What is Songbird?

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Submitted by roblord on Sun, 11/20/2005 - 2:52pm.

Songbird is a complete desktop media player or "jukebox" with a uniquely open approach to Internet digital media network services.

Songbird is developed by Pioneers of the Inevitable, a small, chirpy team of digital media innovators whose previous incubations include the Winamp 5 and Y! Music Engine media players and Muse.Net, a location-independent digital media network service acquired by Yahoo!.

Q. What are digital media network services?

Digital media network services, simplistically put, are Web sites that do stuff with digital media. Examples of digital media network services include eMusic's á la carte MP3 store, Last.fm's social networking service, Odeo's podcast service or La Blogothèque, a personal MP3blog.

Digital media network services are varied and produced by a diversity of service providers, just like Web sites. New services and service type opportunties are fomenting as Internet users utilize more digital media in novel ways.

Songbird's Lineage

Songbird is built atop the Mozilla Foundation's XULRunner platform also used by the Firefox browser, the Thunderbird email client and other desktop applications.

Thus, Songbird runs on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux personal computers with few OS-specific tweakages.

Songbird Releases

Songbird Public Preview v0.1 codename Hilda, will be released mid-December 2005. Windows support with multiple languages is our primary target for December. Mac OS X and Linux support will arrive shortly thereafter.

Your comments are welcomed.

Anonymous (not verified) Says: Tue, 11/22/2005 - 11:59am

Does Songbird play video? If so, which codecs?

roblord Says: Tue, 11/22/2005 - 12:06pm

Video support? Sorta. Songbird uses the VLC Mozilla plug-in which supports a vast number of audio and video codecs. However, we have built support in our Media Library or Playlists to work with video yet. It's easy, it's just a matter of priority. Also, I believe we're bundling Flash support so Flash Video in Web pages already works.

Murty (not verified) Says: Tue, 11/22/2005 - 7:11pm

I have seen the first introduction to Songbird in Blinklist and fascinated by the novel way it presented itself and started monitoring the flight of Songbird. Goodluck. I want to see the bird fly over my home and office. Later I will introduce her to my friends.

Tom Parker (not verified) Says: Thu, 11/24/2005 - 12:21pm

I noticed a small rectanglar box next to the minize button will this button send the player down onto the taskbar? sounds very interesting! Tom | www.tomwrote.info

Peter (not verified) Says: Tue, 12/20/2005 - 9:53am

Would be nice, but I don't see such a feature becoming platform-independant :) So I'm guessing it's a mini-mode (ala Rhythmbox or Winamp)

mig Says: Wed, 12/21/2005 - 9:17pm

Yes, lone (who works for us now) wrote the code to put wasabi windows into the taskbar. Unfortunately, we don't currently have control over that layer of the code. It's all xulrunner. It's entirely possible that "sometime in the future" we'll be able to do this, but it's not on the short term roadmap.

Anonymous (not verified) Says: Thu, 11/24/2005 - 12:26pm

Will songbird support Apple's DAAP protocol? Linux _really_ needs a decent DAAP compatible client

Anonymous (not verified) Says: Thu, 11/24/2005 - 3:14pm

Well this is great and all... but will it sync with iPods and other portable MP3 players? Without that support, you're not going to draw a big crowd from the iTunes users.

Anonymous (not verified) Says: Thu, 11/24/2005 - 4:33pm

will songbird be free as in beer?, what about as in speech? if yes have you decided upon a licence? And are you going to try to make money of this or is this just for fun? Love what I see in the screenshots, good luck with this.

Lobster (not verified) Says: Fri, 11/25/2005 - 2:03am

Good to see XUL which is more robust and secure than the instant gratification of Ajax being used. XUL is Kewl - why it even rhymes . . . I wish you every success and look forward to running Songbird in our default browser (Mozilla with flash) One of the considerations for a small distro like Puppy is size and modularity. At the moment we use Xine which has sound and video codecs. One way to get video in from the start is using Google video - which would combine Ajax and XUL . . . am I rambling . . . must be time for my morning frisk . . .

Ryan Parman (not verified) Says: Fri, 11/25/2005 - 12:33pm

Two things: 1) This seems like a very cool, very awesome project, and it's inspiring to know that these kinds of apps can be built atop XUL Runner. 2) The interface is nearly identical to iTunes. Any worry of lawsuits over the UI?

basic (not verified) Says: Fri, 11/25/2005 - 3:21pm

How much memory does songbird use? (without any files loaded)

Alpha (not verified) Says: Fri, 11/25/2005 - 3:37pm

Will you have "Find As You Type"?

