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Songbird is out, who's singing?
Got a tip this morning that Songbird was finally out (meaning versioin 0.1). Songbird is a proof-of-concept
for now, an open-source music player built on Mozilla's XULRunner platform. It's like a browser and iTunes mushed
together, but better. Why better? Because Songbird connects to almost any video or audio content on the web. The idea
is opposite iTunes, where you buy songs from a centralized, DRM'ed source. Instead, given the platform, developers of
any stripe can plug in to Songbird, and ply their wares. The guy spearheading Songbird is none other than Rob Lord, who
once honed his chops on a project known as Winamp. I like the idea of turning the content back over to the producers, instead of marketers. Songbird, as Rob says over in his interview on BoingBoing, isn't a "walled garden online service," which he compares to the old days of AOL and Prodigy. True, but one thing about a walled garden: those tending the garden can make sure everything is working for the user. The key here will be the experience, as the average user will typically choose the path of least resistance. Since we got the tip the story has been dugg, which means the site is down, save a tiny download link. Anyone out there like it? Hate it? Leave your opinions in the comments. [Read link goes to Google cache of the Songbird site]
Comments
8
Subscribe to commentsvoltonFeb 8th 2006 4:05PM
You can get the program here:
http://www.download.com/Songbird/3000-2141_4-10500668.html?tag=pdp_prod
IncFeb 8th 2006 7:20PM
The site is now back . And if anyone has any questions or comments. feel free to join us on irc.freenode.net #songbird Rob and a few others of the developers are there.
FuzzFeb 8th 2006 8:48PM
I really like the product and can't wait to see it in it's more developed stages! Congradulations on a great POF.
AFDFeb 8th 2006 9:40PM
Seems like a nice idea, but operates very slowly as a music library manager (in comparison to say Winamp) and doesn't seem to support any portable audio players yet. It could also use a stop button, instead of just the pause button and better IDv3 tag editing functionality. I'll definitely test it out again once everything is more complete.
Kenneth DensonFeb 9th 2006 3:30AM
I love it so far. It is pretty buggy so far, but it is a proof of concept after all. I see this leading to big things.
collapsibletankFeb 9th 2006 4:03AM
Seems to scan folders set to be "watched for new media" when started up. A real pain for collections in the order of 100GB.
recrudesceFeb 9th 2006 8:12AM
there's no options, i cant set a proxy for the web retrieval and if it's being compared to iTunes, where's the music sharing features ?
thumbs down from me !
JFeb 9th 2006 2:51PM
It's wonderful.
I've been wanting a simple, clean media player that I can use without feeling like I sold out.
Bugs? whatever. it's 0.1. I had it up and running in less than 90 seconds.