Windows/Mac/Linux: Songbird, the open-source media player built on Mozilla code, has reached a feature-complete release candidate stage, meaning you can take a look at how the 1.0 release will look and feel before any remaining bugs are knocked down. New since the 0.7 beta is the use of the GStreamer backend on every platform, to improve reliability and extendability, support for WMA, AAC, and Ogg Vorbis media files, drag-and-drop album artwork management, and the ability to use existing smart playlists as the default rules for new smart playlists. There’s a bunch of other improvements and efficiencies, so feel free to grab a copy and see what’s new before the player’s official release. Songbird is a free download for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux systems. Songbird Nightly Builds [via Download Squad]
It seems like a lot of people might grumble about iTunes but they keep using it. But a Wired piece on open source music player Songbird caught my eye yesterday. Built on the Mozilla platform, it’s aiming to be as customisable as Firefox, and describes itself as a “desktop media player mashed up with the web”.
What does this mean? Songbird was designed for people to be able to access music from the web as well as from their own computer’s music collection. So it includes a web browser for streaming and downloading music. When you navigate to a page which has embedded music on it, Songbird will display a simple playlist window of all the available music on that page so you don’t need to hunt for the links. Nice.
I’m curious, and I’m downloading it right now as I type. If you’ve tried Songbird, I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on it.
Songbird Music Player Challenges iTunes with Major Update [Wired]
