PC World takes a look at the current state of music playback in Linux, reviewing the different music managers available. The features the reviewer was looking for include browsing and searching, playlists, rip and burning, tag editing and playing internet radio streams.

Rhythmbox (B), Banshee (B-), Listen (C+), Amarok (B), and Exaile (C-) are reviewed, with Amarok being the only KDE app tested as the reviewer, like myself, is a GNOME user.

Matthew Newton, the reviewer, notes that he’ll keep an eye on Banshee as the development is much faster paced than Rhythmbox, but has had problems with Banshee’s stability. I’ve run development and stable versions of Banshee, both from the Ubuntu repositories and compiling my own, without the problems he references.

There’s no question that music management in Linux is still early, and is one of the killer applications that will need to be developed quickly to help with user adoption to Linux.