10 Things Songbird Does That iTunes Can’t
Songbird turned 1.0 this week, and aims to do to iTunes what Firefox did to Internet Explorer. That is, it aims to take the basic design of something closed and proprietary, and turn it into something open and extensible and fun. Songbird aims to give the power back to the people.
Appearing in February 2006, Songbird is five years younger than Apple’s iTunes, and does not yet match it feature for feature. iPod support, album artwork, podcast support and stability are considered beta features and need improving. CD ripping, watching folders for changes and video support are all still coming.
However, Songbird’s unique features make it a great media player in the Web 2.0 world. It is a flexible tool that belongs in the toolkit of any musician who explores new music online. In particular, the way it works with music-related websites and blogs greatly interests me. Songbird has completely changed the way I think about discovering and playing music online.
1. Tabbed Browsing
Like most of today’s web browsers, Songbird comes with tabs. If you can only listen to one song at a time, you might wonder about the point of trying to multi-task within a media player. So far I have found the tabs much more useful than I expected.
With my song library open in one tab, I’ve been able to change settings, install add-ons, explore feathers and surf the web in other tabs. The tabs are also used effectively for displaying photos and YouTube videos of the currently playing artist.
2. Feathers (Themes or Skins)
Songbird is based on Firefox, and shares many of its strengths, including themes, which Songbird calls “feathers”. A variety of feathers are already available, including some nice dark themes, an iTunes-like one, and a Vista Aero look.
As Songbird takes off, I’m sure many hundreds will be created by the user community. This feature alone will give Songbird appeal to those who value creativity and individuality.
3. Add-ons (Extensions)
If Songbird doesn’t do what you want, you can always install or write an add-on. Some of the add-ons that are currently available include:
- LyricMaster, which displays lyrics so you can sing along. I’m waiting for someone to create a chord chart add-on.
- MediaFlow, which is similar to Apple’s Coverflow.
- iPod Device Support, which seemed to work very well when I tested it on a friend’s iPod earlier in the year.
- LiveTweeter, which adds support for Twitter, MSN/Windows Live Messenger, Pidgin and Mercury.
- Last.fm Album Art, which may save hours of fiddling.
4. Turn a Web Page Into a Playlist
Songbird includes an integrated web browser based on Firefox, with features like bookmarking and tabbed browsing. A unique feature of the browser is that any playable music files on the page appear in a playlist at the bottom of the screen.
This makes Songbird an excellent tool for exploring new music online, especially when combined with the subscription feature mentioned below. The playlist also allows for easy downloading of songs.
5. Subscribe to MP3 Blogs as Playlists
When you right-click on the page as you view a music-related blog, you’ll see “Subscribe to this page” as an option. Click on this, and you’ll get a chance to choose which folder to save the blog’s music into, and how often Songbird should check the site. After subscribing, the page will appear as a playlist, and new songs will be downloaded to the specified folder automatically.
6. Display Media Related to the Currently Playing Artist
Songbird’s Mashtape feature allows you to discover Flickr photos, YouTube videos, Last.fm biographies, Google news (and more) for the currently playing artist. The Mashtape pane appears under your playlist. It contains tabs for artist info, news, photos and videos.
- The artist info page contains a short biography, discography, tag roll and web links from Last.fm. Clicking on any links in this section opens a new tab containing the relevant Last.fm page.
- News is aggregated from a number of sources via RSS, including Google News, Hype Machine and Digg.
- The Flickr photo stream scrolls smoothly across the screen. Clicking on an individual photo opens the Flickr page in a new tab.
- The videos are related to the currently playing artist, but not the currently playing song. Clicking on a YouTube video link opens a new tab in Songbird where your video is played.
7. Play a Wide Range of Media Codecs
Songbird supports MP3, FLAC, and Vorbis on all platforms; WMA and WMA DRM on Windows; and AAC and Fairplay on Windows and Mac. I’m by no means a fan of DRM, but the fact that Songbird can play protected files will make it much more usable to some. Add-ons allow the playback of DirectShow and Audible media formats.
8. Better Last.fm Integration
If you haven’t heard of Last.fm yet, sign up for an account today. Last.fm collects a list of every song you play (plugins are available for most media players), recommends songs you may like, and introduces you to people who have similar musical taste. It also allows you to stream a very large collection of music. Besides submitting your played songs to Last.fm’s database, Songbird also allows you to scrobble, love, and ban your tracks directly from the program.
9. Purchase Concert Tickets
If you purchase your concert tickets online (and who doesn’t), you may find Songbird’s integrated Songkick helpful. From within Songbird, you can search for concerts available in your area, and purchase the ticket there and then. Songkick services the US, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
10. Run It On Linux
Last, but not least, Songbird works on Linux and related operating systems. Yes, I admit that I’m a geek. Like iTunes, it supports Mac and Windows too, which should also keep the rest of you happy.
