Ok, so being the curious bugger that I am, I decided to give KDE a go. Ubuntu comes with GNOME by default (I think), so I installed KDE as per this guide.

My problem was that my keyboard’s multimedia hotkeys weren’t working anymore. Well the volume buttons were, but the next & previous track and play/pause were not. So I went and asked Google. I’ve gone through a few articles and howtos, but in the end I figured it out. So, here’s how:

Step 1:

Enter the System Settings (Click the K button at the bottom left, then Computer, then System Settings). Enter Input Actions.

Step 2:

On the left bottom click the Edit button and click New Group. A new group is created – call it Banshee.

Step 3:

While the Banshee group is highlighted, click Edit at the bottom left again, but this time click New -> Global Shortcut -> D-Bus Command. A new shortcut is created in the Banshee group.

Do this three times!

Step 4:

Name the three new shortcuts:

• Play/Pause
• Previous Track
• Next Track

Step 5:

Do this for each shortcut:
At the top, click the Trigger tab. Next to Shortcut there is a button. Click that and then assign the multimedia key that you want. Then click Apply at the bottom right.
Make sure you press the right multimedia key for each of the shortcuts.

Step 6:

Do this for each shortcut:

At the top, click the Action tab. There you will see a bunch of different settings. Remote Application and Remote Object are the same in all three cases.
Remote Application: org.bansheeproject.Banshee
Remote Object: /org/bansheeproject/Banshee/PlayerEngine

The Function for the Play/Pause button is: org.bansheeproject.Banshee.PlayerEngine.TogglePlaying
The Function for the Previous Track button is: org.bansheeproject.Banshee.PlaybackController.Previous
The Function for the Next Track button is: org.bansheeproject.Banshee.PlaybackController.Next

The Arguments field should remain empty for the Play/Pause button.
For Previous Track and Next Track the Arguments field should be: false

For reference, here is what it should look like:

Click Apply at the bottom right.

That’s it!