Songbird: Open-Source iTunes Killer?
Posted by Harry McCracken | Wednesday, February 08, 2006 10:30 PM PT
I'm not sure if anyone or anything can kill anything music-related from Apple right now--or even give it a serious flesh wound. But Songbird is a new open-source music player, built on some of the same code as Firefox, that aims to change how people think about online music. This Windows-based program is rather iTunes-like in look, feel, and functionality. (Actually, it's
incredibly iTunes-like: Sometimes, imitation is the sincerest form of open-source development.) But rather than hooking into one online music source--Apple's iTunes Music Store--Songbird aims to talk to lots and lots of them.
Boing Boing has a
good interview with Rob Lord, the Songbird project's leader, which explains the thinking behind the app. Lord compares current commercial music players/services like iTunes to old pre-Web online services like AOL and Prodigy, and in many ways that's exactly right--what we really need are players that can play anything and music that can be played anywhere.
But Songbird would seem to face an imposing obstacle in the fact that the bulk of legally-available online music is so locked up in proprietary interfaces and restrictive DRM that this player can't talk to. So Songbird is less like Firefox and more like Firefox's great-great-granddaddy, Mosaic--which hit the scene when most of the world's online content was still anything but open.
Of course, if you have a collection of MP3s, you have music that's neither proprietary nor locked up, and Songbird gives you tools to manage it and listen to it. I'm going to do just that over the next few days and see how things go.
The preview version of Songbird is off to a bit of a rocky start--the
download site has been overloaded today, and the program seems decidedly beta-ish (read: buggy). If it's got documentation, I can't get it to work. (Which is one reason why there are things about the program I don't know yet--like what handheld devices it supports.)
At the moment, it also has a high geek factor, more reminiscent of early Mozilla builds than the more consumery Firefox. Why it prominently links through to a FreeBSD directory of MP3s somewhere and a blog in French, I'm not entirely sure. But like I say, this is a preview, not a finished product; it'll be interesting to see how it develops...and whether it catches on.
If you give Songbird a whirl, come back and let us know what you think...
One thing that iTunes can't handle very good is the podcasts, to be specific, aggregation of podcasts. In that sense, I hope SongBird provides better functions on that road. Otherwise, I will be continuing to use podcatchers, like Feeddemon or Ziepod.
Third try and still crashing. Will be back.
um..
i'll stick with iTunes.
thanks.
Linux users, Banshee is charging towards similar status.
The thing that we must devoutly wish for - us music lovers - is that the Apple monopoly on downloaded music gets destroyed. Around 20% is the most any sensible person can want them to have. So Songbird is deserving of our wholehearted support. Give them money, help them write the documentation, hack at the code, whatever way you can, help, and start to smash a monopoly today.
Make no mistake about it, what Apple wants is a world in which you have to have their software to buy from their store, and then you have to play it on their machine. And if they could, it would be Mac only.
Why does no one ever cover Foobar2000, the most powerful, the smallest footprint and the most flexibility? Sad.
What for?
Cloning Itunes is the worst thing you can do. Help Amarok and you'll have a great music player!
This article (including the title) and many of the comments are so misleading that it is sad. The current Songbird release is is version 0.1. It is NOT "beta-ish" it is a lot worse than that. It does NOT have documentation. No program that I know of has documentation at version 0.1. It is NOT supposed to replace iTunes or any other media player now or in the near future. This is a proof-of-concept release. It does some things like web playlists better than any other player but right now it does not support any external device. Not even a CD. So if you want a replacement for your media player you have a long wait ahead.
I second another "Anonymous" about helping the amarok project. It is a real kick-ass player and miles ahead of banshee!
I don't see why anybody is complaining about this. It very generic, but remember this is a beta. No, it did not crash.
Can you say....W H O Cares!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
LSongs is almost the exact copy of Songbird.
I have taken it for a run, and i can only hope their summer release is going to be a lot more impressive. All it is, is a browser, with pre-defined bookmarks to lots of music services, and a very basic media player. It crashed a few times, but thats to be expected.
It is no iTunes, and it has a long way to go before it matches anything like the functionality in WinAMP or VideoLAN.
