Testing upcoming Banshee releases is extremely easy.

The preferred route is to install the daily snapshot PPA. This will give you a fresh Banshee as it is developed. The database format has not seen changes and Banshee can safely be downgraded to the latest maintained release after testing has been performed.

The repository can be found here:

https://launchpad.net/~banshee-team/+archive/banshee-daily

A video detailing how to enable PPAs can be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMxAtDlEHlo

It can also be enabled via the terminal by running:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:banshee-team/banshee-daily

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

Development snapshot releases are also available.

Development Snapshot PPA:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:banshee-team/banshee-unstable

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

Reverting to the stable Banshee after testing

First install the ppa-purge tool

sudo apt-get install ppa-purge

then use the tool to disable the daily ppa.

sudo ppa-purge ppa:banshee-team/banshee-daily (or ppa:banshee-team/banshee-unstable if the Development Snapshot PPA was used for testing)

It is now recommended that you enable the maintained release PPA to receive updates to the stable Banshee release. Note that the maintained release PPA is not available for development releases of Ubuntu, for these releases the following should be skipped and the packages in Ubuntu should be used instead.

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:banshee-team/ppa

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade