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Songbird, the Firefox of media players?

junauza.com — Songbird is an open-source customizable music player that's under active development. The project ’s main aim is to create a non-proprietary, cross platform, extensible tool that will help enable new ways to playback, manage, and discover music.

made popular 47 days ago

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  • ECas123, on 11/21/2008, -14/+41Awesome jukebox. Can't figure out how to install it in Ubuntu though :(
    • motang, on 11/21/2008, -2/+11Just download the tar.gz, extract it anywhere you want. Right click on a panel and choose Custom Application Lanucher, and browse to where you extracted the data and choose file called songbird. From there you can choose the icon they provided in the directory (songbird.png) and choose a name for it. That should do that trick.
    • magicmushroom73, on 11/22/2008, -1/+34Just use the deb file here.

      http://www.getdeb.net/search.php?keywords=songbird
    • waspbr, on 11/22/2008, -2/+7just like magicmushroom73 said, go to getdeb.net download the deb file. Deb files are equivalent to .exe files in windows so, download, double click, click ok and you are done
      • Muncher, on 11/22/2008, -3/+4“Deb files are equivalent to .exe files in windows”

        No, they’re not. The closest thing in Windows would probably be MSI files, if you had to make a comparison.
      • neuroelectron2, on 11/22/2008, -1/+9I think he means it as the user equivalent not the functional equivalent, but you did win the nerd pissing contest.
      • spectre_25gt, on 11/23/2008, -0/+2"nerd pissing contest"... Right... Let's just let all incorrect information hang out there so no-one's actually able to learn. There's a big difference between an installer and a program executable.
      • waspbr, on 11/23/2008, -1/+2oh for pete's sake...
        can we stop with the dick waving competition
        People are always saying that if they want to run programs in windows they just have to double click and it is done. I am just trying to keep things simple so people can relate to what they already know. I am well aware of what a debian package is but FFS.

        I suggest Muncher and spectre take the stick off their arses and get a freaking life.
    • AnarchyIsOrder1, on 11/22/2008, -0/+7Don't dig him down. This is a perfectly valid question that people may want the answer to, like me :)
      I didn't know about getdeb.net. Thanks for the info. It was very helpful.
    • SuperMoses, on 11/22/2008, -0/+1RC3 is available for Songbird 1.0, but i was only able to find a deb for Songbird 1.0 RC2.

      https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Songbird
    • st3vo, on 11/22/2008, -0/+2ASIO not included, hopefully soon :(
    • tedhead2k, on 11/22/2008, -10/+3It's Linux, it's supposed to take you all day to install an application.
    • pogoyoyo, on 11/22/2008, -6/+4amarok > songbird
    • Midorita, on 11/22/2008, -0/+2Awesome jukebox, don't understand why the little logo bird is always farting though: http://getsongbird.com/contribute/
    • jivemasta, on 11/23/2008, -1/+1its pretty easy assuming you know a little about the terminal.
      Extract the folder somewhere say the desktop.
      then cd to the desktop and move Songbird to /usr/share/ . Then make a symbolic link to /usr/share/Songbird/songbird in /usr/bin called songbird.
      So for example
      mv Songbird /usr/share/
      cd /usr/bin
      ln -s /usr/share/Songbird/songbird songbird

      If you've ever installed firefox without a package, it's the same thing as that.
  • razorxpress, on 11/21/2008, -4/+44I tried it some 4 months ago, but removed it within an hour. I did not like when i was offline the main page showed the offline browsing page. Another feature i did not like was it did not have more and necessary preferences(settings) to impress me and leave amarok
    • leapetra, on 11/22/2008, -0/+7Same here, but tried it again. It has improved a lot. Worth another try.
      • Midnitte, on 11/22/2008, -0/+2Indeed, I use it every day and have had no problems with it. All the people complaining probably haven't tried the latest RC2. Best feature is probably the fact it tells you when artists in your library have a concert.

        Only problem with it, as others have said is no folder updating functionality. Good thing they are working on it, unlike when other developers don't even comment on such things.
  • temujin2012, on 11/21/2008, -1/+36FTA - "It's light, fast, easy-to-use, and highly-customizable."

