ATTENTION QTRAX USERS
Are you having problems with the Qtrax service or the Qtrax player? You should direct your comments to
http://qtrax.com/contact.html
You may be wondering, "How are Songbird and Qtrax related?" Glad you asked. :)
Songbird (our company name is POTI, Inc.) makes a desktop media player called the Songbird Player. Qtrax licensed the Songbird Player, added the Qtrax brand, changed the look, and then integrated the Qtrax advertising supported music download service. If you speak geek, Songbird is a software platform providing open API's to allow seamless integration of devices and services into a desktop media player using markup, Javascript, CSS and other Web developer tools.
Songbird doesn't own or operate the Qtrax music service, and we're sorry to report that we can't fix your problems. If you have issues with the Qtrax service or the Qtrax player, you'll need to chat with Qtrax.
Sorry for the confusion!
The Songbird Player Team
Need some help?
The Songbird support page will hopefully answer your burning question, if not, please post it to Bugzilla if it's about product functionality, or check the forum.
Frequently Asked Questions about Songbird
What is a Developer Pre-release?
Help! I upgraded from 0.2.5 (or earlier) and my library is gone! What gives??
Does Songbird run on a Mac? Linux? My OS?
What digital music formats will Songbird play?
What are Songbird's system requirements?
How do I hide the Web Playlist?
How do I see a web page as a playlist in Songbird?
Will Songbird work with my favorite portable music device?
What can I do if Songbird doesn't speak my language?
How do I install Flash in my Songbird?
What do I need to get playback working on Linux?
My Linux install doesn't play sound from Flash embedded in websites, what's the deal?
I shrunk Songbird, and now I can't get it back!
Does Songbird work with Last.fm?
What does Songbird do?
Songbird plays the Media Web. Play MP3s without leaving the page. Songbird views Web pages as dynamic playlists to play, save, download or subscribe to.
Songbird plays your music too with all the features you’d expect in a desktop media player. Like Firefox, Songbird's features may be improved with user installed and contributed cross-platform extensions.
Soon, Web page authors will be able to publish playlists and transfer MP3s into Songbird to build digital music stores like eMusic, music subscription services like Yahoo! Music Unlimited, virtual jamming services like Ninjam, playlist sharing services like WebJay and more.
What is a Developer Pre-release?
This release introduces a set of APIs and other platform improvements that enable websites to integrate seamlessly with Songbird’s media player features. It also simplifies Feathers creation and further stabilizes the API for add-on developers. Take a look at the Developer Site for details.
Help! I upgraded from 0.2.5 (or earlier) and my library is gone! What gives??
If you previously had 0.2.5, or an earlier release, installed and upgraded to a more current Songbird release, you may have noticed your Music Library & Profiles are gone. Don't Panic! 0.3 and later releases introduce a TON of new features and bug fixes. One of the unfortunate side-effects is that the library and profile formats had to be changed from 0.2.5 to 0.3, and there was no straight-forward way to support old libraries/profiles created with legacy (<=0.2.5) Songbird releases. You can, however, both your current and a legacy release installed side by side though. Please see our Songbird 0.2.5 migration article for more detailed information.
Does Songbird run on a Mac? Linux?
It sure does! Songbird flies for the following platforms:
Windows
- Windows XP
- Windows Vista
Linux
- Fedora Core 7 i386
- Fedora Core 7 x86_64
- Ubuntu Feisty i386
- Ubuntu Feisty x86_64
MacOS
- MacOS X 10.4+ PPC
- MacOS X 10.4+ Intel
See the Download page for your platform.
What digital music formats will Songbird play?
With the QuickTime Playback and Window Media Playback add-ons installed, Songbird can play all the popular music formats including MPEG Audio (mpga), MPEG Layer 3 (mp3), MPEG4 family including FairPlay (m4a, m4v, mp4, m4p, m4b), Ogg Vorbis, Speex, AAC, WMA, WMADRM, FLAC, and less important: LPCM, ADPCM, AMR. If you're a developer, teach Songbird how to play your favorite format!
What are Songbird's system requirements?
Windows
- Windows XP, Windows Vista
Minimum Hardware:
- 733 MHz Pentium III CPU (Recommended: 1.5 GHz Pentium IV or comparable)
- At least 256 MB of physical RAM (Recommended: 512 MB)
- At least 40 MB of available space on your hard drive
- 16 bit sound card (Recommended: 32 bit Sound Card)
- Speakers or headphones
Linux
Please note that Linux distributors may provide packages for your distribution which have different requirements.
