Songbird 0.1 Preview

[Ice Czar]

http://www.songbirdnest.com/
from the developers of Winamp, Y! Music Engine and Muse.Net an open source media player and more that employs the firefox engine and is skinnable and extensible.

Songbird is a media browser and Web Player built from Firefox's browser engine. Songbird is opensource, will run on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux and supports user contributed, cross-platform extensions.

This is a preview release, a proof of concept, so there are many things still missing We will have a full featured version this summer. Sign up for updates at Songbird.nest. See the Release Notes for what's working and known bugs.

Songbird: Open-Source iTunes Killer?

Songbird pecks at Apple's fruit

Early reports on Songbird in the blogosphere are mixed. Granted, it's early on, and most people haven't had much time to tinker with the new software yet. But this isn't the kind of software that is meant to knock users' socks off the first time they use it. What will make Songbird successful is how involved the open-source community gets with it and whether user-created extensions, which will be supported in the near future, help it mature and take advantage of the traits that give Songbird an edge over iTunes, namely that it's not limited to Apple's music store.

Features

Play Anything
MP3, AAC, OGG, FLAC, WMA, and more. Can you teach Songbird to sing?

Pick Feathers
Choose from the two included themes: Rubber Ducky or Cardinal Red. You can even make one yourself.

Control the Flow
Play, Pause, Previous, Next, Volume, Mute, Seek, Three Repeat Modes, and Shuffle.

Multi-Task
Quickly switch between tasks using the buttons to the right of the dashboard display.

Organize Your Library
Filter your collection by Genre, Artist, Album, and Song or Search-As-You-Type.

Scan Your Computer for Music
Songbird will find your music and add it to your collection for you.

Super Slim Mini-Mode
Use the mini-mode for basic controls while keeping Songbird out of the way.

Multi-Language Support
Songbird comes in dozens of languages.

Build Custom Mixes
Drag-and-drop songs from the Library or another playlist to your create your own custom mixes.

Make Smart Mixes
Criteria-based playlists that are always up-to-date with your current collection.

Dynamic Mixes
Get mixes from the Internet and stay up-to-date with the latest updates, downloads, and casts.

Play In Place
Songbird plays MP3s without leaving the page.

Play the Web
Play web pages as playlists and view any web page as a playlist.

Set Music Watch Folders
Tell Songbird to watch a folder for new music and it will automatically add new tracks to your collection

Integrated Web Search
Search the web from the context of your collection or tell Songbird to search on the currently playing track.

Songbird Extensions
Coming soon! Have an idea for an extension?

Cross-Platform
Coming soon on Mac OS X, Linux and more.

CD Import and Burn
Coming soon!

 

[Ice Czar]

so far its had no problem scanning and organizing some +16GB of music on my box and Im currently enjoying Jethro Tull's Aqualung

give her a spin, this song bird might just turn into the next bird of prey in media players
and looks to redefine how we think of such aps


http://www.songbirdnest.com/releasenotes

Release Notes for 0.1:

This release is not intended to replace your current desktop media player... yet.

This release represents our first steps upon the path to a truly next generation media player. It is meant to give users a firm idea of the direction we are heading, but we would be the first to admit we are far from there with our 0.1 build. And we wouldn't want to claim to be.

Our tiny amount of C++ code is included in the build, but a working public build system is still in the rapidly nearing future. We would ask people interested in Songbird development to have a bit more patience until we're ready for them.

However, we want to invite you all to import your media into our player, let it scan your metadata, and explore the (admittedly hardcoded at the moment) integration of a web browser into a media player. We equally invite you to browse web pages containing links to media content, and explore the integration of a media player into a web browser.

We have tons of links to let you have an idea of the breadth of what we're intending, but we assure you that they won't be hardcoded like that once we're further along. There will be an easy process to install any services you like and uninstall any services that annoy you.

In addition, there are certainly some known issues you all should be aware of, the worst of which being a pair of crashbugs and the fact that the browser part of the application wants to use RAM like a browser and not a media player.

Lastly, our metadata scanning is currently hacked in through VLC, and that approach is somewhat CPU intensive and further leaks some of the RAM it sends back to the app. So if you have a huge media collection on a slow machine, you might want to let the app be while it says it is "Scanning..." or you can click on that text to pause and resume the metadata scan while you play with our proof of concept. Modern machines should be just fine.

But take a deep breath, remind yourself it's just a 0.1, and take a long hard look in the direction we're pointing. We assure you, this is just the beginning.

 

[Ice Czar]

Whoa

Library > King Crimson> Thela Hun Ginjeet > DClick Play > RClick > Lyrics > Google > a ton of lyrics linkage > the lyrics, while the song is still playing


cool

 

[CrimandEvil]

I've been kind of excited about Songbird, it looks like it could be really cool.

So I DLed the Preview, I use iTunes and all of my music is in 256kbps AAC. I let Songbird scan my music directory, from some reason it misses 71 songs (it only finds 8516 of 8587 songs) and it looks like it didn't read the ID3 tags correctly or something cause it only showed the track title. On top of that non of the files played, it just listed "error" and went on to the next track.

I've got some FLAC CDs that I haven't encoded to AAC yet so I'm going to see if it plays those fine.

Even for a .1 preview I'm a little bit disappointed that it could play my music, Foobar and Winamp can so why couldn't it?

 

[Bullitt]

Even for a .1 preview I'm a little bit disappointed that it could play my music, Foobar and Winamp can so why couldn't it?

The differences between alpha and production programs might have a bit to do with it


Jeez, Ice, throw in some Traffic and we might have similar libraries...

Ohhh boy.. open source. I'll bet someone will throw a torrent client in the mix there to automagically get more songs from your favorite artists...(naw, that wouldnt happen)

 

[CrimandEvil]

The fact that it couldn't play any of my music is what was disappointing, sure there are huge differences between production and alpha ware but it couldn't even do it's core function for me.

 

[Ice Czar]

well the Traffic folder is a little lighter than Id want currently

40,000 Headmen
John Barleycorn Must Die
Low Spark of High Heeled Boys

But I do have extensive Blind Faith and Cream collections