    I wish the author had said something about large volumes of music...I'll try it when I get home, I guess.

    Still like Foobar, personally, for the exact reasons as above. Windows-only, but it handles my large library very well, has a mass tagger, freedb tagging, replaygain, ui customizations, etc. etc.
    • MrsButtersworth, on 11/22/2008, -0/+5I installed the RC1 when it was released a couple weeks ago. I loaded up my library of 12k+ songs, it was slow as mud. It consumes resources like a whore. It's junk as far as im concerned. Plus having a web browser in your media player, I wouldn't exactly call the app "light."
      • ogre2112, on 11/22/2008, -0/+112K here too. Ditto on your observations.
    • ZenFountain, on 11/22/2008, -0/+3Foobar is the only audio player that doesn't take a crap when you have a truly large music collection...but it does get a little hungry if you start adding on tons of custom panels and mods. I also love the replaygain and mass tagger features that Winamp just plain fails at.
  • dejanigma, on 11/21/2008, -4/+53My only question is, can it handle my 60k song music collection? So far the only player i've run accross that can play 60k songs on random without crashing is Winamp.

    Edit: hahaha glad someone else is thinking the same thing.
    • fatas, on 11/21/2008, -34/+7is that a compensation for something down below?
      FFS there aren't even 60,000 songs in the world worth listening to a second time.
      • Melancholiatic, on 11/22/2008, -2/+27God forbid he likes a lot of music.
      • firefly2271, on 11/22/2008, -2/+6i have over 80k and I have the same problems. winamp is the only stable player at this level

        I'll give it a go though
      • solid12345, on 11/22/2008, -1/+3"God forbid he likes a lot of music."

        Most of that music he will never hear in his entire lifetime.
    • JBrown99, on 11/22/2008, -3/+16Agreed. WinAmp is the only player I'll use because it's small & lightweight (the older versions) but it handles a ton of music really well. No bloat at all.
      • Amiga501, on 11/22/2008, -6/+1Try XM Play. It's small, faster, and with has greater format support than all versions of Winamp. It's also free from AOL *****.

        http://www.un4seen.com/xmplay.html
      • StockholmSyn, on 11/22/2008, -0/+4I use Foorbar for my collection, easy and equally lightweight really; Songbird was good, but it just couldn't handle a big music list.
    • 64705, on 11/22/2008, -2/+5Have you tried MediaMonkey? Its got a free version and says it can handle 50,000+ tracks.
    • jannefoo, on 11/22/2008, -0/+36foobar2000 can easily handle about half million tracks (yes, someone tested)
    • ChileanGoD, on 11/22/2008, -3/+40it really whips the lama's ass!
    • betona, on 11/22/2008, -0/+8While I still use it, I'm becoming less and less happy with Winamp because it's gotten so heavy and takes too long to load.
      • renegadeafk, on 11/22/2008, -0/+4winamp 5 with the new skin and all that loads in like 1-2 seconds for me....

        I actually use foobar though just because it has a better standalone last.fm plugin available for it. But winamp opens really fast for me and is definitely not bloated or slow.
      • Alchemist11, on 11/22/2008, -3/+8How do you even get 60,000 songs?
      • MrSelfDestruct, on 11/22/2008, -0/+3By deleting most of my collection?
      • mcprogrammer, on 11/22/2008, -0/+9http://thepiratebay.org/
      • MeTheDon, on 11/22/2008, -1/+1For the same reason I use only Winamp Classic 2.95. Blazing fast.
    • mojoriesen, on 11/22/2008, -7/+3Songbird is too slow for large collections.
      Winamp is too overloaded now.
      iTunes is OK, but I don't like the preferences nor most Apple products.
      Media Monkey is good once you get used to the interface.
      For my money, meaning cheap-as-free, stick with the media monkey.
      • JakeW, on 11/22/2008, -3/+9I dugg you down because iTunes is a piece of *****.
      • wazzledoozle2, on 11/22/2008, -2/+1A horrendously slow, bloated piece of ***** at that. 120+ mb of memory usage on fresh install!
      • ratsg, on 11/23/2008, -0/+3@JakeW

