Lsongs (and Lphoto) produce two sets of files containing the information about their databases. One set is a binary format, typically streamed or pickled Python objects, and therefore of little use to external applications. However, they both *also* save their databases as XML files, in Apple's "property list" format. This is done specifically for interoperability with other applications that want to access or modify the information in the databases, or to convert to other formats.
How can I copy my Playlist to my mp3 player? [This assumes that your player does not need a special database file to recognize the tracks.]
1) Open Lsongs, build a playlist with the songs you want to copy. 2) Open a File Manager (aka konqueror) window and set it to the location on the player device that is where it likes to store music. 3) Select all the tracks in the playlist in Lsongs and drag them to the File Manager window. Do not drag the playlist itself. 4) You should get a popup menu, select "Copy Here". It should copy the audio files.
What does "validate" really do?
1) It removes entries in the Lsongs database for which it cannot find the corresponding file listed in the entry.
2) It imports any file it finds in its "managed" directory (typically My Documents/My Music/Lsongs/LsongsMusic) for which it cannot find an entry in the database.
Lsongs will not remove any files when this command is done - it only updates the internal database. If some music seems to disappear when you perform the command, it means the files were already gone. The most common situtation that causes this is somebody manually moving/deleting the files, or importing files from an external device without copying, and then unmounting the device.
How does Lsongs rip (import songs from CD)?
There are two parts to the ripping/encoding process.
1) The first stage is ripping the raw data off the drive into a PCM/WAV file, and the second is transcoding the PCM/WAV file into MP3, Ogg or whatever. By default, Lsongs does the ripping part as fast as it can, using some tricky stuff with the program cdda2wav - however, this will sometimes bother certain hardware configurations, and can cause a crash - this is not an Lsongs bug per se - it's somewhere lower level. When you turn on the "use error correction" checkbox, Lsongs uses a different program, cdparanoia, which is safer but much, much slower to rip.
2) The second phase, transcoding, uses LAME. LAME is a very slow, but very high quality encoder. There are no viable alternative Open Source encoders.
There is an alternative method for ripping beside Lsongs if you'd like to try it: Install the package "kdemultimedia" from CNR , then open File Manager and type the url "audiocd:/MP3". You can then drag the "files" from this window into another one, and it will convert them.
Support/Help
Linspire, Inc. provides support for the download and installation phases of 3rd
party products distributed via the CNR Warehouse.
If you experience any download or installation issues with this software, please
use the resources available to you at support.Linspire.com including:
- FAQs
- Community Forums, and
- Ask Linspire, Inc. Support
Post-install and usage questions and support on this product will need to be
addressed by the software Publisher / Developer, who determine their own support
policies and provide support at their discretion.
For more information and support for this software, please visit the project's
page at sourceforge.net/projects/ostunes/.
Other support alternatives you may wish to consider include (a) posting a
message on the Freespire Community Forums, (b) attempting to contact the
Publisher/Developer directly, or (c) searching the Internet for additional
assistance.
