Songbird To Build Out Music Power-Browser
Songbird is a desktop music player I've been using lately instead of iTunes and I've really been enjoying it. Based at core on Mozilla technology, this week the company kicked off a 6 week campaign to build the 40 most-requested Firefox extensions for Songbird. This big burst of functionality could put Songbird over the edge as a music-lover's dream-come-true, though it's pretty close already.
The core feature at Songbird is integration with MP3 blogs. When you are on a page with MP3s on it, Songbird lets you download any of the songs to your desktop with a single click. A friend described it to me today as "HypeMachine for the desktop" and that's not a bad way of explaining it. It also syncs with an iPod.
The company is backed by Sequoia Capital, the funders of Google and YouTube, and though the product has had "developer releases" available for almost 2 years - it's not really offered as a public product yet. No matter, you can and should try it out now. Alex Iskold wrote here about the product's desktop/web blend in February.
I've been using Songbird as my media player, Flock 1.0 as my browser and Ma.gnolia as my bookmarking service for awhile now - all of them are startups that are innovating rapidly, pushing the envelope on features and bringing the age of Open Data. It feels good to use these services.
Anyone who can is invited to port extensions to Songbird, whether they are the owner or originator or not. The campaign will include a 2 day Songbird hackfest in San Francisco mid-month.
Extending the Bird
The new Top 40 program should help Songbird grow in feature-richness by leaps and bounds. The extensions on the list for porting over look really interesting in the context of music discovery. Some of them are things that, to be honest, I have found relatively uninspiring as Firefox extensions. Put them in the specific context of music discovery, though, and they take on a whole new meaning.
Here are a few I'm most excited to see become available.
AllPeers - filesharing between friends makes more sense in the context of music discovery and consumption than it does almost anywhere else.
BlueOrganizer - this semantic analysis tool generates a cloud of ancillary data and links around anything you're looking at online. Again, zeroing in on the context of music discovery makes BlueOrganizer more compelling than it is for me on the wide-open web. (Disclosure: Alex Iskold, the CEO of Adaptive Blue, makers of BlueOrganizer, is a frequent contributor here at RWW - and he's one of the nicest, smartest people in the industry.)
Del.icio.us Bookmarkes - A must have if this is to flirt with "music browser" status.
Me.dium - another browser add-on that generally makes no sense to me at all in the web-at-large. Do I want to see what my pages my friends are looking at around the web in real-time, in general? No, I don't. When it comes to music sites? Now you're talking.
These are just a few of the Songbird Top 40, the whole list is here.
Readers here may also appreciate an interview Om Malik posted last month with the Rob Lord, one of the guys behind Songbird.
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interesting post...i don't know this software...
Posted by: gnoma | January 3, 2008 12:44 PM
Songbird is great, but has a lot of bugs. In addition, the production team moves entirely too slow.
I'd like to use it again, but it's just too buggy.
Posted by: James Thomas | January 3, 2008 1:04 PM
Let's hope someone comes up with an extension that removes all the unnecessary crap that gets in the way of this great music manager and player.
If I want to search music blogs, imdb, torrent sites or whatever, I'm more than happy to do that within my favoured browser NOT my minimal, functional music player.
The Songbird website asks: "wutsinitforme?"
Absolutely nothing except a bloated and more complicated client that *will* develop more problems than concentrate on improving the user experience.
*sheesh*
Where do these folks get off?
Posted by: HeavyLight | January 3, 2008 1:10 PM
Songbird is fantastic... In theory.
Unfortunately i'm going to go with the "too many bugs" analysis given by a few other commentors.
That being said, I think that it's a little unfair to suggest that it would stay this way. Mainly because it's still really there for developers. I expect that in 6 months it will either be up to scratch or a little past due.
Flock feels incredibly similar in this sense, where for a while it seemed to have massive potential but then just kind of didn't get itself together quick enough and the hype it generated just started to plateau a bit too much.
Posted by: Mr. Crash | January 3, 2008 1:32 PM
(full disclosure, I work for Songbird)
@James: We definitely took some flack for how long it took to go from 0.2.5 to 0.3, but please keep in mind that update also went from Gecko 1.8 to 1.9 (to put that in perspective, think of how long it's taken Firefox to do that same engine update from Firefox 2 to Firefox 3). Now that we're at 1.9, we're moving considerably faster (we put 0.4 out about 3 months after 0.3).
@HeavyLight: Sure, to each his own. The beauty of Songbird as a platform is that it can be both. Compare and contrast the full-featured "heavy"/rich interface of the default Songbird install that exposes things like the browser, music search, etc. with a Feather/skin like this one:
http://www.songbirdnest.com/node/2457
Which does away with all that and presents a clean and simple interface.
But yeah, if all you're looking for is a staid media player that does nothing more than play music files you give it - then sure, Songbird may not be your cup of tea. Apps like Winamp, XMMS, etc. arguably perfected that a while ago.
@Mr.Crash: Yup, we're looking to target a consumer ready 1.0 release this summer. We've gone to great lengths to make the point that we're not ready for prime time yet. We're definitely a developer preview. There are bugs. It will crash on you. What we'd like to do is hear about your crashes and to get the crash reports... we spend easily half of each development cycle trying to squash bugs and get the player in shape for a 1.0 release.
Posted by: stevel | January 3, 2008 9:32 PM
SamePlace is the extension that would most benefit Songbird users. SamePlace would allow users, for example, to chat and share playlists with their social network.
Posted by: Nick Vidal | January 4, 2008 7:57 AM
Although I use Mozilla for my browser, this is the first time I've heard of Songbird. I'm using iTunes right now for my iPod player so maybe this program is worth checking out. Besides, the logo is too adorable to pass up on. Who knows? I might just switch since I'm using a pc and not a Mac anyway.
Posted by: jen_chan, writer SureFireWealth.com | January 4, 2008 9:26 AM
@Nick: Yeah, I think SamePlace would be killer (which is why I'm glad to see it was picked up by the author who is working on Songbird support now)
@jen_chan: Minor correction. He's our mascot, not our logo. :)
Posted by: stevel | January 4, 2008 9:32 AM
I downloaded, installed, and played songbird for a little while. Nice interface, but it froze on me a couple of times, crashed some other times.
As with any alpha or beta software, this might be expected. My only concern is that since it is based on Firefox and XUL, does it not inherit by default Firefox's questionable memory management? And does that add to its occasional instability?
I'll keep an eye on it for sure. And yes, I would love to replace iTunes (for locking the user down to its own method of organizing our music files alone).
Rahim
Posted by: Rahim Taliesin Snow | January 4, 2008 3:28 PM
I've been hoping Songbird would improve over the years, but whenever I try it it's slow/buggy/sluggish - just not the experience I get with something like Rhythbox. Yes, I love the fact that you can 'browse' mp3 sites, and scrape mp3s to the iPod (I've discovered plenty of bands this way), but after using it on my desktop I usually tire of waiting for it to do things. It's a good example of a great idea, and a good product stymied by not being open source.
Having said that, I will try it again tonight on my new laptop, and will continue to hope it reaches its potential eventually.
Posted by: fak3r | January 7, 2008 10:45 AM