        What doesn't suck on m$ windoze? OTOH, iTunes is great on OS X.
    • Xaqu, on 11/22/2008, -0/+1My library is 150~ gigs and Songbird cries trying to perform, to answer your question. Some of the add-ons for it almost make it worth using (like Concert Tickets via Song-Kick)
    • LucidDr34m3r, on 11/22/2008, -0/+6Actually, if you configure Amarok to use MySQL instead of SQLite it goes much faster. I have no issues with my large collection.
    • chrono13, on 11/22/2008, -0/+3Windows: Foobar2000
      Linux: Amarok with MySQL. (it is easy, but you can google Amarok mysql to find step-by-step guides).
    • slythfox, on 11/23/2008, -0/+1Probably. As I recall it uses SQLite, which is what Firefox switched to for bookmarking. It's a lightweight, simple and relatively fast database. I wouldn't think this would be a problem at all.
  • Skyview, on 11/21/2008, -4/+25The application where you have to manually update your ENTIRE song collection every time you put mp3 in your music directory.

    • SSUK, on 11/22/2008, -1/+7They're working on live folder functionality for the final release.
    • chaos7, on 11/22/2008, -19/+5are you talking about songbird? you don't have to update your ENTIRE song collection. you should make folders for each artist. then you can just add the new folder. noob.
      • coldwind777, on 11/22/2008, -1/+2***** you, what if I don't want to make folders for each artist? What if I organize my music a different way? I shouldn't have to conform you to your music organization standards, you fascist.
      • Bkaufman, on 11/22/2008, -0/+2lol@ calling someone a fascist for telling you how to organize your mp3 files.
  • Cymrubeats, on 11/21/2008, -16/+6to answer the question...yes, assuming you think firefox is a buggy, bloated POS that adds nothing and offers less.

    Foobar2000, on the other hand...now that's the firefox of media players.
    • dogson, on 11/22/2008, -3/+8its not cross platform, so no.
    • lowtolerance, on 11/23/2008, -1/+2thanks for the tip on foobar. i'm really digging it
  • almondfilter3, on 11/22/2008, -4/+28Better than Itunes, good enough for me.
    • Taedirk, on 11/22/2008, -9/+58Reading the raw file and trying to hum the tune from the bytes is better than iTunes.
    • Radan, on 11/22/2008, -4/+16On the PC perhaps, seeing how iTunes is a complete mess there, though on the Mac it's the other way around.

      I actually tried songbird since I thought it was an interesting project, but I had to give up very early since it was just too buggy. It doesn't behave like a Mac application should either which makes it very awkward to use. Also, it doesn't have support for neither AirTunes nor the iPhone which is pretty much a deal breaker for me right there.

      Good idea, but needs a lot more work.
      • NicoNicoNico, on 11/22/2008, -0/+3Agreed. It wouldn't play anything for me on OS X, even after a couple of reinstalls. It's too buggy for the Mac atm, but I'll wait for the final release.
    • weareglass, on 11/22/2008, -0/+5I really WANT to like Songbird. But so far it's left me wanting. I want someone to come up with a list of reasons why Songbird is BETTER than iTunes. So far it just seems like a keeping-up version of iTunes plus the ability to download from blogs (which is definitely cool) and the potential for add-ons that mostly weren't there yet. I'd love to hear about what I'm probably missing though
      • Danltn, on 11/22/2008, -0/+1It has Addons for lyrics, which are extremely neatly done.
  • teotbote, on 11/22/2008, -6/+84I don't really need another media player. Winamp for music, and VLC for video. This combo works fine. I also don't need a fancy, bloated media library app. As it turns out, I'm pretty good at naming my files and folders.
    • JBrown99, on 11/22/2008, -3/+20Not sure why you're getting buried. Winamp is a great music player that does what it should - play music. No need for anything fancy. Same with VLC.
      • teotbote, on 11/22/2008, -0/+3Yeah.. some of these guys are kinda nuts when it comes to software. I just like things simple, and when I find something that works, I don't really care to change it.
    • iainc, on 11/22/2008, -10/+1Bet you drive a Trabant, too. Good for you, though. Some people are just different.
    • brianpeiris, on 11/22/2008, -1/+4Agreed. I've used winamp, foobar, rhythmbox and even tried songbird when it first came out.
      Now that I'm running Ubuntu, I use MPD (Music Player Daemon) instead of Winamp with VLC for video.
    • CHAZZER, on 11/22/2008, -0/+0I use GOM player find it plays better then VLC, less choppy and still plays everythng

      (Apollo player for music)
  • Overcyn, on 11/22/2008, -2/+5its buggy on mac. Im still trying to find a replacement for vlc + finder.
    • paulzov, on 11/22/2008, -2/+2VLC doesn't need a replacement...
      Replace finder? Try PathFinder (google it yourself lol). It's just a more powerful Finder. Not very usable though.
    • Overcyn, on 11/22/2008, -0/+1replacement as in replacement media player w/ library. because currently i have to use vlc + finder
    • AdemoS, on 11/23/2008, -0/+1VLC Replacement:
      Smplayer
      http://smplayer.sf.net

      The great subtitle support of mplayer, with a clean, efficient GUI that saves your place in each song and video when you exit.
  • sibot, on 11/22/2008, -8/+7The player still has miles to go when it comes to being stable. It's absolutely useless, deleted multiple files without even asking for my permission. Hangs without reason, cannot handle a large library of music. Epic Fail.
    • ThorHJ, on 11/22/2008, -3/+0Why do people want these huge full-screen music players? I have my files perfectly organized on disk already, thank you very much. WinAmp was my favorite while I still used Windows. Didn't like it when they started bloating it up with that Media Library crap and added video support. Why is everyone copying iTunes? Why does anyone like the iTunes media player in the first place?
  • okyourturn, on 11/22/2008, -12/+2no mac dl? lame.
  • xsquirrel378x, on 11/22/2008, -2/+17I still can't find any good reason to use these full featured new school media players. Winamp on Windows and XMMS on BSD or Linux both still have all I need, playing music files and streaming radio.
    • jadrian, on 11/22/2008, -1/+2Hey if that's all you need to be happy even mplayer on a console would do.

      Lots of people aren't happy with just that though. I like how I can drag a playlist straight from Amarok into some friend's pendrive. I like good Last.FM support. I like lots of things.
    • FriedR1ce, on 11/22/2008, -0/+2Winamp FTW
    • linuxpenguin, on 11/23/2008, -0/+2Songbird isn't just a media player. Actually Songbird is a full-on Web browser based off of Firefox's code. It's intended for "music blogs" where people/bands/labels post songs. When you go to a site, it automatically gleans the page for links to sound files and creates a playlist from the songs on the blog (or any other site you visit with links to media files - it works for video files too). Chances are that you don't know about most of these sites so the default homepage has links to several of them.

      It's like Pandora in that it helps you to *find* new music rather than just listen to what you already know about - except you find sites that tend to post music you like rather than having an algorithm pick songs for you. Personally I don't think it's a good idea to have "just one tool in the toolbox" so-to-speak. Pandora's great, Songbird's great. . . but you don't have to pick one or the other, and both are free - so why not try both?

      Choice of media players is different though. . . sounds like you prefer something that just plays music. A lot of people would rather use something like Amarok or Songbird which can help you organize your music.
  • lemur, on 11/22/2008, -5/+108I think Songbird's biggest flaw is that it's Firefox. Just try it; it's like running Firefox on your system twice and wasting a crap load of memory. The developers even talk about how awesome it is that you can install all these popular Firefox addons in Songbird. It's not even good at managing your music library.

    Songbird's other biggest flaw is that it's based on a customized version of XULRunner. XULRunner is like a "universal" runtime that many applications should be able to depend on in order to have embedded web content. Having a special fork of XULRunner defeats the purpose of XULRunner. The reason why Songbird is not packaged in major distributions such as Fedora is because they have already packaged XULRunner and don't deserve the pain of packaging special version of it to be concurrently installed just for the sake of a single application.

