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The URL http://getsongbird.com/desktop/ disagrees with you. Download link for OS X.

Not sure what you need iTunes for (since there are somethings alternatives can't do), but what about Songbird?

You might want to check out Songbird. It is a lot like iTunes except it is open source.

Does anybody use that anymore? Let me know when iTunes is infected

If you're looking for open source alternatives to iTunes: CDex, VLC and handbrake .

You forgot a big one Songbird

Have you actually tried using that? I have and its more sluggish then iTunes could ever be.

If you're looking for open source alternatives to iTunes: CDex, VLC and handbrake .

You forgot a big one Songbird

C'mon, it's not that hard....
Just type 'songbird' into your browser & you'll be here: http://www.getsongbird.com/

A great way of NOT using iTunes...this news sucks since I have multiple boxen with everything from BSD to Win7 chez moi, and the kids all have iPods & iPhones...

Don't know why you would actually want Amarok (seems kinda clunky to me) but you can run it on Windows if Amarok is really what floats your boat. Personally I would go with Media Monkey or if you are strictly FOSS then I'd go with Songbird, but whatever. You can probably run F Spot too, but again why would you want to?

Juk is a very simple KDE-based player.

Songbird is an interesting alternative. It isn't KDE based. Rather, it is actually built on Mozilla. Like Firefox, it has a plugin framework to customize how you want it.

http://www.getsongbird.com/

There are alternative to itunes one is songbird http://www.getsongbird.com/

... It's called songbird http://www.getsongbird.com/ = (mozilla+google)

Please. "Online music sales" and "music library manager software" are not, by any means, the same thing. Apple may have a de facto monopoly on the online music business, but iTunes is definitely not the only music library manager out there, and it isn't even the only one capable of playing files purchased via iTunes. Songbird and WinAmp (yes, that's still around) are two alternatives that come to mind, either of which could easily be made to support -- via proper and official means -- the syncing of iTunes's XML library file with a third-party device. Writing software to do it themselves is also an option for Palm, and one they're clearly capable of, as they've written sync software for ages.

The bottom line here is that Palm is being lazy, and now they're actively shooting themselves in the foot by intentionally violating the USB spec. If Apple wants to prevent devices that violate the USB spec from connecting to its computers, by all means, go ahead. Who knows what other parts of the USB spec Palm might be planning to selectively ignore in the future?

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Yep. There's absolutely no way to use an iPod under Linux

Now, don't you start your whining about your precious Ogg and FLAC or-anything-else-support neither!

Now STFU, you fucking Troll...

Apple has explicitly done something to make my experience *worse*. They went much further than simply failing to "provide support for, or test for compatibility with, non-Apple digital media players." They went out of their way to harm users.

I'm usually a fan of Apple, but I have to agree that this seems like a bad move. What is really gained by purposefully breaking compatibility? I can understand not supporting alternatives, but going out of their way just to break existing compatibility seems petty. It's the sort of thing where I wonder if the increased lock-in is worth the associated bad PR.

If they're concerned about customer experience, then fine, fix it so iTunes recognizes that it's not an iPod, and throw up a warning the first time it syncs saying, "Warning: this is not really an iPod. We don't support this. Proceed at your own risk." Otherwise, provide an open spec and let other manufacturers use it. If the iPhone is really the best smartphone, then why fear the Pre?

On the other hand, I expected that sooner or later they'd change something and it would break interoperability with the Pre, even if inadvertently. I can't imagine that Palm didn't see it coming. Why didn't they just come up with a better solution from the start? If they're in favor of openness, why not throw their weight behind an open alternative to iTunes?

Try Magnatune. They:

• treat their artists far better than any of the major labels
• let artists license, not sign over, music for distribution so artists keep their copyrights
• let you listen to their entire catalog without charge
• work with music player programs (Rhythmbox, Amarok, Songbird, and proprietary software including iTunes)
• offer purchasing by the track, subscription (for streaming or download), and all-you-can-hear prices
• offer downloading in multiple formats including FLAC
• offer redownloading without hassle (compare this to what Apple told Wil Wheaton after Apple's software erased purchased tracks from his iPod)
• offer all tracks without DRM

Have you tried Songbird? I'll be the first to admit i'm a Windows guy(quite happily on XP x64, thanks much) but if Firefox works good for you in Linux, I don't see why Songbird wouldn't too, as it is based on the Gecko engine.