Jlee (not verified) Says: Sat, 11/26/2005 - 1:41am

The user interface is identical to J River Media Centre. If you want to match the power and versitility of JRMC you have a lot of work to do but good luck to you. Do you have any plans to implement a series of APIs to allow two way messaging to a remote control device like NetRemote (www.promixis.com)?

l0th (not verified) Says: Sat, 11/26/2005 - 4:32am

Indeed, the UI is almost identical to JRMC's. I wish you guys manage to match the rest of the program, but you might have a long way to go.

Alexander Grundner (not verified) Says: Sat, 11/26/2005 - 11:38am

You guys should consider tapping into Wikipedia for band and lyric info, similar to amaroK. This is a very popular function and it would really add to the music experience.

Hipotecado (not verified) Says: Sun, 11/27/2005 - 1:32am

will songbird support directly Last.fm?

Anonymous (not verified) Says: Sun, 11/27/2005 - 4:15am

apple could get dangerous... the interface looks soooo iTUnes-like

stestagg (not verified) Says: Sun, 11/27/2005 - 6:52pm

Will Songbird be open source? I would hope that it is and would hate for it to have a closed source and then go the same way as Winamp.

danbee (not verified) Says: Mon, 11/28/2005 - 5:11am

Will Songbird support replaygain and do gapless playback by default? What kind of codec support can we expect 'out of the box'?

Anonymous (not verified) Says: Mon, 11/28/2005 - 3:20pm

how about a theme similar to the Bang & Olufsen 'Beoplayer'?

King P (not verified) Says: Tue, 11/29/2005 - 8:12am

Will you be supporting formats like Ogg Vorbis, AAC, MP3, and FLAC? Support the Indies, www.ind-music.com

PC832 (not verified) Says: Tue, 11/29/2005 - 1:08pm

Here's your chance to be the first app of this kind to find and write the BPM (beats per minute) for mp3, wav, wma, and/or ogg files. This would be great for dj's.

Anonymous (not verified) Says: Sun, 12/25/2005 - 8:00pm

Shoudln't be too difficult. Run an FFT over the whole file, and detect anything below the 1Hz range.

Mooks (not verified) Says: Tue, 11/29/2005 - 7:04pm

Will quicktime and wmv videos be watchable under Linux somehow? If so, I hope it's not using the current win32 codecs because those cause so much trouble viewing stuff under Linux.

Stefan Constantinescu (not verified) Says: Tue, 11/29/2005 - 7:49pm

Why not get the guy who does Media Player Classic to help you integrate video support. Every windows user I know uses it as their video player, it's open source, and you guys can make some awsome stuff happen. It isn't a media player until it can literally play anything. Link Texthttp://sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli/

Anonymous (not verified) Says: Sun, 12/25/2005 - 7:58pm

Because VLC's support is more complete, and works on linux, too. MPC's video support is based entirely around DirectShow - making it unusable for OSX or Linux.

Geo (not verified) Says: Wed, 11/30/2005 - 12:21am

Do you intend to implement those wonderful smartplaylists that we can already find in iTunes?

roblord Says: Wed, 11/30/2005 - 10:05pm

Yes, in fact, we may have "smart" or criteria-based playlists in the Songbird User Preview coming out mid-December.

Chad Poirier (not verified) Says: Wed, 11/30/2005 - 1:17pm

Will Songbird support iPods? How awesome and complete would that make this?

serrebi (not verified) Says: Thu, 12/01/2005 - 9:00am

can't wait for songbird! :D

Anonymous (not verified) Says: Fri, 12/02/2005 - 6:36pm

can we download the beta version now ?

Anonymous (not verified) Says: Sat, 12/03/2005 - 10:49am

Dude, I'm all for neat new apps, and it's cool that you are doing it in XUL. However, it is obvious that the UI is a complete rip-off of iTunes. This is bad for two reasons: (1) It totally lacks class. (2) It's going to get you in legal trouble. So, back to the drawing board with the UI, but otherwise keep up the good work!

Mr. Cheese (not verified) Says: Fri, 12/09/2005 - 7:46pm

I suggest you read Songbird vs iTunes entry. I don't remember iTunes being skinable.

Anonymous (not verified) Says: Thu, 12/15/2005 - 11:57am

Nice try - doesn't change the fact that the default UI is still ripped-off.

