Songbird - The Music/Web Player
Songbird is a new web player that soon will be coming out of the woodwork. It looks good. I managed to download the proof of concept from their site.
The download isn’t fully functional at this time, but it has given a good idea of what tune the Songbird is singing.
Songbird was built from Mozilla’s popular open source (that means free to use and modify) web browser, Firefox. It will run on Windows, Mac OS X and even Linux.
Because Songbird is open source, it has some added features that are different than the popular players seen today.
Features
Well, let’s get started. I downloaded a copy of the concept and found it looked a little like the iTunes player from Apple.
Songbird quickly scanned my computer and found all my music files quickly. It plays your music and does exactly what you would expect from a music player. But…
There is more. Songbird allows you to surf the web right in the music player. It also allows you to play music or radio directly from the webpage by finding music files on that website.
When you visit a webpage that contains music or radio files that you can play you will see a window at the bottom naming the title(s) you can play. I began playing an internet radio station directly from the web.
I could do that without opening windows or pressing buttons on the website itself. I thought that was pretty neat.
The bar on the left displays all of your popular audio and website material in one place like, podcasts, radio, music stores, library and so on. You navigate from these to choose what you will listen to.
Here are some other features:
- Songbird plays anything.
- Choose different skins
- Play, Pause, Repeat, Volume, Shuffle, etc.
- Surf the web right in Songbird
- Play audio files from web pages
- Build and play mixes
- Mini Player Mode (saves space on your screen)
- Rip and Burn CDs
That’s not all. You can check out the full list of features from the Songbird website.
What Makes Songbird So Powerful?
Songbird is an Open Source project. That means that anybody can create modifications to the software.
These are called extensions. Normally, a media player will come from a company and you cannot change anything. You are forced to stick with the design set out by the player.
Not here. Now imagine that you download the software and now can visit the Songbird website to download extensions to modify the music player so that it can best suit your needs.
Or if you know how you could even create your own modification for Songbird yourself.
That is exactly what Songbird will deliver.
Look for Songbird to take off when it is officially released. Expect big things. The fact that the music player is customizable is what makes it so powerful.
Visit: Songbirdnest.com for more screenshots and information.
Technorati Tags: Gazotto, Songbird, music, player, web, Firefox .
February 21st, 2006 at 6:02 am
Thats Awesome!!!
February 21st, 2006 at 6:32 am
WHAT ABOUT REAL PLAYER? same thing.
February 21st, 2006 at 10:21 am
Real player is NOT the same thing, get a clue…
February 21st, 2006 at 10:44 am
Winamp is good enough for me.
February 21st, 2006 at 12:01 pm
Well if I am going to use it as a music player it better play my music instantly, not like that winamp sh*t which takes 5-7 seconds to start playing a song.
February 21st, 2006 at 12:29 pm
I just want to remind everyone that this is just a proof of concept and not the final product. The software hasn’t been optimized and isn’t complete. However, the post was to show that this player has some potential.
Songbirdnest.com even says that it is not ready to replace your current player at this time.
February 21st, 2006 at 1:09 pm
Winamp sucks so much it’s untrue and as for Real player, its spyware by any other name, this software looks interesting.
February 21st, 2006 at 2:32 pm
So far I dont see anything particularly special about it. Looks and sounds like a bad knockoff of iTunes. Hopefully it will actually gain useful features rather than just rehashing old features like so many other players. Music from the browser sounds about the only unique thing it has, but that seems pretty useless.
February 21st, 2006 at 7:11 pm
Well the open source capability is so good to have on programs like this (and web browsers) as it allows for brilliant extensions to be born e.g. footyfox for Firefox an may other, but the player abilities so far sound very good, but the fact that its so similar to itunes lets it down a bit, I think that the developers will change this towards the release date.
February 21st, 2006 at 7:33 pm
There is nothing special about this. In fact it appears that the author of this post is probably just trying to sell what he has made. The only useful thing about it is the web-radio thing, but iTunes does it just as well by saving all ur radio stations.
winamp as well has its own search for radio/video streaming.
February 21st, 2006 at 10:23 pm
Winamp taking 5-7 seconds to play a song, I think there is something wrong with your computer mate. Plays instantly for me.
I still use Winamp 2.81, the last version before it became sh*t.
February 21st, 2006 at 10:51 pm
This is alright. It’ll probably kick even more ass as time goes on and more features are added. And to that guy Eric who said Winamp takes roughly 10 seconds to start a song, step your computer up playa….mine starts up instantly. Winamp is the sh*t!!
February 21st, 2006 at 11:57 pm
i think it will be good ,
ill take this over MS or ITUNES CRAP
February 22nd, 2006 at 4:31 am
Don’t bash WinAmp!
The best player ever
February 22nd, 2006 at 7:37 pm
Yea…well I have a big big amplifier which plays record. It beat all your winampy and tunesI crap. It has a big nob which i can turn to increase volume, and it is brown wood and silver. No seriously now…
…does anyone actually own a hi-fi to play that format…what is it??? That’s right- CD. You know that un-compressed clean crisp sounding, wide dynamic format…..REVIVE THE COMPACT DISC.
February 26th, 2006 at 4:44 pm
if FoxyTunes had the ability to play files on the page I’m on, then SongBird wouldn’t be needed as a seperate app.
May 3rd, 2006 at 4:51 pm
one of the biggest advantages that i’ve seen thus far in this player: it can play just about anything you throw at it, including .mov .avi .ogg .flac, the list goes on and on, and for anyone who knows their audio formats, you’ll know that Ogg Vorbis has some of the best sounding audio capabilities, and that itunes and winamp neither one support it.
the only thing that im really waiting for, is visualizations, and not even the lack of those rules it out.