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Songbird 0.4 developer preview released
Yesterday, the Songbird team released version 0.4 of their Mozilla based music application. We took a quick look at it, and were pleased with what we found.While at first glance Songbird may seem like an iTunes clone, it is actually much more than that. It's sort of what iTunes might have been were Apple not an evil Monolithic corporation. It serves as an open platform that allows any content provider to integrate their stores, podcasts, communities, or whatever else they can dream of into the program's interface.
Although is is still in Alpha status, this developer preview boasts many new features, including "display panes", enhanced iPod support, and much more. It is certainly one of the better jukebox type applications for Linux, and we were delighted to see it integrate the 22 Gigabytes of music on our test machine almost instantly with no hiccups. This is less than we can say about the more sluggish Banshee.
Preview builds of Songbird are available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.
Comments
11
Subscribe to commentsBrett ZamirJan 25th 2008 5:40AM
A few requests:
1) Change the default theme to not be black--hard to read in dim area, and while cool, is a little too cool I think to work as a default "for-everybody" jukebox; iBird worked well for me, even though that is probably too similar to some other jukebox.
2) Have a checkmark option as in iTunes to select/deselect songs.
3) Allow for listing of "clean" vs. "explicit" songs. I'm hoping this great software can be a tool for everybody.
4) Separate feathers from extensions on the addons site and in the extension downloads.
5) Have a built-in connection to a lyrics site, including ideally a wiki one! (a wiki commentary site would be cool too)
6) Please add keyboard controls and options to change them. Gotta have the spacebar to start/stop
7) Smart playlists (don't see them either)
8) Keep on rockin' with what you been clockin'!
Brett ZamirJan 25th 2008 7:13AM
Whoops... I see there are keyboard shortcuts, but I think there should be some defaults and setting them shouldn't be so easily global such that adding the spacebar keycommand causes my spacebar in FF not to work!
michaelDec 29th 2007 12:01AM
Actually like Songbird.
Just wish it weren't Mozilla based, and keeps pushing open source at me.
Blog JonesDec 29th 2007 12:46AM
I think this has a lot of promise. I'm looking forward to a good open-source media player.
This one has a couple of problems that I noticed right off the bat: It doesn't seem to handle smart playlists at all (unless they're a hidden option someplace), and it couldn't handle my iTunes-purchased video files. If it's going to replace iTunes, it needs to be able to do everything iTunes can.
But it's definitely a good start.
Ian DumychDec 29th 2007 12:55AM
I'm not sure about the smart playlist issue, but I feel I need to point out that Songbird's man goal isn't to replace iTunes. While it is possible to use it with an iPod, it's simply not reasonable to expect it to support Apple's proprietary video content, because of legalities.
dorianDec 29th 2007 3:10AM
I really want them to do (better) Podcast support. Can anyone update if this has changed?
Blog JonesDec 29th 2007 10:22AM
But it says it can handle FairPlay on the Songbird site, but that only applies to audio apparently.
And for something that isn't trying to replace iTunes, it sure looks a lot like iTunes. And that really what I was hoping for; iTunes has a lot of stupid little limitations that I would love to be rid of.
DanDec 29th 2007 10:23AM
To be clear: by "Mozilla based", you actually mean that Songbird is a XUL-based application ...
GoOrangeDec 29th 2007 11:22AM
I tried out an earlier version several months ago and thought it was OK, but lacking in a few areas. I think it has promise, but I'm waiting for the final release to see if it really delivers enough features and a decent execution.
gentkDec 29th 2007 12:23PM
Is the memory and cpu usage any better?
I remember the previous versions taking up to 100 mb of RAM just after a few actions... I guess one of the downsides of being "mozilla based". The Cpu usage was quite high in comparison to other players too.
For regular music playing that's unacceptable really. Right now my foobar2000 is taking less than 3mb of RAM and extremely low CPU usage with a few active DSPs (mostly for better quality on headphones). But yes foobar2000's interface can be a bitch to set up, but I now have something I'm happy with.
All of this makes switching to Songbird unlikely for me, as the developers have said resource usage isn't going to get much better as a result of it being a XUL-based app. It is a good concept though, but simply playing music isn't one of its strong points right now.
boogieDec 29th 2007 10:29PM
Yep, I agree. It's just a huge memory hog. I prefer either Apollo37zz that uses not more than 2mb ram and provides spectacular sound, or old good foobar.