Mr. Cheese (not verified) Says: Thu, 12/15/2005 - 3:05pm

why would they care what _you_ think? the point of songbird doesn't seem to be it's UI, though i like their UI better than ugTunes. As for the idiotic legal threats, i do doubt it's an issue, but since you're the great legal mind, mr. anonymous idiot, i'll trust you 'know'. PS: stupid unconstructive critiques posted as 'anonymous' show you both lack class and that you're pathetic

Anonymous (not verified) Says: Mon, 12/19/2005 - 2:42am

No need to be insulting and defensive. It is obvious where songbird got it's inspiration, and that is an issue. They could easily have work around those problems by offering some other default skin. I can guess their business model, and wish them good luck. I'll be trying it out.

Donger (not verified) Says: Sat, 12/24/2005 - 1:19pm

At last check, Apple was being sued over patent infringement claims on their iTunes UI. I imagine that any suits Apple might want to file on the subject of the iTunes UI could be delayed until this matter is resolved. Then again, I don't seem to have a legal degree or a bar membership to back up that analysis.

ScottB (not verified) Says: Tue, 12/06/2005 - 1:56pm

Nice! I've got a OSX and Linux dual boot and it would be brilliant to use the same app on both. Make sure you get that Mac version going, I know alot of people who would like a more customisable interface for playing music.

Sennheiser_Man (not verified) Says: Tue, 12/13/2005 - 11:52am

Is it just me or does this resemble iTunes. Don't get me wrong it looks awesome but are the design ideas derived from the apple software? Looking forward to using this though, I hated the grey colour of iTunes :)

Anonymous (not verified) Says: Tue, 12/13/2005 - 2:00pm

It'll be interesting to see if Songbird violates any of the iTunes patents and what Apple's legal response will be.

Sennheiser_Man (not verified) Says: Tue, 12/13/2005 - 11:54am

Sorry ignore the post below, I didn't read the above posts...

Josh A. NYC (not verified) Says: Tue, 12/13/2005 - 1:09pm

skins!!! me a mac guy.. grew up on winamp and its skins & effects can't wait for Itunes alternative ...songbird for mac . stream radio like itunes- aac - have it work with ipod - and

Deacon Nikolai (not verified) Says: Sun, 12/18/2005 - 10:04pm

I hope it has an icon that matches the icons of Firefox, Thunderbird & Sunbird. The Mozilla Foundation should advertize this IMO!

Kitsune (not verified) Says: Mon, 12/19/2005 - 4:21am

Those three products were all released by the Mozilla Foundation. Despite the fact that it's name contains the word "bird", Songbird is created by Pioneers of the Inevitable, and has very little to do with Mozilla.

Anonymous (not verified) Says: Mon, 12/19/2005 - 8:17am

Really? this has little to do with the Mozilla Foundation? you're saying this cause you're in the foundation, or because you're a major source contributor, or just cause you like pulling things out of uranus?

Fordi (not verified) Says: Sun, 12/25/2005 - 7:54pm

Check the Mozilla Foundation's website and search for Rob's name

Anonymous (not verified) Says: Sun, 12/25/2005 - 8:26pm

Just because it ain't on the website, idiot, doesn't mean they're not cooperating.

Kitsune (not verified) Says: Mon, 12/19/2005 - 4:17am

For some reason when I heard the name, I just assumed this would be open source. Seriously, the last thing anyone needs is yet another closed-source mp3 player. Like millions of other iTunes users, I don't use it for it's Media Content Syndication Whatever, I use it because of it's simple, highly stable and easy to use interface for managing and organising large numbers of mp3 files. From the screenshots released of Songbird it seems to have none of this, and it's so-called new innovative features look like a repackaging of the web browser I already use. Taking just the code from Firefox gives you none of the highly sucessful open source methodology that created. If you really want to be successful, give up on all these shady Partner tie-ins, push it to 100% open source RIGHT NOW, and watch the cash flow in from any number of consumers waiting for a real alternative in Mp3. Or just be another MusicMatch, and I can stick with my iTunes.

mig Says: Mon, 12/19/2005 - 4:52am

:) why wouldn't we be open source? why are having business partners "shady" ? mozilla takes alot of google money. is that shady? the whole point (as I'm about to expound upon in greater detail) is to mix the web experience with the media player experience and bring them both closer together. I'm not sure how any cash is supposed to flow in from a free player without any "shady partner tie-ins," regardless of our being open or closed source. Or were you suggesting we charge for our software?