whichwayup.org

10/05/06 11:23 PM: Test Drive: Songbird 0.2

Over the past few months I’ve found myself in a bit of a jam. My primary computers are now Windows machines. Both my PC at work, and my laptop at home. Unfortunately my Titanium G4 Powerbook is out of commission, and while I also have an older G4 400Mhz desktop… I don’t use it on a daily basis (other than to store my music, and it’s hooked up to the aux input on my stereo).

Back in the day, I used to use Winamp and manually keep my files organized. Of course, after using a Mac for several years, I became accustomed to all of the features in iTunes. So of course, I gave iTunes for Windows a try. Not a huge fan. Personally, I don’t think the GUI translates very well, but aside from that it was sluggish and it just didn’t work as well as I wanted.

Then I discovered Songbird. It’s an open source media player, based on the Mozilla code that powers applications such as Firefox. I thought I’d give it a try.

Songbird is only on verson 0.2 (“Test Flight”), so I didn’t expect much. A lot of features I would really like are not there. It doesn’t provide library organization (yet, and yes, I understand some people don’t want that… but it would be a nice option). It also is missing a few things such as the ability to reorder items on a playlist. But, it shows promise. It also integrates with a ton of online music resources and stores, and while I don’t use that functionality, it’s still kind of cool.

I’m hoping by version 1.0 it will truly be an open source iTunes killer. I am a bit worried about the future of iTunes. A friend of mine predicted that by iTunes version 10, it will only play music files with DRM. I potentially see that as a real possibility. We’ll see. I also just like the idea of an open source player.

Other options include Foobar2000 but it lacks the pretty GUI that I’ve gotten used to.

Anyhow, if you’re curious, I suggest giving Songbird a whirl. It probably won’t replace your current music player, but it’s interesting.