Make Sure You Look Good in Songbird
Consider how people using Songbird to listen to your music will perceive you. You can use Songbird’s rich media experience to improve the image of your music and band.
- Use a direct, unobscured link to the MP3 files on your website so that the mini-playlist will appear at the bottom of your screen when viewed in Songbird.
- Add your band to Last.fm, including a good description and photos, and consider uploading some of your music. This way, when playing your music, Songbird will have something to display, and you won’t come off looking like you’re unknown. Near the bottom of the main page you’ll see a link “Do you make music? Upload it!” which will get you started.
- If you’re part of a gigging band, make sure your gigs are scheduled in Songkick’s database. That way, when you’re playing in someone’s area one Friday night, they’ll have an extra way to find you. The “Add new concert” link on their home page is pretty hard to miss.
Have you tried Songbird yet? Please share your thoughts.
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Comments
Adrian
Adrian is writer and editor for Audiotuts+ and the AudioJungle blog. He has been playing keys and acoustic guitar for three decades, and has six kids. Follow him on Twitter at @audiotuts.
Three years of development to get to 1.0 and it still crashes in OS X.
Beta iPod support? Uhhh why? Did they not get the memo?
And…..fail.
I tried Songbird, I am not impressed. The thing does not do some of the most basic of tasks. A memory hog and crashes like a drunk. This thing does not touch iTunes yet. Will check it out in 5 years.
I have using songbird over a while for now. It’s awesome
WOW… the AudioJungle community is grewing so fast, and now its so big, incredible, welcome all
Things iTunes does that Songbird can’t:
1 Manage podcasts
2 Manage iPods beyond the 5G video
3 Manage iPhones
4 Genius automatic playlists
2-3 aren’t a big deal for me, but #1 is a dealbreaker.
Thanks to everyone for their comments.
I’m not yet using Songbird as my main audio player – Amarok still plays that role. But it’s a great second player, especially when listening to music on the web. I have set it up as the main audio player for iTunes users who migrated to Linux, and most of them seem very happy with Songbird. The iPod add-on is pretty good.
@Smelly – I’m amused that someone called “Smelly” is worrying that the bird is farting. I did wonder the same myself.
@chris, VideoEditing, tom – I’m sure that Podcast support (as most people think of it) will improve over time. I’m not a user of the iTunes store, and think of a podcast as an MP3 in an RSS feed. For me, Songbird already handles podcasts very well. Just use the web browser to go to the website with the RSS feed for the podcast, right click, and subscribe.
@anonymouse – visualizations are coming.
Broken podcasts was a dealbreaker for me too.. I don’t understand why they ship with this feature broken… just leads to frustration and wasted time.
I tried Songbird after reading all these features, and it sounded amazing. But I hated it and am going back to iTunes. The only thing I will miss is the SHOUTcast plugin, but I can live with that.
10 Things that iTunes Does That Songbird Can’t*
———————————————————-
01. Automatically organize Music Library – rename tags and files will be automatically renamed and reorganized
02. Responsive GUI for 30000+ songs / Performance and Stability
03. Scrobble iPod playlists
04. Get Artwork from iTunes Store
05. Genius Playlists
06. CD Ripping
07. Equalizer
08. Manage iPods beyond the 5G video (Tom)
09. Manage Pocasts (Tom)
10. Manage iPhone (Tom)
*without extensions
i love songbird
it has no EQ, no visualizer, no Rip, no Podcast…
it takes 100MB of RAM
yet, I use it
because it plays the best, shows lyrics the best
(with EQ and enhancers, my winamp sounds no better, so EQ is not even needed)
Songbird is a BRILLIANT player. Its sheer volume of customizable features and sleekness renders it hands-down the best media player ever, in my opinion.
And in response to the comment regarding the lack of guitar chords add-ons- There is an add-on for that now, using the Songsterr database. Songsterr is fairly limited overall, but its online tab-playing capabilities are very cool, and worth checking out.
It is still lacking a bit and I think it may have to do with memory usage, but I find you can get Songbird to stall whilst playing songs like Mediaplayer 10 (was it that one) would. I find if I am playing songbird and am on the net or anything else and I use the scroll wheel and hit the limits songbird will physically stop playing music for a second or two. I don’t know if it is a buffer issue or just my computer, but this doesn’t happen with iTunes or Mediaplayer 11.
But I will keep it on my computer and use it from time to time until they solve this issue. If I go full Linux on my laptop, it will be a definite though.
