Comment 7 for bug 582743

Just for the sake of clarity, it's safe to assume that this issue exists in all versions of Banshee (including even the most recent packages for Ubuntu) until the upstream bug report is marked as fixed. The problem is not specific to any certain version of Banshee; it happens when the SQLite database that Banshee uses gets corrupted -- probably as the result of a system crash or a loss of power while Banshee is running.

The good news is, as Alexander said in the first comment, the database (including all of your playlists, ratings, etc) can generally be recovered in a few simple steps. Developers are working on a solution that should eventually automate this database recovery process.

Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to track this down and confirm it! No more confirmations are necessary at this point, but if you're interested in helping out or following the progress, please see the upstream report: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=621057