Songbird: an Open-Source, Cross-Platform Music Player
Songbird is a an open source, multiplatform music player intened to rival players such as iTunes; but does it have much more beyond the basics?
[Editor’s note: this review was written by Freewaregenius contributor Jason H. Check out his tech blog: 404techsupport.com].
I’m taking a look at Songbird version 1.1.2. Songbird has been out for a while but only reached 1.0 at the end of 2008. Version 1.2 is expected to be out this month adding features like an equalizer and a customizable toolbar. I used to use iTunes and left that after getting sick of the ever-increasing size for updating and bloat. I’m now currently using MediaMonkey and am pretty content with it. We’ll see how Songbird stacks up against the two.
If you’re familiar with other Mozilla products like Firefox or Thunderbird, the install process will feel very familiar. An additional part of the Songbird setup process is locating your media collection and importing it for the first time. You can also set this folder to be monitored for any changes. Along with the import, you can install some add-ons that the setup recommends. You can always add these later but installing them during the setup makes for a much improved first impression. Setup recommends these add-ons: MTP Device Support, QuickTime Playback, Windows Media Playback, SHOUTcast Radio, Concerts (songkick.com), Last.fm, mashTape, 7digital Music Store.I would recommend the MorningPeeps (alarm clock), LyricMaster (lyrics) add-ons as well. They’re pretty cool and add more versatility to the player allowing you to set an alarm with your music collection and automatically pulling down lyrics for your songs to add to the tags. I would recommend a few more plug-ins based on their description but they did not work for me upon installing them; MinimizeToTray (Songbird version) and The Exorcist (remove broken tracks and duplicates) were two that I tried. It seems the Songbird community is not as rigorous as the Firefox community for the reliability of add-ons.
Songbird uses tabs like Firefox and allows for a lot of configuration. You can open separate web pages in these tabs which might allow further integration with the player. It also has an about:config page like Firefox for advanced tweaking. Of course, the standard configuring with an interface is also available and allows for a lot of customization.
Songbird comes with a built-in tag editor and much of these can be automatically populated through the various plug-ins. You can rate songs and add all the metadata you want including your own comments.
One of the coolest features of Songbird, in my opinion, was the Smart Playlists. You can have a playlist randomly populated based on different filters and criteria. If you want to listen to something but you’re not quite sure what you’re in the mood for this can definitely help narrow down your music collection.
If you’d like to change the look of things around Songbird, you can change the theme, or Feathers in Songbird terminology.
I was pretty impressed with the import process. It imported more than 4500 tracks in less than 30 seconds. You can use Songbird to play DRM titles if your machine is already authorized. Unfortunately, to authorize your machine that likely requires you to download and install the client for the other systems.
With a 13 MB download, Songbird measures in on the light-weight side of things compared to the ever-increasing 64MB iTunes 8 download. When running, Songbird brings with it a 70MB process and feels snappier than iTunes and MediaMonkey.
All in all, I’d still recommend MediaMonkey over either of the others. MediaMonkey has its own dynamic playlists to stack up against Songbird’s Smart Playlists and I really make use of MediaMonkey’s ability to auto-organize files by different tag attributes, particularly genre and artist. That’s just my opinion though. When the price is free, give them all a go and see which you like best. Songbird will likely continue to be developed and bring a lot of cool features with it, so it will be worth keeping an eye on.
Version Tested: 1.12
Compatibility: Windows XP, Vista.
Download Songbird from Mozilla (approx 13 megs).
Mozilla doesn’t make Songbird. Songbird uses a lot of Mozilla open source technology, but Mozilla doesn’t make the product.
That’s like saying gstreamer or SQLite makes Songbird. Neither does, but their technologies are used in Songbird.
I’m not too convinced with Songbird, it is perhaps a bit too resource demanding for my pc, i dunno, found it a bit slow both times i’ve tried it (back in the day and a month or so ago).
Still, worth a try, that’s for sure. And yes, the Mozilla Foundation is not behind Songbird, some other folks are – it just so happens that it is based on Firefox, ’cause it’s open source. Mediacoder is also based on Firefox, and it is also not connected to Mozilla, just to name another example.