    I feel bad for the project because Songbird actually has a beautiful interface and is capable of doing some very interesting and cool things, but the program itself is epic design fail.
    • firefly2271, on 11/22/2008, -1/+5thanks for the info.

      that's a shame
    • chaos7, on 11/22/2008, -0/+6i do agree it's like running firefox twice. for example, passwords saved in songbird, are not saved in firefox. they should merge/fix this somehow.
    • billizm, on 11/22/2008, -0/+2I have been following SongBird since version 0.2, and I think you hit the nail on the head. I wonder if it can be saved.
    • pensivewombat, on 11/22/2008, -0/+4If it does what it's supposed to, people will use it. Nobody cares about whether the code is redundant as long as it works.
    • metalgel, on 11/22/2008, -0/+6I have 3GB of memory, i dont mind running it. its like a luxury that i can have because i can afford it. though you're right with how wasteful it is. as of right now my processes are using:

      Firefox: 240MB
      Songbird: 205MB

      thats almost 450 MB of memory just between 2 apps.
    • linuxpenguin, on 11/23/2008, -0/+2Firefox is not designed to do what Songbird does though.

      The reason the Firefox code was used is that they needed a Web-rendering engine, because that's what their media player does - you go to a site that has links to media files, and it automatically detects them and puts them in a playlist. Not to say that they couldn't have done this a better way or that they don't need to rewrite some code. . . but there is a reason they did this.

      As for running Firefox *and* Songbird. . . why would you do that? I think part of their intention was that you'd already be using what's essentially Firefox, so you could just open your sites right in Songbird as though it were Firefox.
    • BobCFC, on 11/23/2008, -0/+1The purpose of XULRunner is to make cross-platform GUIs using XML. This is why it runs on Linux, Mac and Windows.
  • FireStalker3150, on 11/22/2008, -5/+0had line between this and foobar 2000
  • Okinsley, on 11/22/2008, -5/+6eh..its ok
  • DigitalisAkujin, on 11/22/2008, -6/+14I can not imagine how anyone could possibly seriously use a full screen audio player when audio is inherently a background process. Which is why I believe Winamp Classic Skin and XMMS with global hotkeys and custom plugins is the way to go but whatever lifts your inner audiophile I guess.
    • Overcyn, on 11/22/2008, -7/+2you cant imagine?
    • ThorHJ, on 11/22/2008, -3/+2Yeah, an audio player should take up a minimal amount of screen real estate, and rest in the system tray. Anything else = bollocks.
    • snowballrx7, on 11/22/2008, -0/+3For some music is an active listening process not just a sound track to your life.
      My stereo has no TV I just sit and listen to music so I like to have as much music on my control screen as possible.
    • karan1003, on 11/22/2008, -0/+2"music is inherently a background process." - wrong
      • coldwind777, on 11/22/2008, -0/+2for a computer, I mean, it is inherently background. You don't need to see anything to get the essence of the music. A music player doesn't need to be in the foreground, it's interface can be in the background and that's just fine. I don't think he means the actual music is background, I think he means that the actual player can be in the background. That's what I thought, and believe, at least.
    • linuxpenguin, on 11/23/2008, -0/+1Except that this is partially a Web browser - which is what makes it different. It creates playlists from sites/pages you visit (if they have any links to audio files). It's also a media organizer - maybe not the best, but it is one.

      Also. . . I don't know why you'd say it's a "full screen audio player". Just don't maximize the window, and now it's not taking your full screen. Or if it really bothers you, just minimize it. That's what you do with Pandora.
  • DrLeePhD, on 11/22/2008, -0/+3So good but still seems not-quite-there.
    kinda buggy and crashy which is unacceptable. It needs easy ipod ripping support.
    Is it too much to ask for something that works as well as itunes, with ripping support,.
    on Ubuntu?

