Songbird Media Player

[Phantom Lancer]

For those of you who have not yet tried out songbird , now is a good time ! . It is available for most Operating Systems (windows , mac ,Linux) . Developed by the people behind WinAmp and Yahoo music search engine it is an open source software . This is positioned as a web media player as it integrates with the web seamlessly .

features that set it apart

-> Retrieves metadata such as Band information , Album Art etc from Amazon for free while your media plays
-> Can be used as a browser (uses firefox base) and has tabbing functionality similar to Firefox
-> Multitude of audio/music specific add-ons similar to firefox
-> Feathers - a theme manager lets you easily skin your media player .

Its still not present in the ubuntu's official repository so you ll have to manually download and install it in ubuntu

Songbird in my Ubuntu 9.10

[thewisecrab]

I'm using it as my primary media player in WinXP . .loving every minute of it. . .I tried it during it's beta days in Ubuntu, was impressed then too . .the addons are different yet better. The "feathers" is like Personas, and nice too.

Though I sometimes find it sluggish (during the loading of the app) but once it's open, it's smooth sailing

[Krow]

/me is the foobar guy.

[Faun]

/me is the Quodlibet guy in Linux and foobar guy in Windows.

I tried Songbird, its really like the firefox of media players. Props to the developers !

[Phantom Lancer]

Originally Posted by thewisecrab

I'm using it as my primary media player in WinXP . .loving every minute of it. . .I tried it during it's beta days in Ubuntu, was impressed then too . .the addons are different yet better. The "feathers" is like Personas, and nice too.

Though I sometimes find it sluggish (during the loading of the app) but once it's open, it's smooth sailing

yup its a bit of a resource hog . Takes a second to start up , not something you see very often in Linux apps .
But i dont mind turning a blind eye to that , sound quality is top class and its makes great eye candy .
I hope they iron out all the minor issues , this media web browser concept is really a winner all the way imo .

[desiibond]

last time when I tried it was when it was in beta and it was terrible. let me check now

[x3060]

thanks for this...never knew of about it. been a media monkey person for a long time now. will give it a try.

[Krow]

^Your avatar says that.

I prefer a lightweight music player. I don't mind a lack of features like lyrics and album art, etc. I just need a minimalistic one. Foobar2000 consumes about 3mb of ram when minimised in windows, of course after a painfully barebones install.

However Songbird is good (addons, browser ) , along with Media Monkey too. I hate Winamp, is very buggy on systems with low RAM. The classic 2.x versions were brilliant. Not the 5.x ones.

I use Rhythmbox in Linux. Can't really come to terms with Amarok. Looks like I gotta try the Quodlibet thingy kanjar mentioned.

[thewisecrab]

@kanjar, krow

AFAIK, Songbird uses the same platform and engine as FF, hence the similarity.

Actually, I stumbled upon it a long time ago, when I was looking for a player that could provide CoverFlow and not be a HUGE resource hog (a la iTunes).

Songbird could do that. And of course, mashTape, Lyrics, Concert Swag, etc. were just more things that made it better (addons for Songbird are awesome, I must say)

[desiibond]

just finished installing it and damn, it looks superb on windows 7.

and i can tweet directly from this player

[thewisecrab]

^^
Using feathers? And I doubt whether you'll have drm probs with this one too

[XTerminator]

Originally Posted by Krow

/me is the foobar guy.

me too

[Rahim]

I use Songbird on Debian and tried Amarok 2 on Arch( just for consistency) but BOTH lags a lot during song searching and it takes almost 10 seconds to get active.

Songbird, on the other hand, do take resources but has many intuitive features but I am an Opera lover, so don't use Songbird's browser.

[azaad_shri75]

how is it compared to VLC.

[Rahim]

^Wrong comparison bro, as Songbird is media management capable while VLC is an all-in-one media player. Both are different.

[Krow]

Originally Posted by azaad_shri75

how is it compared to VLC.

Compare VLC to KM player, etc. Compare songbird to foobar, media monkey, iTunes, etc.

[hellknight]

installed latest version of AmaroK on Fedora 12.. the graphic equalizer option is there but it is greyed out.. any advices.. i'm using Xine Lib as the backend..

[ssk_the_gr8]

was a media monkey guy on xp, have shifted to WMP with Windows 7, will give it a try.
the last time i tried it was good but buggy.

[Rahim]

Originally Posted by hellknight

installed latest version of AmaroK on Fedora 12.. the graphic equalizer option is there but it is greyed out.. any advices.. i'm using Xine Lib as the backend..

Phonon still doesn't fully support this feature YET. So it might get sorted in future releases.

[Faun]

Originally Posted by Krow

However Songbird is good (addons, browser ) , along with Media Monkey too. I hate Winamp, is very buggy on systems with low RAM. The classic 2.x versions were brilliant. Not the 5.x ones.

I use Rhythmbox in Linux. Can't really come to terms with Amarok. Looks like I gotta try the Quodlibet thingy kanjar mentioned.

I heard AIMP2 is better than Winamp. Havent tried it as I use foobar in windows and hardly boot into windows unless I need to play some game.

[6x6]

does songbird has equilizers?
I use mostly rythmbox but could not find equilizers in it. so sometimes use audacious, which reminds me of winamp 2.xx

[desiibond]

yes. it has. you can download equalizer extension pack

[thewisecrab]

Most addons on FF (Adblock plus, greasemonkey, Stylish etc.) are on Songbird. Posting on forum now while listening to Lamb Of God at the same time

[Cool G5]

I use XMMS on Linux & Winamp on my windows system. Will try this out once I get some free time by my hand.

[Krow]

Rhythmbox FTW!

[danova]

I tried it during it's beta days in Ubuntu, was impressed then too . .the addons are different yet better.
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