Songbird

If Firefox and iTunes hooked up, their hatchling could very well be Songbird. Basic usage bugs have gone the way of last season's molting, so this fun app that's part music player, part Web browser, and all about music discovery, management, and playback is ready for every day use.

During installation, it'll ask if you want to load your iTunes music directory or another media directory, or perform the task later. Processing 5,000 songs took about 3 minutes, which is not a bad pace. It then asks you which of the preinstalled Songbird extensions you want to load. Most of these, like the iPod, Mass Storage Class, and USB device managers only make the app stronger.

The left sidebar provides quick links to bookmarks, downloads, your music library in an iTunes-style interface, and several music discovery Web sites to get you started. When you're looking at any Web site with MP3s available for download, Songbird will open a new window at the bottom of the main browsing pane. Double-click on a song to play it, and links on the right let you purchase the track from Amazon, iTunes, eMusic, and Amie St. They also tell you the format of the track--MP3 or AAC, for example--and provide a blog link for more info.

Songbird has a growing library of extensions, and support is slowly growing for those written originally for Firefox. Songbird is more than stable enough to take flight for the music-loving, Web-surfing fanatic in all of us.

Songbird is a desktop media player, specifically designed with the future in mind. While most media players are still focusing on local music only, Songbird is currently looking to the constantly-changing landscape of the web for guidance. What does this mean? Simply put, Songbird allows you to 'play' the web. Instead of needing separate applications to search for and listen to music, Songbird allows you to do it all from one simple program, with an astounding level of integration between the web and your music.

It's free!

Of course, many of the most popular media players, such as iTunes on Mac and Windows, and Winamp and Windows Media Player on Windows, are available free of charge. But there's more to Songbird's freedom than its lack of a price tag: Songbird is open-source, which means that it is community-driven and powered by you. You can truly make it your own and modify it to your heart's content with add-ons. Also, rather than just implementing the features that are most likely to bring in revenue, Songbird's development team can implement features that they think are cutting-edge, useful, or just plain cool.

It's cross-platform!

Have you ever tried to play music on another operating system, only to find that you are unfamiliar with the media player? That's not a problem with Songbird, since it runs on the 'big three' of operating systems (Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X), which means that you'll have a consistent experience between operating systems.

It's customizable!

Songbird is probably the most customizable media player on the planet. Want to change the way it looks, add support for a web service, or add something new to the way the media library works? There's probably an add-on for it, and they are easy to install.

All versions:

2.8 stars out of 15 votes

5 star: 5 4 star: 0 3 star: 1 2 star: 5 1 star: 4 Current version:

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Write review 2.0 stars

"Won't Download!"

March 10, 2012  |   By s_march

Version: Songbird 1.10.2

Pros

Cant assess because I can't get it to download.

Cons

Can't download it!! I keep getting the same error message 'forbidden' but have NO idea why. Very frustrating!

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1.0 stars

"I Give Up Trying To Talk To The Developer"

January 27, 2012  |   By zunipus

Version: Songbird 1.10.2

Pros

It's a nifty kewl open source alternative to iTunes with bells and whistles.

Cons

It is impossible to download the program due to problems at their server that they are unwilling to repair. The developer's help via their chat forum is useless. If you can't download the program, isn't that called a "DEAD END"?

Summary

I have spent the last 24 hours attempting to talk to the developers about repairing their broken URL. I can't download the software. I've extremely clearly described the problem to them and received back only WRONG information. The problem is at their end. It throws those attempting to download the software, via their OWN 'Free Download' link on their website, to an XML error page. This occurs on ALL BROWSERS (meaning the everything except Opera and obscure browsers rarely used by anyone).

I'm FED UP trying to help them and GIVE UP trying to make sense to them. I am deleting this software from my Macs. I don't respond well to talking to a wall. I tried!

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2.0 stars

"Slow and Force Quit Necessary"

January 7, 2012  |   By Chip92103

Version: Songbird 1.10.1

Pros

Similar to iTunes in look, easy to leap in to.

Cons

Speed, frustrating when using browser or any menu command.

Summary

So far I have found Songbird extremely slow, and most of the time, I have to use Force Quit to exit the program.

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2.0 stars

"Great when it runs, but that isn't often"

December 17, 2011  |   By apelzin

Version: Songbird 1.10.1

Pros

- great feature set
- great song organization
- good plugins

Cons

- crashes very often on my Lion system

Summary

If it worked all the time, this app would be wonderful. But it doesn't.

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2.0 stars

"Unfortunately, quite pointless"

June 12, 2011  |   By croupiac

Version: Songbird 1.10.0b2

Pros

Nice enough sort of app.

Cons

... but just plain limited.

Summary

It's a nice enough sort of app, but the problem is that it's just limited in what it can do and what it can interface with. It's hooked up with Zune now, so iPod support was dropped (the very definition of pointless, choosing a dying platform over the world's most popular). Regardless, it just doesn't do that much, or do what it does do in any kind of stand-out fashion. Which makes it nice as an academic experiment or project, but not really worthwhile as a consumer product. While Firefox (and more recently, Thunderbird) has managed to establish itself with some platform friendliness, Songbird still suffers from its open-source platform-agnosticism. That is, in order to be a good citizen on all platforms, it's also compromised on all platforms, and isn't particularly good or at home on any of them (see also: Mozilla 1.x, Firefox 1.x-2.x).

There are other, better apps out there. This is not the one you're looking for.

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1.0 stars

"Crashed my Macbook"

April 23, 2011  |   By shel66

Version: Songbird 1.9.3

Pros

none if it always crashes

Cons

noticed many many others complained of crashes

Summary

never trust cnet again

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1.0 stars

"Could be fantastic but several intolerable quirks"

January 4, 2011  |   By needless1

Version: Songbird 1.9.1

Pros

sound quality is superior to itunes, lots of interesting material presented with music, can stream from 3d party sites that itunes can't.

Cons

wants to save to my printer! multiplies my itunes library repeatedly, adding duplicates and triplicates.

Summary

If the quirks and bugs get worked out this will/would be the best music and sound application, but now it is just the most frustrating.

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1.0 stars

"Crashes sometime for no reason."

December 28, 2010  |   By ilgaar

Version: Songbird 1.9.1

Pros

This application is great, it is both a web browser and a music player and management tool, it has lots of great features but...

Cons

It looks like it is not polished well enough, it still has some serious bugs and crashes some times which makes to use this application very annoying.

Summary

Nice features but still not polished enough.

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5.0 stars

"Best media player... EVER...."

May 12, 2010  |   By mctaboo

Version: Songbird 1.4.3

Pros

1.Very Fast & Free...
2. Huge range of Add-ons
4. Amazing in searching, retrieving, organizing, syncing media files...

Cons

it needs an integrated iPod/iPhone sync option..

Summary

BEST media player ever comparing with the WORST media player (iTunes)
THANK u so much Songbird developers..

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2.0 stars

"SLOWWWWW...."

January 10, 2010  |   By Eric Mason

Version: Songbird 1.4.3

Pros

Nice feature set, easy to navigate if you are used to iTunes.

Cons

Terribly sluggish, lots of sitting and waiting.

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