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I agree I want to like Songbird but it’s just not playing nice,using KPM and foobar but I’m still looking.
I have been trying to use Songbird for two years now because I loved the idea of it. Every time there is an update I download it and try again, but it was always a little too buggy for everyday use. The previous update was much more stable, but I wasn’t happy with ipod sync and it does not burn CDs. So I’m still not using it. (I used to add yet whenever I said that, but I am beginning to wonder, if they still haven’t got all parts working after all this time, will they ever? Plus, what was unique two years ago is becoming common in other players. So this boat may have sailed, and without many passengers)
I have tried Songbird in the past and it is far too resource intensive to be used seriously. There are better audio players such as QMP, Spider Player, Aimp, Foobar and so on.
One comment I’d like to add is with the songbird search bar. It searches every single character you type in the bar. When you have a large library (over 7-8k songs) and you are typing quickly, your computer can get holed up in a repetitive search loop. Even on a high powered computer the program can freeze up for anywhere between 30 seconds and 5 mins.
It’s pretty nice and powerful. Several add-ons quite nice and some of them are very useful.
It could be a great app, but currently is memory hog.
I’ve tried Songbird a couple of times and it’s developing nicely, but an alternative worthy of mention is Jaangle (previously Teen Spirit) which has been my default player for a few years.
Great site – keep up the reviews
Denis
I’ve been using Songbird for the past few months, switching over from Winamp. Despite it’s Firefox-like tendencies to crash and memory/CPU usage, I fell in love with it. It has potential if the extension development community was larger/more productive. But all in all, I like how it integrates last.fm and my library, allowing me to see band bios in an instant.
Very well recommended.
Thank you! Looks great. Added 6 plugins. Bird tabs doesn’t seem to work. I’d like to see some sort of message like: no file found. But it just sits there. Otherwise the plugins work nicely. I put Songbird through it’s paces, even ‘tortured’ it, and can say it’s stable, no crash. Who knows how messed up other peoples computers are that this wouldn’t run correctly. It would be fantastic if there was some decent folder management. Well there is but it’s a plugin and there is no right-click menu, so all you can do is make a new playlist and drag and drop from the folder view. Because of this deficiency I give only 4 out of 5
Why is browsing capability crippled??? Had to use a trick to go to freewaregenius with Songbird.
see pic http://www.turboimagehost.com/p/1850877/songbird.png.html
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I’ve been keeping an eye on Songbird but as of yet I’m not even remotely ready to let Winamp fly the coop (;o). Of course, Winamp is only partially freeware, but for music management (ONLY) — I haven’t found anything that I prefer to it.
For video.. I’ve found nothing that I like better than KMPlayer (including the vaunted VLC, whose interface I find infuriating).
Both Winamp & KMPlayer offer full media (music & video) management but I find their strengths (music & video, respectively) are far better implemented than their other media offerings.
I think the reviewer missed most of the functionality of Songbird. It’s essentially a web browser. You can navigate to a website and the media is presented in a bottom window pane available for view/download. It gives users great ability to both manage and add to media libraries. Songbird is visionary with enormous potential.
Songbird is like Firefox+Limewire+Winamp+iTunes and still 13mb.
Oh, and it’s open source…
i am using songbird’s latest version. started using from 10 Nov 2009. i didn’t see any bugs mentioned above. it got a few killer apps like lyric master thats super cool. the ability to add extension will only make it better. i’ll use it as my main music player in future.
Songbird is nice, but one feature which screwed up my “music” folder. Managed Mode is the feature which needs to have much more explanation as to what it will do to your music’s subfolders. A great example would be a folder of Billboard’s hits from say 1950-something where you have 20 or some different artists in the same folder. Managed Mode will move and rename the files without asking you/telling you what it’s going to do. It’s crazy this feature does not warn the user what it’s going to do. Needless to say, I’ll have fun going through all the artist/album subfolders Songbird created for me; free of charge!!