I have been passing it to customers as well as using it myself and it is actually a pretty nice player. it has plenty of customizations and more importantly to me, none of those customization are by default which means I can have MY media player MY way. So give it a try, and maybe one of the Linux guys can chime in and tell us how it handles in Linux?

Screw Last.fm. Grooveshark has a much better offer, is less anal-retentive and is much more accessible than Last.fm. If only they would provide a plugin for Songbird (or a decent API so someone could make it), they would have a killer internet radio.

Is this really such a "big fat middle finger"? It's cementing iTunes as the default player and iTMS as the default music store, and putting Palm in the position of trying to pick up some of Apple's leftovers. Plus, if Apple doesn't like it, they can issue firmware updates and update iTunes, making everything connect some slightly different way, and suddenly Palm's stuff stops working.

If Palm really wanted to make trouble for Apple, they'd make their own alternative to iTunes, which wouldn't take much work. If they really didn't want to do it from scratch, I'm sure there are even some open source projects that could be used as a jumping-off point. And if they didn't want to make their own music store, they could probably strike a deal with Amazon. Now that would be a problem for Apple.

Uuuhhh...if that is all you are worried about simply get any of the models of Cown that support Rockbox. The problem with iTunes is not only the proprietary nature of the thing(as I use Windows I can't really bitch about that) it is the fact that iTunes is a MAC app. Which is just fine if you have a Mac, and from using friends Macs I can see why they like it as it "just works". Not so much in Windows though. I don't know how many weird bugs and app crashes I've had dealing with my customers iTunes. It has gotten to the point that if I am writing out a support ticket and a customer tries to bring up iTunes problems I just hold up my hand and say "I can give you Songbird, WMP11, or Mediamonkey but I do NOT deal with iTunes. You have a problem with iTunes talk to Apple." and most after trying Songbird are quite happy with the switch.

That is why we need to point out when talking about iTunes or Safari that we are talking about the Windows or OSX version, since they really are two different beasts. Saying that iTunes works for you on your Mac is like saying the iPod works really great in your Ferrari. Since most of us don't actually HAVE a Ferrari that doesn't really help us now, does it?

Where is the music player that beats Amarok?

I agree with your other stuff but I just wanted to point out that I think Songbird thoroughly beats any other music player. It's still in its infancy and has some warts but it has been one of my favorite apps for a long time now. I'm also a heavy Firefox and Thunderbird user so it fits right in.

The thing about Songbird is that it's already set for the whole multimedia-web-blah-blah experience. As far as I know nothing other than Songbird and iTunes does all that very well. I know some will say "but I just want a music player" and that's fine too but some of us enjoy a rich experience.

Amarok? Please don't tell me you've never used Songbird! It all comes down to opinion, but if you want an iTunes alternative, that's where it is. Perhaps you wont catch this message since there is a little under 600 messages here, but if you do catch this reply i highly suggest trying it out.

First off almost all of the netbooks come with multi media players. But for example you can use SongBird for linux http://getsongbird.com/ which looks a lot like iTunes, and it supports iPods (http://addons.songbirdnest.com/addon/12 )

Linpus has many gigs of linux software at their distribution site and most fedora apps work pretty well which gets you to essentially everything.

Have you tried Download Statusbar? I have mine set to clear the bar after 5 seconds, but you can probably set it to 0 if you just want them to go poof.

And as for the above poster who wonders why I don't just give the old folks a shortcut? Because with Seamonkey it really makes it easy to copy/paste that recipe they are sure that Mabel will like,LOL! But that is what I love about Firefox,all the diversity. I give Seamonkey to the older folks, Kmeleon to those with older PCs or who only care about speed,and Flock to those that are into the social sites. With the FF codebase I can give everyone something for them and still not have to worry about the latest IE bug. Oh and those who haven't given it a shot should try Songbird. I have been using it myself as well as handing it out to my customers and it is really gotten quite nice.

Wow,that is a lot of stuff to install just to be able to watch and listen. I have downloaded CCCP and will try it out on a test box though. But so far my customers haven't had any problems with Klite. Also giving out Klite with either Songbird or Musikcube depending on the PC seems to fill my customers needs. Musikcube does better on low resource machines and Songbird lets you update ID3 and Album Art. But with just those 2 installs I take care of all my customers A/V needs.

Does CCCP work on Win9X? Because I do run into Win9X machines occasionally and having a single pack that works on all is a plus. But like I said next time I fire up my test bed I will give CCCP a shot. Thanks for the info.