    I've tried all the options but haven't really liked any of em', However, knowing how feverishly this is being developed it could start getting good.
  • Soave, on 11/22/2008, -1/+13I hate the most emphasized feature: internet integration. I'd love a great open-source media player (Amarok for Windows soon please?), but I hate how much memory Songbird uses. I feel like most people have no use for a web-music player combo.
  • zmur, on 11/22/2008, -2/+22ever heard of foobar ?
  • MattBD, on 11/22/2008, -3/+10It would be cool if someone made a BitTorrent client that was an extension for Songbird and linked directly to The Pirate Bay or other torrent search engine, so you could have a nice integrated iTunes Store equivalent, but without having to pay!
  • bigfreakinlion, on 11/22/2008, -1/+8I'll switch if I can start syncing my iphone to songbird.
    • zwaldowski, on 11/22/2008, -0/+1Me too.
    • wiggles, on 11/22/2008, -0/+6Proprietary tie-ins like iTunes+iPod are the reason I refuse to own an iPod. My perfect player/smartphone/whatever will arrive when Android matures into a mainstream product.
      • linuxpenguin, on 11/23/2008, -0/+1I've had my iPod for probably 5 years, and I've only used iTunes a few times. You don't need iTunes for your iPod - there's many other programs which sync your music to your iPod, even for Windows.

        Including Songbird. It needs work maybe, but it's there.
      • Kyderdog, on 11/23/2008, -0/+1Stupid digg you can't delete comments with in the 4 mins
    • Syphon8, on 11/22/2008, -1/+1Uh... You can...
  • damian7, on 11/22/2008, -20/+4Winamp = Firefox
    Songbird = Google Chrome
  • booshack, on 11/22/2008, -5/+19Foobar 2000 really is the best player, especially since 9.5. As soon as the new SDK is realeased, it will be absolutely amazing I am sure. This is just one set up I have with the default ui, extremely easy and fun to set up:
    http://img523.imageshack.us/my.php?image=foobarwi3 ...

    Windows only, it's the music player for gamers i guess.
    • spyd3rweb, on 11/22/2008, -15/+3Wintendo: Foobar 2000
      Nix: Audacious or Amarok
      Mac: Who the ***** cares about mac?
      • SmellyGeekBoy, on 11/22/2008, -0/+4Mac is technically *nix...
      • renegadeafk, on 11/22/2008, -0/+8Am I the only one that hates amarok? it's gui is terrible. I prefer Banshee/Rhythmbox to amarok any day.
    • chaos7, on 11/22/2008, -1/+1what's the minus sign at the very left of your taskbar?
      • booshack, on 11/22/2008, -0/+2The start button ofcourse! It's just a custom visual style, by lasse kongo on deviantart.
      • Alchemist11, on 11/22/2008, -0/+4Oh my...I had the very same visual style. Lasse Kongo is great.
    • MonkCanatella, on 11/22/2008, -0/+1Does foobar have a lyrics plugin by any chance? I've been wanting to get it, but I can't find any lyrics plugin better than winamps integrated browser that automatically searches for lyrics.

      Secondly, is there an editable now playing list like winamp's? I hated it at first, but I can't live w/o it now. I've also found a plugin which allows you to search you currently playing playlist and play the song you were looking for, no problem.

      That would be the only thing keeping me from foobar atm
      • booshack, on 11/22/2008, -0/+1I've never really been interested in a lyrics plugin myself, but afaik it's not yet possible to do with the new default ui - you can get some basic functionality with the text display plugin by foosion, but nothing like automatic lyrics downloads and such. Then you need to go foobar 9.5.3 and get a panels/coloumnsui setup with a lyrics panel. I am sure there is a plugin that satisfies your needs, including your specific playlist requirements.

        http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?show ...
    • Kenelm, on 11/22/2008, -0/+1I like it oldschool: http://i33.tinypic.com/nvs5sx.png
  • livejamie, on 11/22/2008, -6/+1I like Billy, it's the lighest media player I've ever used and it naively supports last.fm as well - I use it instead of Foobar, it's even lighter! :)
    http://www.sheepfriends.com/?page=billy