The top thing that songbird does that iTunes doesn’t is crash. It might be one of the most unstable programs I’ve ever run on my mac. It has some fantastic features, but it needs work.
I find it kind of frustrating that when I run Songbird on Linux it acts like I’m running it in Wine or something (It isn’t GNOME native or something, the window acts weird).
Going to have to agree with McoreD on this one, sadly. If I can’t EQ, then there’s no point.
If I can’t rip into FLAC (or at least Apple’s proprietary shit[ALAC], since it’s being compared to iTunes) then it’s not worth it.
Can’t manage my iPhone, not worth it it. Honestly, what’s the point of this? Why release it as 1.0 when it can’t do the basic things needed to make it a decent contender?
what songbird cant do but itunes can is Supporting iphone, backing it up, installing application. it means I am always stuck with my iTunes!
I liked songbird but was put off by slow loading times and no gap-less playback
I wonder why Songbird is worrying about “features”. If you want to compete with iTunes then you need to take their basic functionality and make it better. This includes things like iPhone/iPod support. Honestly do people care all that much that you can skin Songbird? It just another feature that could break and that they have to maintain.
Played around with both, but I’ll be sticking to itunes for the moment – it’s much cleaner and steadier, integrates better visually with my mac. The feathers for songbird all felt a bit lacking, and I didn’t like the positioning of some of the elements.
Don’t forget, iTunes is a slob when it comes to software, at first I thought Adobe was making it, Adobe iTunes, GEESH who taught these guys how to program, when did A 500 GB harddrive become a requirement for software!
@Krushemall: You do not require a 500GB hard drive in order to run iTunes.
Many of the things in your list that you say can’t be done in iTunes actually can be: extensions, “mp3 blogs”, play a wide range of media codecs (anything that QuickTime can handle, and QuickTime is exensible with plug-ins too), last.fm integration (via an itunes extension), artist related type things (though to be fair, probably not as nice as Mashtape). That was off the top of my head. So that leaves tabbed browsing in my media player, skins, and ability to purchase concert tickets. Ehhh. I use Linux for my work, but I don’t think I need need to run my entire life on it to call myself a geek.
But, I find Songbird slower! I don’t know why.. I am using Vista Home on my laptop.
Songbird is a nice concept, but to me it has two main disadvantages. First, last time I tried it, it was a slow peice of software. I think this was mainly because of the XUL engine, which is very heavy and also, in my opinion, is what makes Firefox way too slow. Second; the whole idea of integrating a browser into your media player is stupid if you ask me. We have browsers dedicated to this and they do it better. A media player should do one thing; play media.
(Also, FLAC is kind of pointless, but that’s a whole other discussion)
in the end, itunes is a very fast and reliable pice of softeware that provides a very usable and easy to work with interface. it is free to download and works better than any other media player. I think that their should be changable skins but i also think that will be a new feature on a version in the near future.
This songbird is a great idea, but i don’t see how it’s availability is any different to itunes
what I just hate about i-tunes is that it takes so much ram from my computer its AWFUL! does songbird needs less memory or it is about the same ?
thanks
Songbird is my homegirl. We rock n’ roll all night, and party everyday.
for reals.
I like songbird so much more than iTunes, and now that it’s finally out of Beta and into the real world, I like it even more. I recommend it to anyone who likes to sink their teeth into the music world, as it makes downloading songs and finding new music amazingly easy. It’s pretty freakin hardcore.
The program is still a bit glitchy, but what it lacks in program fluency, it makes up for in awesome add-ons. love it
while i do agree that it needs work (eq, visualizer, podcast stuff) none of this makes any difference to me. ive never had it crash once, (and im using an 8 year old IBM thinkpad) and it plays music more reliably than ive ever had itunes do. my itunes (which is the newest version) would add breaks and skips to even the simplest of songs while performing no other tasks. ive never had songbird do this.
the ability to manage my library (such as removing ghosts and clones) were also a major plus.
the lyricsmaster add on and built in browser app is a great feature, making it so i dont even need to open firefox (which is handy on this old beast). i realize it has its shortcomings, but lets be serious, most of those have to do with your OS and less to do with songbird. of course it doesnt run as smoothly on a mac as itunes. but i dont own a mac, nor will i ever want to (unreliable pieces of junk, imho). I dont want to have to have add on corporate bullshit (such as quicktime) weighing down my computer. I realize its a bit heavy on memory right now, but come on, this is only 1.0. I have full support in this project, and am using songbird as my main media player.
and to be clear, almost all discrepancies pointed out above are being integrated into future versions (such as cd ripping, equalizers, visualizers, etc). so just hang on to your socks and wait for this great media player to get better.
also forgot to mention built in internet radio and seeqpod integration make this the hands down winner over any media player in my book.
love songbird, only thing i dislike: no support for iphone or ipod touch..