Lots of buzz, no substance.
alan
http://alan.blog-city.com/
lol i love people who spam msg boards with links to their lame blogs ALAN
It is an alpha really since it's not even near being feature complete. No options or preferences, no CD ripping, no smart playlists, no integration with the bookmarked music services, incomplete playlist management, no hotkeys. All this together with an incomplete XULRunner. Anyway I'll keep trying this product since it will become a great partner to Firefox once it migrates to XULRnner as well (maybe by early next year with Firefox 3.0).
Uninistalling it.
A brief comparison of 3 MP3 players from my own experience
Winamp
iTunes
Foobar2000
I started with Winamp and used it until my library hit 45,000+ and Winamp started taking up 150-175MB ram, significantly impacting the performance of my computer.
I tried iTunes several times wanting to use it as it had a cleaner look and some features that I liked (Top 25, Smart Playlists, Easy Search Function) But each time I was dissuaded by the slow startup, the laggy scrollbar operation, and the lack of typical organizational schema that EVERY other MP3 player I had tried had - namely, sort by directory/filename.
So Winamp became a nuisance and I looked elsewhere. I heard of a small program called Foobar2000 that was apparently difficult to use but would pay off in the end. I tried it out, and immediately went back to Winamp upon seeing how sparse the program was.
Winamp kept getting worse and worse and started randomly crashing. Reinstalls didn't help, going back to 2.x didn't help, I needed a new program.
I tried Foobar2000 again and read up on how to use it. After reading for a few minutes I finally figured out why it was so plain. It's basically like Firefox... You use 3rd party components to add features you need. It took roughly one hour to find all the components to suite my needs and to tweek the look and scripting, but in the end it was well worth it.
I now had an MP3 program that could not be beat. It took up 50 megs of ram Vs. iTunes at 110MB and Winamp at 160-175MB. It had all the features of Winamp and iTunes, and the ability to add MANY more, and to customize essentially EVERYTHING. So not only was it the best program performance wise, it was the best program feature wise.
Foobar remained my sole MP3 player until this Christmas when an unsuspected iPod fell into my lap. I had to install iTunes again. For convenience purposes, I figured it might be worth it to give up Foobar2000's better performance and features for iTunes with slightly worse performance and less features, but with the ability to copy to my iPod.
I was wrong. The slow and choppy scroll bar, the poor playlist functionality (you'll know what I mean if you have used Foobar2000), the terrible sorting and the utter lack of customizability just killed the convenience factor.
I'm now back to Foobar2000 with iTunes used when I need to transfer files to the iPod. I'll never use iTunes until those dimwits who developed it realize they need to implement a better sorting system (ID3 tags alone for sorting? What jerks).
Woot.
And no, I'm not some Foobar guy, I just use the program and love it so much... I can't understand how it recieves NO coverage anywhere, it's quite sad, because it is hands down the best mp3 player in all categories.
I have said in the past, and will iterate, I will stick with I-tunes. Other than battery issues I enjoy my I-pod. For me the main issue is owning my music. I download when I want. If I don't for months my music is still mine. Yes, Apple has a majority of the musuc downloads, but that is business. As an old hippy, and geek in training, I will be loyal to Apple for my music. I use HP for my computers, and JVC for components. When I find something that works I stick with it. Peace. GUS.
Foobar2000 is Awesome. I think that until more features are added to Songbird, Foobar2000 is the way to go. iTunes has a RAM usage in excess of 30,000KB whereas Foobar2000 has a RAM usage of around 5,700KB. Foobar is also totally customizable.
If your ram is being eaten by your damn music player i have some suggestions;
1: Delete old/bad songs. With 47000 songs theres generally going to be a few you can get rid of and I'm using the word "few" rather lightly.
2: Play music from your personal music player. Use iTunes or whatever crap you want to port the music to the device and then play the music from the device. If you think theres not enough organization on your iPod or whatever then make PLAYLISTS!
3: UPGRADE YOUR RAM! 128 is rediculous, 256 is obsolete, 512 is bare minimum, 1 GIG is really where you should be at if you do just general computing. if you wanna go wild upgrade it to 2 Gigs and quit your whining.
For some reason my itune's seem's to of deleted itself an i can;t get it back can you please help me out here cos i'm STUCK
Thank you
Lippie_cow