Move over iTunes - Mozilla’s Songbird is Here

This isn’t Mozilla Songbird. It’s no Mozilla-project. It’s based on the Mozilla platform, which is open source.

I checked Songbird out a few minutes ago, but unfortunately it wasn’t my thing, which was pretty depressing, as I’ve been a big Mozilla fan all along. The problem is that I love the Mozilla apps because they traditionally let us control/pick everything aside from the core functionality — a lot in Songbird that I didn’t need seemed mandatory. (I say “traditionally” because Flock is also an exception to the rule, and since devs have said Firefox will essentially merge with it at some point in the future, I guess it’s the future norm.)

Personally, while it’s closed-source, the amazing Quintessential Media Player Beta 5 has been my favorite for years. As is the user community, which is full of freeware lovers. You might find some other cool stuff in the huge thread that began as one guy’s “list of software that kicks *ss & is 100% free” in 2005, and has taken on a 19-page life of its own since then.

You can check out QMPb5’s abilities on the website, or ask the community for details on what its advantages are over other various players. (I couldn’t find a recent Songbird-specific comparison, or I’d link to it.) I’ll spare you my own rundown, which got extensive once I started writing it! ;o)

Songbird is listed on Mozilla’s site but not “with Firefox & Thunderbird”. Firefox and Thunderbird are listed under “Featured Mozilla Applications”. Songbird is listed under “Featured Mozilla-Based Applications”. These Mozilla-Based applications are “applications are built by individuals and organizations using Mozilla technologies”

Here’s a link to the Mozilla site that has these listings:

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/

Rats, I made another comment that was semi-large, but it vanished instead of posting!

I’ll wait a few hours to see if it’s caught in a spam trap that the siteowner would have to approve, then repost it if it’s still missing. Otherwise, the short version was “Songbird isn’t like traditional Mozilla apps, and I think Quintessential Media Player beta 5 follows the ‘give you a core app and a ton of extensions/skins made by other people to make it fit your wishes’ philosophy a lot better. Their forums are super-friendly, and if you search for ‘freeware’ you’ll find an awesome 19-page ongoing discussion of available apps!” (It’s all at quinnware.com in case it was my link that made the comment not post.)

[...] MakeUseOf sono venuto a conoscenza di questo progetto (per il momento in fase beta) voluto da Mozilla che [...]

Pretty Rad piece of music player, downloaded it last week and its pretty amazing so far!

Disappointed at the lack of standard media player features, such as video capability and equalizer settings…but if this project takes off, I think it’s going the right direction.

Judging by looks along, I’m leaning towards this than iTunes. Perfect for those iTune haters.

[...] or just want to see if there’s something you like better, Mozilla’s Songbird is shaping up to be a serious contender. It’s based on Firefox, which means people can write extensions and plugins which you can [...]

Songbird wasn’t made by Mozilla, as said above, the browser just runs on the same platform as Firefox. Songbird is still in beta stage as far as I know, possibly even Alpha, and has a LOT of work to be done. I personally couldn’t use it until it can do proper tabbed browsing, and can accept and run any Firefox add on. Until then I’m sticking with good old Swiftweasel.

I checked Songbird out a month or two ago… not sure where it is at now, but by the description I think this post came with too many early details that will shroud the bigger picture down the road. I think the “being in early beta” statement should have been made at the beginning of the post not the end.

It does look promising though!

I didn’t know there was a MP3 player for it. Interesting.

I wish they would hurry up and make a full release! I can’t wait to use the stable version! Oh well, gonna go download the beta, I can’t resist!

I’ve recently become a huge fan of freeware, and this seems like a great addition. I wonder if it uses less system power than iTunes?

Wow… I’d love to switch from iTunes to this…
I’m probably gonna be asking a really dumb question, but… Is there a way to transfer your library from one media player to another without just re-adding every single file? I’ve got almost 2000 songs on iTunes and I reeeeeally don’t feel like having to go through and add them all over again.
Any help would be pretty… ballin.

-Tanner

Regardless of the specifics of which company if any makes it or whatever… Songbird seems to kick iTunes’ ass.

so we can browse the web with our media player, but we can’t listen to music with our browser without a plugin. hmm…

[...] that has great looks, go for it if your Windows computer has got some memory to spare, it’s reviewed here. You can customize it by adding extensions (similar to [...]

never seen it before

[...] you have a choice of three music stores which gives you the chance to download new music. But what makes this different from iTunes is that here, you can choose between iTunes, Amazon’s [...]

What theme are you using?

I was wondering about your ’store’ screenshot - I’ve got Songbird, yet have never come across a window like this - where is it?

[...] make FireFox have come up with a music browser they’ve named Songbird that they think will give iTunes a run… Now I like FireFox… A lot… In fact LCO is made to work best with FireFox and [...]