- Linux kernel - 2.2.14 or later with the following libraries or packages:
- glibc 2.3.2 or later
- XFree86-3.3.6 or later
- gtk+2.0 or later
- fontconfig (also known as xft)
- libstdc++6
- Songbird has been tested on Fedora Core 5 and Ubuntu Dapper 6.06.
Minimum Hardware:
- 233 MHz Intel Pentium II or AMD K6-III+ CPU (Recommended: 500 MHz or greater)
- At least 64 MB of physical RAM (Recommended: 128 MB or greater)
- At least 52 MB of available space on your hard drive
- 16 bit sound card (Recommended: 32 bit sound card)
- Speakers or headphones
Mac
- Mac OS X 10.4 or later
Minimum Hardware:
- Macintosh computer with an Intel x86 or a PowerPC G3, G4, or G5 processor
- At least 256 MB of physical RAM
- At least 61 MB of available space on your hard drive
Performance requirements will scale to the size of the user's library.
How do I hide the Web Playlist?
Grab the "Splitter" bar above the column headers in Web Playist, it is identified by a small mark called a "Grippy." 
Drag that bar to the bottom of the browser window and the Web Playlist will collapse into just the "Splitter" bar.
How do I see a web page as a playlist in Songbird?
Every web page is a potential playlist in Songbird. When Songbird finds a playable track, it will let you know by showing the Web Playlist at the bottom of the browser window with the tracks in it. If you are a web developer and want to do more advanced customization of how your website interacts with Songbird, please see our Webpage API pages.
Can I play my purchased music from services such as the new Napster, MusicMatch, MusicNow, or BuyMusic.com with Songbird?
Songbird can play any popular music file format that is not DRM'ed. We will also be able play Windows Media DRM on PCs soon (but not on Macs or Linux). We are looking into legal ways to play music from the iTunes Music Store that has FairPlay DRM.
Can I skin Songbird?
You sure can. We call them Feathers, and we've got a whole set of docs, getting started guides, and examples over at our Feathers Development pages.
Will Songbird work with my favorite portable music device?
Yes! There are two popular extensions to add support for USB Mass Storage capable players, as well as iPods
Can I distribute Songbird?
You can distribute our most recent, official, unmodified binary with no additional work. You can also distribute modified binaries and source code; see the Development page for more info on our licensing terms.
Is Songbird open source?
Yes. Developers will be able to add extensions to Songbird and modify the application's source code. See our Development page for more info.
What can I do if Songbird doesn't speak my language?
See our localization blog post on how to help us make a language pack for you.
How do I install Flash in my Songbird?
Open Songbird and paste "http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/xpi/current/flashplayer-win.xpi" in the location bar at the top of the library or browser. Follow the installation process.
What do I need to get playback working on Linux?
We use the GStreamer media core for playback on Linux. Many distributions have this installed by default but may not have all the plugins to get playback working for you media format of choice. Check out our documentation about Setting Up GStreamer for troubleshooting your GStreamer set up.
My Linux install doesn't play sound from Flash embedded in websites, what's the deal?
Flash on Linux got a whole lot better with Flash Player 9. Go to the Macromedia site, and download Flash 9 for Linux. Decompress the .tar.gz file. If you run the installer - it will install the plugin for supported web browsers (Firefox, Mozilla, etc.), but it will not auto-detect Songbird. To install it for Songbird, copy the libflashplayer.so to your Songbird application folder's plugins directory. So if you have Songbird installed in ~/Songbird, copy it to ~/Songbird/plugins. Similarly, copy flashplayer.xpt to your Songbird application folder's components directory. Restart Songbird, and you should be back in business.
Honey, I shrunk the Songbird!
There is currently a bug (5286) in Mac and (to a lesser-degree) Linux versions of Songbird 0.3 where you can resize and shrink your windows to the point of no return. Unfortunately, right now - the only way to get your window back is to delete your profile (or create a new one). To delete your profile, simply do the following:
On Mac OSX, open the Finder, and go to your home/user directory and rename or delete the Library/Application Support/Songbird1 directory.
On Linux, rename or delete the ~/.songbird1 directory.
Scrobble Scrobble Scrobble!
You can use the Audioscrobbler add-on for basic scrobbling support in Songbird.
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