I’m always interested in trying something new, especially when that something competes in a space where competition seems impossible. Take Macintosh music players for instance. There’s iTunes, and then there’s… Well, there really is nothing else because iTunes effectively killed the market by being both good and free. (I’m talking the Mac version of iTunes here; I acknowledge the debate over the quality of the Windows version.)


the 800-pound gorilla

Singing a Sweeter, Simpler Song

A few weeks ago, I came across an application called Songbird. It’s an open-source music player that runs on the Mozilla XUL Runner platform and is compatible with all operating systems supported by that runtime environment. It’s designed primarily as a music player, and is not ideally suited for podcast viewers or people who use iTunes to access TV shows and movies. The developers want it to do one thing and one thing well.


looking good Miss Morissette

The interface is very similar to iTunes, but there are only so many intuitive things one can do with a media player’s interface. All interface elements are responsive, and the UI looks fine on Mac OS X. I could complain that the scrollbars are out-of-place, but iTunes’ scrollbars are wrong too.

Songbird made some very good impressions on me right away. If you already have an iTunes library (or Windows Media library, I presume), the application will import your media and playlists on first launch – making migration initially effortless. Additionally, the application is pretty responsive, and it has access to several community-developed plugins that allow you to do things like download lyrics, get album art from LastFM, search for concert tickets for artists in your library, and sync with iPods and other MP3 players.

Managing your plugins is very simple with a built in manager that will check for updates automatically as well as recommend popular plugins from the Songbird website. To further simplify matters, Songbird features an integrated web browser that allows you to check out and download plugins directly from within Songbird.


browsing the web in Songbird

For users who think iTunes mini player is a tad large, Songbird also has you covered. The mini player in Songbird is just a few pixels tall.


this picture is full size

Finally, Songbird proved itself to be incredibly stable. It never crashed or hung once for me, but the folks at Ars did run into a couple of snags. Regardless, I find this release an impressive effort that’s worth checking out. It has some problems, but Songbird 1.0 does a great job managing and playing music files without a lot of clutter or distraction.

Some Sour Notes

With any piece of software, especially software as young as Songbird, there are going to be a few issues. Here are some I ran into.

• Protected AAC/WMA. Songbird will import your entire music library – even the stuff it can’t play. This leaves the user to remove protected music from the playlists.
• CD Ripping. Right now, you can’t import a CD into Songbird. The tracks have to be digital.
• iPod Ejecting. This doesn’t always work well.
• Album Art. I couldn’t find a way to automatically search for and add album art. Songbird also doesn’t import album art from iTunes.
• No Equalizer. Depending on your music collection, you may or may not miss this.

Final Thoughts

Whether or not you like Songbird will depend on how much you have invested in iTunes or Windows Media music. Since both of those stores lock their music to their player, you won’t be able to take those tracks to Songbird. However, if most of your music comes from your CD collection or from DRM-free stores like Amazon MP3, you might find Songbird a worthwhile download. It’s a simple application to get used to, and it strips away much of the bloat that’s becoming standard with bundled media players. Through downloadable plugins, you can make Songbird as simple or as complicated as you want it. If you just want a simple application to manage your music files, Songbird may hit all the right notes for you.

Tags: software, itunes/ipods, songbird