A tech support question came in today asking about the status of Rhythmbox, an excellent audio player on Linux.
This gave me the nudge to install the latest Ubuntu 11.04, and give Rhythmbox a spin. It's very easily installed, from within the UBuntu Software Center.
I found that the current version of Rhythmbox has *EXCELLENT* support for Magnatune, both in free and membership modes.
The entire Magnatune catalog is kept up to date in Rhythmbox, you can stream everything as well as easily download from within Rhythmbox. Basically, the entire experience is as good as if you downloaded the entire Magnatune catalog, all perfectly organized on your desktop.
Rhythmbox also supports a number of audio format defaults, since Magnatune also provides all its music in these formats:
Make sure you have a fairly recent version of Rhythmbox. This tutorial was made on Ubuntu 11.04 and Rhythmbox version:
To enable streaming and downloading ad-free music from Rhythmbox, follow these steps:
1) go to "edit/plugins"
2) choose "magnatune store" and click "configure"
3) choose "I have a download account"
4) enter in your Magnatune membership name and password
Here are what the screens look like for these steps:
If you're running Linux, give it a try.
If you're running Windows, you can run Ubuntu inside of Windows quite easily (and then install Rhythmbox) with this installer: http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu/windows-installer
On Mac OSX, Ubuntu now installs in 3 minutes inside of Parallels, and Rhythmbox works perfectly. Just download the "32 bit" version of Ubuntu: http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu/download
Amarok
I'd also like to mention that Amarok, another audio player on Linux, also supports Magnatune (and memberships) very nicely:You set Amarok with your membership by going to the preferences page and choosing "Magnatune Store":
put your membership info in:
this is what Amarok looks like while browsing/playing Magnatune: