Open Source iTunes Competitor Songbird Officially Released (Listening Post)

[Drew Wilson]

Songbird is like an open source version of iTunes that handles just about everything that program does, while swapping out the iTunes store interface in favor of the world's music blogs.

You can stream music from those sources directly within the program (try that with iTunes' browser), purchasing whatever music you encounter there that strikes your fancy from multiple sources: Amazon, Amie St., eMusic or iTunes. Or, if a blog or other site offers songs as free downloads, those are gathered neatly at the bottom of the screen as well (see screenshot to the right).

At its core, though, Songbird is a solid music playback program -- albeit one that can be customized with add-ons from Songbird and other developers, a strategy we've seen before from Songbird founder Rob Lord, formerly of Winamp, which itself had a wide variety of plug-ins. Lord set his sights squarely on iTunes when he launched Songbird a couple years back, accusing the program of being "like Internet Explorer, if Internet Explorer could only browse Microsoft.com." Songbird, with its emphasis on unfettered access to the web's music sources, proves his point.

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Ooo, purdy.

[mountain_rage]

I'll have to look into it, I hate how Itunes handles the music library. If you delete, move a song it won't auto remove it from your list. Also if you add a folder with music already in your library it will double it. Such a pain in the ass.

[fer007]

It looks elegant, but I hate it for the same reason I hate Itunes: it's "library centric" philosophy. Usually when I play music I add it from the Windows Explorer into a playlist in Winamp. The playlist is always the first thing visible, so it makes it the easiest way.

Also, it lacks some Winamp features like Gracenote autotagging, cover art search and replaygain scanning. I hope someone makes extensions to fix this.

[mountain_rage]

That's right, Winamp is also compatible with the Ipod. Maybe its about time I gave them a second chance.

[Feather]

Winamp sux donkey penis
it has become an overbloated piece of cow dung.
trying to make the thing do everything and what they have done is make it do everything poorly

[fer007]

Winamp sux donkey penis
it has become an overbloated piece of cow dung.
trying to make the thing do everything and what they have done is make it do everything poorly

Yeah, I've used it since forever and they keep adding and adding stuff, but it's the only one I know of with free autotagging really that works.

[Feather]

There are free alternatives out there but they are not built into the player.
Songbird will have it soon. They deal in plugins like winamp and firefox. Soon song bird will be bloated the same.

[Drew Wilson]

I suspect it'll only be bloated if you install every plug-in, but that's just speculation on my part.

[Feather]

also it will probably not use gracenote
it will most likely be freedb

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