Songbird, a nifty new Web browser and media player -- and iTunes killer?
 |
Mozilla.
Since songbird is a web browser in addition to a media player, users can browse web sites and find music to play: If audio files are embedded in the site, they will be displayed separately and can be played, downloaded, included in playlists, etc
Here is some background on the company's founder, digital-music veteran Rob Lord. And judging from his interesting profile, his team, which numbered only five as recently as December, is based in Santa Cruz, just south of the hills cordoning off Silicon Valley.
Gee, will this thing really kill iTunes, as people are saying? The company's actual name is ambitious: Pioneers of the Inevitable. Songbird is the name of the product.
Click on the thumbnail below for example of screenshot you get when you first load it. And have fun!
http://www.siliconbeat.com/cgi-bin/mt331/mt-tb.cgi/1113
Links to blogs that reference this entry:
Cerf lobbies Senate (and Trek UI)
Excerpt: In today's IT Blogwatch, we look at network neutrality. Not to mention is it art or is it a Star Trek UI? ...
Tracked: February 9, 2006 5:48 AM
Songbird, il web browser musicale
Excerpt: Agli inizi c'era il web browser poi si aggiunse un media player nacque Songbird. Pare che chi abbia provato il nuovo software sia rimasto particolarmente affascinato, oltre che dalla gradevole interfaccia, dalle funzionalit del prodotto e, sempr...
Tracked: February 15, 2006 10:47 AM
It's definitely slick but until it supports Ipod it'll never be a contender.
Ryan on February 8, 2006 10:46 AMComment link
Ryan, agreed that iPod support is key. But I will say that Songbird has the potential to be an iTunes-slayer for one reason, one word, three syllables: Ex-ten-sions. Imagine if something like Greasemonkey were ever developed for a competent, itunes-like client like Songbird. Think of all the functionality.
Mmmm...functionality. :::drool:::
Seriously, though, I feel like this could become something pretty big - at least as big a competitor to iTunes as Firefox is to IE.
Daniel A. Munz on February 8, 2006 11:08 AMComment link
Songbird is a truly remarkable effort in its own right, and so calling it an itunes killer (as I keep reading everywhere) has only managed to turn leagues of McUsers against the whole idea of Songbird. That is sad, in a way. There is no need to kill itunes in order to be an excellent development. Songbird by its very nature as an opensource project based on Mozilla sets it apart from itunes in so many ways, that i honestly don't see them as competing in the same ballpark. And songbird can only continue to get more and more birlliant, what with the extension system. It has already become my main audio media application, and it's not even quite at alpha 0.2!!
But then, for me itunes was (thankfully) dead the moment i discovered a working ipud shuffle plugin for winamp, and that nifty ipud database builder on sourceforge, so I am really approaching Songbird from a fresh perspective rather than looking to it for an itunes replacement. And it definitely seems that some people don't want itunes to be killed, judging by the ire of the McUsers' comments at Digg regarding the use of the 'itunes killer' term.
And that is perfecly fine, because if it works for them, great!
Can't wait to see how Songbird develops. Thanx for spreading the word.
Comment link
