Songbirg 1.0: A real iTunes challenger?
When Songbird 1.0, a Mozilla XULRunner-based jukebox application shipped at the beginning of this month, naturally people tried comparing it to iTunes. However, these are two very different apps with different priorities and, especially here at the beginning, divergent feature sets.
Where to begin? My 61GB library imported almost instantaneously. Why? Well, because Songbird didn’t actually move or physically import any of the songs, which is intelligent. So, if you ultimately decide Songbird isn’t for you, the iTunes library you’ve spent all these years building, grooming and maintaining will be exactly where you left it.
In fact, if you want to, you can use iTunes and Songbird side-by-side.
After importing and then clicking play, the first thing I reached for was the equalizer and, damn it, there isn’t an equalizer, not even a cheezy little three bander and a search of the Songbird add-on site yielded no love whatsoever. Major downer.
It’s Mozilla-based so it’s extensible!
One of the many things people love about Mozilla products, Firefox for example, is that they’re so easy to customize and extend. From skins to application-like add-ons (ie Share-a-holic), the world’s favorite open-source browser can be customized in hundreds and hundreds of ways.
Songbird is built on the same foundation and is highly extensible.
Thereupon, if you wanna get a preview of the many, many ways Songbird can be customized? Then you need to check out their Getting Started page where you’ll find video introductions to a variety of integrated and add-on features. Whether you want to pimp Songbird’s look or functionality, I guaranty you you’ll find something to pique your interest.
Check out Songbird Remote for iPhone
A neat feature? With the Last.fm plug-in installed, artist bio, discography and a list of related links automatically displays in a separate pane for each track as it plays back. You don’t need to manually select tracks or click anything—if Last.fm has info it, just displays.
Also, because Songbirg is in many respects “just a browser,” clicking one of those links displayed by Last.fm opens a new tab within Songbird. Tracking down add-ons is also handled within the app, very much like Firefox.
“Songbird promises to be the Firefox of media players”—Aaron Boodman, Greasemonkey
And something else Songbird does that iTunes doesn’t—play back the .ogg files that wikipedia.org insists on using for audio. That said, MP3, FLAC, Vorbis (ogg) and AAC, including (spotty) FairPlay DRM, playback support is part of Songbird for the Mac
Also, though there are plenty of folks who don’t need or want CD burning, it’s not even an option in Songbird 1.0. Further, you can’t use your iPhone or iPod touch with this application—other iPods, yes, but the handheld media players that are reshaping the world right now are not supported.
There are a lot of things (release notes) about Songbird 1.0 to like—add-ons, integrated Last.fm, all those shoutcast stations, etc—but overall it’s not quite there yet. Besides spotty iPod support and an inability to burn CDs, there’s also a complete lack of video support. Oh, and the lack of an equalizer of any kind.
There’s a lot of promise in Songbird 1.0, but for the time being it can’t be considered an iTunes killer. Here’s hoping the Mozilla foundation it rides upon will indeed help make Songbird the Firefox of media software…
What’s your take?
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