Open-Source Songbird Music Player Hits Version 1.0

[Rob Williams]

From our front-page news:

The up-and-coming open-source music player "Songbird" has just hit a major milestone: Version 1.0. "Up-and-coming" might be a poor choice of words, though, as the developers have stated that usage is now above 160,000 users, which is an incredible show of support for an application that didn't release a "stable" version until just now.

Songbird, unlike so many other music players, is unique in various ways. The first major feature is the fact that it's open-source, so anyone can download and alter the code as they wish (and hopefully contribute to the project). In addition, it's actually a combination music player / web browser, and is built on top of Mozilla's XULRunner platform. This means that it has a solid base and that extensions (plugins) are plentiful.

At first glance, Songbird looks similar to iTunes, and overall, I suppose that's a good thing. It's an extremely clean design, one that's neither busy or difficult to navigate. Plus, it also happens to look pretty-much the same regardless of what platform you're using it on (Windows/Linux/OS X). Other key features include support for many formats (MP3, FLAC, etc), iPod support (including FairPlay support), built-in RSS capabilities, support for Last.fm and SHOUTcast, and more.

I installed Songbird on Linux, and it couldn't have been easier. It includes all the required dependencies, so it was just a matter of extracting the archive and running the executable. It didn't take too long to realize this might not be for me, but my reasons are going to likely differ from most. Being a long-time Amarok user, I've become very accustomed to how things work there, and Songbird is fairly different.

One thing I can say though, is that the application is fast. It took about two minutes to import my collection of 7,000 FLAC files, which isn't bad at all. General navigation was also speedy, as well. I won't get into the main problems I had with the program (not problems per se, just functionality I want) since I don't turn this into a novel, b the user-base of 160,000 can't be wrong. If you are looking for a new media player, this is definitely one that should top your list.

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We set out to build an open, customizable music player. Today, we’re launching with dozens of integrated services, hundreds of add-ons, and a growing developer community. We’ll be the first to admit that there’s plenty left to do. And, while we’re not ready for everyone, 160k users a month are expressing their vote for an alternative music player.

Source: Songbird Official Site
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[Rob Williams]

I used the player again a little bit more today, and I really have to say, it's good. There are still a few things about it that are going to keep me with Amarok for the time-being, but they are minor. The biggest issue with me is that the "Artists" list can't be sorted any different from default, from what I can see. The reason I dislike this is because I have a fair amount of compilation CDs, which features a different artist for each track. I don't want those artists to be shown like that... rather, I'd like them to be shown under "Various Artists".

I'm able to do this in Amarok, and what it results in is a much cleaner playlist. The fact is, half of the artists on these compilation CDs, I wouldn't even know to look at, so I don't want them in my full list. After counting, I see that I have around ~166 unique artists in my actual collection, where as you can see in the screenshot, there are 387 artists being displayed. So there's literally twice the list there that I'd like there to be. Seems like a small issue, but I'd like to be able to find my music far easier than that.

The other issue is album cover art, although that is a feature that's going to be coming. I've spent a fair amount of time putting in album art for all my stuff in Amarok, so it kind of sucks to look at Songbird and see that it can't import it, or at least scan and fill in the album art itself.

Still, these are small complaints overall, and I'm sure a lot of them wouldn't affect most people. It's just not for me, not right now at least. Hopefully it will be more to my liking in the future, since I'm not really digging the direction that Amarok 2 is headed.

Ars has a good write-up for those interested:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081202-first-look-can-songbird-1-0-replace-itunes-wmp.html

 

[madstork91]

I tried this a while back when i was looking for an alternative to winAmp as there was a build of it that was complete mem hog and had some sort of a mem leak that eventually ate up my ram. (i left my music player playing for hour-days back then)

Songbird was an awesome alternative! but... it was unstable as hell, and it too was a bit of a resource hog. So I canned it.

I might have to give this a shot again, but if it uses near what it used to, I think I will stick with foobar.