Ubuntu has been changing some things around with it’s notification icons and GNOME applets. Specifically the volume, power, e-mail and Rhythmbox applets. I could stand for most of that, but don’t mess with my music. My main complaint is that being part of the indicator-applet has broke some things I like, such as quickly showing/hiding or muting, since everything must be done via a menu.
Pidgin had this same problem, and they solved it by offering both indicator applet support and notification area support. After talking with the GNOME folks, and reading this bug report, it’s probably not going to get done. Because of the way Rhythmbox is developed, you must install a new package to get the old behavior back. I just made a PPA with the --enable-appindicator=no flag.
Easiest way to install is just sudo add-apt-repository lp:kris-santiance/oldrb and then grab the “update” from the update manager.
Thank you very much!