Software Review: Clementine

  Clementine is not only a tasty fruit, but in fact a tasty cross-platform Media Player with Last.fm, Grooveshark, Spotify, and Magnitude support, all rolled into a neat and clean interface. If you've been looking for a replacement for Windows Media Player, or iTunes, than read on to see my impressions.



  Clementine is a project inspired by Amarok 1.4, and is in it's first stable release at 1.0.  The User Interface of Clementine is very similar to Amarok, however, Clementine didn't crash constantly on my Kubuntu install, unlike Amarok which would spontaneously freeze.  That's already a big improvement!  Clementine's Interface is clean, with  a dual column view and most of the buttons that aren't essential to playback moved out of the way.  The left column contains 6 buttons: Library, Files, Internet, Devices, Song Info, and Artist Info.

  In the Library View, all of your artists, or albums,  are shown in the left column.  Clicking Files brings up a list of files in your Home Directory (on Linux), and clicking Internet switches the view to all of the online services integrated into Clementine.  Here you can listen to your Last.fm radio, or Spotify playlists.  Devices shows all connected Phones and MP3 players.  The Song Info and Artist Info list information regarding the currently playing track.  And at the very tippy-top of the left hand column is a universal service search bar, where you can search for an artist, album, or song and it will search your local library as well as any internet services you have connected.

  Adding music is also a snap.  Right Clicking the left hand column that says "Your Library is Empty!" brings up a context menu with the option to "configure Library".  From here you choose the folder that your music is stored in, and Presto! The right hand column is blank until you add songs to it.  To add a song, just drag and drop, or double click on the song.  Right clicking also brings up a context menu with other options.  There, you see everything that is playing in the current Playlist.  Clementine really puts an emphasis on Playlsits, as you'll see.

  You can save your Currently Playing Playlist as something else.  For example, you've been listening to some Led Zeppelin, Cream, and Cat Stevens, and you want to save all of those songs into a play list, all you do is click the little button at the top that has an arrow pointing to a Hard Drive.  You can also create a New Playlist with a specific theme in mind prior to adding songs to play.  You could make a "Sweet Dubstep Remixes" playlist by clicking the sheet of paper with a "+" sign in front of it.  Then, you just add the songs you wanted the same way you added to the Now Playing playlist.  You can also add a playlist you have previously created by clicking the folder-with-sheets-of-paper icon.  You can even search for Playlists in the "Playlist search" bar.

  At the bottom of the right hand column is your skip back, play, stop, and skip forward buttons.  If you link your last.fm account up, the heart button and ban button are also available.  Any track you play in Clementine will be scrobbled for you.  You also have the cool little audio bars to show how awesome your music is.  And last but not least is an audio slider, which is by default set to 50%.

  Clementine also had a neat notification popup in both Windows 7 and Kubuntu.  A small popup appears when the song changes, informing you of what you're listining to now.  There's also a small "slice" icon in the notification bar that when right clicked gives you a context menu to play, pause, stop, forward, back, love, and ban a particular song.  So, if you minimize or close Clementine, it just disappears to the notification area, where you can still control it without having another window to clutter your desktop.

Those features are leaps and bounds ahead of Windows Media Player 12, and iTunes, and the fact that Clementine will play darn near any audio format doesn't hurt either.  What Clementine lacks is a way to purchase music.  I would love to see Clementine with the Amazon.com MP3 Store integrated into it.  I would also love to see the Amazon.com Cloud Player integrated in.  Many other Linux-based Media Players offer Last.fm or Spotify integration and play oogles of formats.  Some, such as Rhythmbox on Ubuntu, offer a way to purchase music.  What makes Clementine special is how many of those services it integrates, the universal search, and the clean and simple interface.

More Official Screenshots can be seen at Clementine's Website.

Note: I wrote this Post prior to cancelling my Last.fm account as stated in this other post.