Well,I don't know about him but I prefer the versatility of Gecko myself. When a customer comes in with older hardware or they only care about speed I can give them Kmeleon,if they are into the social sites I can give them Flock,the old folks that still like to download their mail I give Seamonkey,and for the everyday Joes I give Firefox. I have also started giving out Songbird,which is also based on FF,thus the Gecko engine,and so far folks are really liking it. If Firefox wants to know where the next "Firefox killer" is going to come from,IMHO they just need to look in the mirror. Their engine is so easy to customize that I wouldn't be surprised if the next big thing ran Gecko under the hood.

I used to be a diehard Winamp user, back from the pre v1 days to the early days of v5. It just got so slow and bloated that I eventually gave it up. Apparently Winamp users care more about how their player looks than how it sounds and responds.

Songbird sucks boulders through crazy straws. I tried it once before and have absolutely nothing positive to say about it.

foobar2000 is my main player. I've been using it to manage and play my music library/large playlists for the past few years and absolutely love it. It's fast, small memory/CPU footprint, supports almost every known audio format, has just about any audio/DSP feature/filter that can be named, ReplayGain support, nice masstagger/renamer and a highly customizable interface via its own internal scripting language, ColumnsUI or PanelsUI. In my opinion there is no other player that even comes close.

Xion is what I use for quick individual sound files or small playlists. It's quite a nice, fast loading little player.

XMPlay is decent, but is a little too slow loading once you get the file format and DSP plugins installed. It boasts "balls-on" accurate MOD/XM/etc playback, but really many other players can handle these formats just as accurately.

CoolPlayer is a neat little player, but doesn't really offer much, aside from being open source. It has limited format support and not many features.

uAmp has the distinction of being an x64 player, but offers little else. It's slow loading, supports even fewer formats than CoolPlayer and has doesn't even have rudimentary features that many other players have (ie. equalizer, noise shaping, gapless playback, etc).

1by1 is actually a pretty cool little player. It supports few file formats standalone, but does support Winamp input plugins for more. The main feature is its interface which directly uses directories instead of playlists.

coverJuke is basically a coverFlow clone. It has a slick OpenGL interface, supports a moderate number of file formats (can support more by using an external player) and is actively developed. Still considering that foobar2000 has a coverFlow-like plugin for it (if that's your thing), this player doesn't have much more than novelty value.

musikCube is a nice lightweight player with a respectable number of features. I think of it as foobar-lite, except it's really not any faster and has significantly less features and format support.

iTunes is slow, bloated, supports a laughably small number of formats and is lacking in features. I tried it once and it proceeded to start renaming my meticulously named, tagged and ordered music library on its own. Purged it from my system and had to use foobar2000 to repair the damage that it did. In short, it's complete crap.

Aqualung looks promising, but I haven't actually gotten around to trying it out.

I'm not sure about iPod support for any of these since I use a Creative Zen which acts as an external drive when plugged in, making it really easy to copy to/from.

I was actually saying from a development/hardware perspective. I think they had to actually reverse-engineer the protocol because it's so strange. But, yeah, it works great now :)

Shameless plug: For those who want iTunes on Linux, check out Songbird

It is also quite easy to customize,both with extensions and full bore rebuilds. Firefox by itself is okay, but with Noscript,Adblock Plus,Forecastfox,and FEBE to ensure backups it makes Firefox a must have in my book,even so far as keeping a copy of Firefox Portable(another nice customization) on my flash for out in the field.

And then if Firefox isn't to your liking there is always Flock,and Kmeleon for older Windows machines(also works with Noscript and Adblock with a little tinkering) and of course there is Songbird which is going for an Open Source iTunes kind of thing and is actually a pretty nice media player IMHO. To me that is what is nice about Gecko,it has enough features built in that a good coder can use it as the basis for all sorts of applications and it is trivial to add functionality through extensions to make the browser YOUR way,instead of what some company thinks is best. This is why despite the buzz around Chrome I'll still be installing Gecko based browsers(Firefox,Seamonkey,or Kmeleon depending on the client/machine) on every machine I service or sell. But as always this is my 02c,YMMV

Sounds like what you want is Songbird,which,hey what do ya know,it's built from Firefox. And if you want social browsing you have Flock,which,hey what do ya know again,is ALSO built on Firefox. If Mozilla wants to know where the "Firefox killer" is coming from,just look in the mirror. Somebody will take the FF code,add their own killer features and there you go. But as always this is my 02c,YMMV