I have been using songbird now for several weeks & putting it through its paces. It occasionally locks up, very occasionally. it shares music across the network very well using a NAS as the music library, what I would like to see is the play list information on one PC shared to all PC’s on the network. The CD ripping is no big deal, Podcasts would be great, but I’m sure these features will all come very soon. Great work from the dev team at songbird. Well done!
One thing that Songbird needs to sort out is reading & writting metadata to WAV files.
As for the iPhone or any Apple devices, I dont really care much for the songbird conectivity to these devices. You own an Apple product, you should use Apple software, that is the joy of owning PROPRIETRY products. Although songbird is being compared to iTunes it is not a replacment for it, it is an alternative media player & it seems to work reasonably well for an early incarnation. Making comparisons based on Versions of software that are on their 9th & 11th releases & expecting songbird to have the same level of reliability & sophistication is both ridiculous & dumb, those of you making such harsh criticisms should maybe take this into account, Songbird ver. 1.0 Vs iTunes ver. 8.x & WMP ver. 11.x. Both of these platforms have had millions of hours & dollars thrown at them by their respective corporate Owners, Songbird is a community based project doing what they are doing with very little money.
I beleive that they have done well to come this far. To base the worth of a product on its conectivity exclusively to an Apple product is typical Apple elitism & typical of the masses caught up in the Apple marketing strategy, ask many former iPhone users/owner why they ditched their iPhones, “Their not that good” is the overwhelming reply. The world needs alternatives to the stylized corporate junk that we get rammed down our throats from the likes of Apple, Microsoft & Kmart, we need people prepared to challenge their attempts to monopolize the market place & take away your choice. Thank you Mozzilla, Songbird, Opera & Linux. & most of all those developers with the balls to have a go.
Just installed and loving it.Definitely the best media manager for Linux…and so far I’ve encountered none of the memory issues mentioned earlier. The only problem i have is that its not detecting profiles..i have to create a new one each time i start it..I’m using the latest ubuntu desktop edition.
love some of the comments!
especially: “I tried Songbird, I am not impressed. The thing does not do some of the most basic of tasks. A memory hog and crashes like a drunk. This thing does not touch iTunes yet. Will check it out in 5 years.”
awesome…
for me there are three issues, given in random order of priority:
1) it’s a memory hog.
itunes (naked, only running networked music): under 15 MB
songbird (roughly 100 GB on external HDD): scratching the 500 MB mark !!!
tell me what you like, but this is technically NOT necessary. period. ask google, if you willy will.
2) no podcatcher, yet.
3) DAAP clients not (yet ?) compatible with itunes 7 / 8. (basically no-one on a college network would be using itunes 4 in 2009, would they?)
…
To all those with larger libraries, remember this is not out of the box, you have to learn and play with it, boost the cache settings like media player or itunes does automatically, I have it managing 20, 000 songs flawlessly, and still multitask. can’t wait for more features
i use songbird because
1. i have a lot of music, and it doesnt suffer anywhere near the same amount of slowdown as itunes
2. web browser, nice to have controls under ur page, and also lyrics to the side if you get the plugin
3. exorcist plugin, removes ghost and duplicate tracks
4. feathers, so many ways to chang appearence
5. plugins, there is a plugin for nearly everything imaginable
my only issues, then you use the web browser and you alt tab out of it, then it swtches back to songbird once the page is loaded
solution: 5 secounds of patience
It looks way to cluttered, if it stays the way those pictures show i doubt ill ever use it.
If they release a minimal [light] version id have a look and see if it was any good.
The web browser (opera) i’m running takes up three times as much memory as songbird does, I don’t understand all the fuss about memory, especially given all the functions and addons it has. And it’s never crashed on me, either.
A fair point about podcasts — don’t use them myself much but I’m sure one of the next updates will cover it?
I hate ITUNES, i miss the days of re skinning windows media player and .ogg files.
I want to listen good music. Help me please.
Almost $2 million backs for downloading 24 songs? What every an individual does it but the lady got her pep ruined down it? Thats the penalty concerning proscribed downloading…are you SIREOUS?
Did you discover on the newscast a lady got sued because of $1.92 million dollars for downloading 24 songs! Are you serious? How did it measured got to court???
Songbird syncs tunes on to my Ipod Shuffle (1st Gen). Itunes freezes my pc since about 3 versions ago when I plug the shuffle in, unless I unplug the mouse!
Now I’m on Windows 7 Itunes won’t sync for shuffle for shit.
Meanwhile, songbird works perfectly.
Hi,
Can i get a one small picture from your site?
AnnaHopn