Last month, we curled up with a pair of headphones and a 1.0 release candidate of Songbird, an open-source media player based on Mozilla technology. As a cross-platform music player built with Mozilla's trademark extensibility in mind, Songbird soared with its integration of services like concert ticket notifiers, lyric downloading, and artist bios. Today the official Songbird 1.0 is shipping, and it even supports DRM-protected iTunes Store files, so we took another look at the feature roadmap and how the final version shaped up.
For a recap, Songbird is available for Windows XP/Vista, Linux, and Intel-based Mac OS X PCs. The app takes an iTunes-meets-Firefox approach, as it is based on Mozilla's XML User Interface Language (XUL) and Gecko rendering engine that powers Firefox, but presents one's music library and add-ons with a UI inspired very much by iTunes. The integration of a tabbed web browser, official add-on support, open architecture, and a focus on playing well with the rest of the music-loving web, however, are what really help Songbird to soar above the competition.
Songbird ships with six add-ons that a brief setup wizard helps users to get started with: iPod Device Support, QuickTime Playback, SHOUTcast Radio, Concerts, Last.fm, mashTape. This means that, out of the box, Songbird can synchronize with Apple's iPod (including the latest generation released in September) as well as a multitude of other devices and cell phones. Sorry, iPhone, iPod touch, and Zune owners: support for your devices is still on the way.
Other notable add-ons include Concerts, which uses Songkick to check for when library artists are giving concerns in major cities across a handful of countries. The Last.fm add-on allows users to "scrobble" a list of songs to the Last.fm community for music discovery and socializing, and mashTape collects artist bios, photos, and videos from around the web.
Songbird 1.0 running the Sparkle theme, mashTape, and LyricMaster add-ons
In addition to having over 70 add-ons available for launch, one of Songbird's greatest strengths is its customizable UI for displaying the content that all these add-ons aggregate. Collapsible panels on the top, bottom, and right side of Songbird's window can display add-ons that bring lyrics, a Cover-Flow-style or unique Photo browser for album art, mashTape content, and anything else you can find in the add-on directory. A handful of alternative themes can also bring more style to Songbird, or even make it feel more at home on your OS of choice.
After taking Songbird's official 1.0 version on a magic carpet ride, it really feels like a solid release that fixed all of the release candidate bugs we ran into. Songbird imported our entire iTunes library perfectly, complete with DRM store files and metadata like song ratings and play counts, and stayed in step whenever we made changes in iTunes. Scanning our library of 9,370 tracks from nearly 1,000 artists for concert tickets in the Chicago area was a snap, and playing songs from our 4G iPod nano or syncing new playlists to it both went without a hitch.
Songbird's Concerts add-on makes it easy to spend as much money as possible seeing artists live
A number of other features are still on their way, however, including some of Songbird's most promising potential as a true media hub. Besides the aforementioned pending device support, Songbird cannot yet watch folders for new media, automatically integrate media from any of the major MP3 outlets like Amazon's MP3 Downloads store and Rhapsody, or rip CDs. On that last point, though, the project says that one-quarter of Songbird's users have already left the realm of physical media behind long ago. and about three-quarters of Songbird's other users are willing to rely on other apps for ripping CDs and grabbing new music.
Features for importing metadata and album artwork from web services are still in the works, and Songbird 1.0 is definitely a music player, as video playback and organization is on the project's lengthy roadmap. Other more minor features, such as the ability to accept commands from keyboards with media keys, are also not present.
Is Songbird 1.0 a viable music player replacement for iTunes, Windows Media Player, and other incumbents? As long as you don't need to manage videos and aren't nuts for the play/pause key on your keyboard, we can answer "definitely." After a two-year journey, Songbird 1.0 is a serious music player competitor, firmly grounded in the vast potential of an open-source community and a focus on incorporating the web into the music experience.