    If Billy is too minimalistic for somebody's tastes, I find that Aimp2 blows away everything else out of the water - it's way slick - and light as well!
    http://www.aimp.ru/index.php?action_skin_change=ye ...
    • livejamie, on 11/22/2008, -0/+1lol, why am I getting dugg down :/
  • raisedinhell, on 11/22/2008, -7/+14tried songbird.. winamp 5.5 ***** all over it
  • jmccrohan, on 11/22/2008, -4/+9Foobar wins hands down.
  • hiro, on 11/22/2008, -4/+18Dumb headline. Why not "Google docs, the Google Maps of spreadsheets"?
    • valrus, on 11/22/2008, -1/+0"Safari, the Firefox of Apple-made web browsers!"
  • ErhanBd, on 11/22/2008, -1/+5Banshee is cool if you're managing a huge media library.
    • skatoolaki, on 11/22/2008, -1/+2That sounds promising - can anyone tell me more about Banshee? I'm searching for a good music player since Windows Media Player crapped out on me.
      • ErhanBd, on 11/24/2008, -0/+1not sure if banshee's available on win. i'm using it on linux
  • ommadawn, on 11/22/2008, -2/+4The only player you'd need on Linux is mpd (with your client of choice), too bad it's a bitch to set up.
    http://mpd.wikia.com/wiki/Music_Player_Daemon_Wiki
    • dooooo, on 11/22/2008, -0/+1It's not that hard .
      1) Edit /etc/mpd.conf # the file is full of comments to help you configure it right . If you feel puzzled , just provide the path of your library in the 'music_directory' line .

      2) run 'mpd --create-db' to create the database .

      done . you only have to do it once .
  • Amiga501, on 11/22/2008, -11/+31,500 file playlist, consumed 142 megs of memory, uninspired interface, typical OSS stupidity.
    • SmellyGeekBoy, on 11/22/2008, -5/+6Because commercial software never has a ***** interface and eats all your memory?

      *cough* Vista *cough*
  • d4rkst0rmz, on 11/22/2008, -10/+4its good software but it does not compare to itunes
    • passedoutghost, on 11/22/2008, -1/+14What, you're saying iTunes is better?

      Each time I open up iTunes it consumes 400,000+ mb of memory and makes my system lag. And then after that Cover Flow will refuse to work properly and I can't even edit the metadata because when the window appears, it's completely blank. I wish I didn't have to use iTunes, but it seems that it's pretty good at getting album artwork without too much of a hassle. And I don't like staring at a generic picture while looking through the songs on my iPod.
      • c89a, on 11/22/2008, -0/+6only 400,000+ mb? i thought it was more than that
      • ChrisTek, on 11/22/2008, -0/+4My iTunes has never used 400GB of memory, maybe you're just doing it wrong.
      • zeabu, on 11/23/2008, -0/+3Most Europeans use a comma instead of a point, and since passedoutghost didn't share us his location, we should not pick on that.
      • ChrisTek, on 11/28/2008, -0/+1@zeabu: But why would you type 400.000, you would just type 400, no?
  • tomjowitt, on 11/22/2008, -1/+11It's a good player but not good enough to ditch Amarok for.
  • Knivez, on 11/22/2008, -1/+6"It's light, fast, easy-to-use, and highly-customizable. Plus, it is fairly stable even though it is still in beta"
    Is must be a different songbird, because last time i tried it it was slow, bloated and buggy as hell.
    • gnomon, on 11/23/2008, -0/+1For a good 3/4 of those criteria Cog does the trick (On OS X).
  • Philbert, on 11/22/2008, -8/+1Misleading title, I was expecting something that would play video as well.
    • gamepr0, on 11/22/2008, -1/+6it playes video you noob,
      try before you whine
      • Philbert, on 11/23/2008, -0/+1I'm sorry I just read the article, which called it an audio player.
      • jivemasta, on 11/23/2008, -0/+1I think they are taking video playing out for the 1.0 release. It was terribly buggy.
  • c89a, on 11/22/2008, -4/+7is it just me or does it look identical to itunes?
  • computershack, on 11/22/2008, -5/+4Songbird offers nothing new but brings a whole world of pain with it. Tries to be iTunes and fails spectacularly.
  • robinthehood, on 11/22/2008, -2/+11i love what songbird is doing but they have 2 major flaws:

    1. a media/music player should not have an integrated browser, that's what firefox is for.
    2. they still haven't figured out MTP support in Linux.

    Until they figure both of those out, songbird gets a fail from me.
    • chaos7, on 11/22/2008, -1/+6i agree they should remove the integrated browser from songbird. it should just open up the default browser instead.
    • secrity, on 11/22/2008, -1/+2I find it odd that the MTP plugin requires XP and media player. Is there more to the incompatibility?
      • robinthehood, on 11/22/2008, -0/+2that plugin is for Windows. I said MTP support in Linux.
      • secrity, on 11/22/2008, -0/+2I understand that the plugin is not for Linux, I was wondering if there was a particular reason that MTP would only work with Windows.
  • Pelikoira, on 11/22/2008, -2/+21Amarok is still best music player.
    • morphie, on 11/22/2008, -6/+3and the ugliest
    • Zounas, on 11/22/2008, -0/+4Last week I changed to Linux and I gotta admit: it is best music player I've used.
    • DrLeePhD, on 11/22/2008, -2/+1it definitely is ugly though.
  • chaos7, on 11/22/2008, -2/+16the windows version of itunes SUCKS
    • Jake10, on 11/22/2008, -2/+1Um, excuse my ignorance but... why, exactly?
    • kronix2, on 11/22/2008, -0/+1Have you ever used it, Jake10? Ridiculously laggy, dies with massive media libraries, uses 400mb of RAM for normal operation, shoots up to 900mb when I try to close the *****.

      The only legitimate use for iTunes on Windows is syncing iPods and using the built-in album art downloader.
  • katejohn, on 11/22/2008, -4/+0The application where you have to manually update your ENTIRE song collection every time you put mp3 in your music directory.
  • chaos7, on 11/22/2008, -0/+4songbird has a new icon in the latest builds..the bird is orange now
  • S68x, on 11/22/2008, -6/+2iTunes uses 400GB of memory? And it runs? I want your computer.
  • globetrotterdk, on 11/22/2008, -2/+2Where is the PPC support for Mac OS X? This really blows.
  • auralvance, on 11/22/2008, -3/+6If anyone is interested:

    Songbird 0.7 Fedora RPM's are located here: http://www.digitalruin.net/node/42
    Songbird 0.7 Ubuntu DEB's are located here: http://www.getdeb.net/app/Songbird
    • DrLeePhD, on 11/22/2008, -0/+1sudo apt-get install songbird
    • benow, on 11/24/2008, -0/+0I highly suggest going with a newer build. Download, extract to opt and create a launcher. The 1.0rc's are much nicer.
  • MachineMessiah, on 11/22/2008, -1/+3Well it IS another animal name, so...
  • hi2u2, on 11/22/2008, -1/+5Surprised more people haven't heard of it.
    Use it, love it.
  • newdigger, on 11/22/2008, -1/+2No FoxyTunes support was a deal breaker. Back to foobar.
  • InspectorGadget, on 11/22/2008, -3/+12Linux: Amarok > Songbird.
    Windows: Foobar2000, Winamp, Media Monkey > Songbird.
    • T8erT0T, on 11/22/2008, -0/+3I use Media Monkey for its auto-tag feature from Amazon.com (ctrl+L) and its rename feature (ctrl+R). That's the only thing I use it for.
      Does anyone know of another program that can essentially do both for either windows or a linux distro?
  • jaredh999, on 11/22/2008, -8/+2Winamp=open source, lite, intelligent, fast. I'll never change!
    • T8erT0T, on 11/22/2008, -0/+9Way to party like it's 1999.
      P.S: She's not open source. Free? yes. Open? Nah brosky.
      • v1ctor, on 11/22/2008, -0/+1Agreed. I used to use Winamp when I used Windows prior to my linux migration 4 years ago. It was light back then, but now when i use it on my work computer, it seems like it's become bloated with a lot of on-line features. I just gave up and switched back to WMPlayer at work.
    • MrCoke, on 11/22/2008, -0/+3winamp really isnt any of those things, but again, its the only media player that will handle my 120gb music collection
  • criaturaw, on 11/22/2008, -2/+3No. The media player from firefox.
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