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Sure, they're free to do whatever they want; it is after all their project. And it sounds like they intend to keep their project under the GPL, so if anyone really really wants this thing on Linux, I'm sure they're free to fork and maintain it.

I think most of the disapproval here is a general distaste for an open-source project choosing to exclude the principal open-source OS from support, and only support closed-source operating systems. It seems like a pretty poor decision, but if there's some project goal of theirs for which maintaining Linux support was a major obstacle.... hey, it happens.

One has to wonder how much intersection there is between the set of Mac/Windows users and the set of people that choose Songbird over itunes, WMP, or winamp. Does the world really need another do-everything media center?

That was EXACTLY why,although I don't know if that is still the plan or not. But I remember reading the original press release and at the time all the music stores sold incompatible DRM infected music files. Songbird was to be an Open Source music player/store that would allow you to buy DRM free files from a number of stores.

That said,I have been giving this out to my customers for a couple of months in my "Handy Free Software CD" that I hand a customer when they pick up their machine. So far I have nothing but good reviews,especially for the "visual Jukebox" extension that I put in the folder with it. Basically it displays the album covers like those jukeboxes you see in the pizza joints above the track selection. really cool and makes it easier to find the album you want to listen too.And combined with this extension it can download any missing album art. I have been using it for awhile myself and it really is a nice player,and the themes(feathers) make it really easy to match the look of your OS. Anyone who hasn't given it a shot yet ought to give it a spin because it really is quite nice.

That was EXACTLY why,although I don't know if that is still the plan or not. But I remember reading the original press release and at the time all the music stores sold incompatible DRM infected music files. Songbird was to be an Open Source music player/store that would allow you to buy DRM free files from a number of stores.

That said,I have been giving this out to my customers for a couple of months in my "Handy Free Software CD" that I hand a customer when they pick up their machine. So far I have nothing but good reviews,especially for the "visual Jukebox" extension that I put in the folder with it. Basically it displays the album covers like those jukeboxes you see in the pizza joints above the track selection. really cool and makes it easier to find the album you want to listen too.And combined with this extension it can download any missing album art. I have been using it for awhile myself and it really is a nice player,and the themes(feathers) make it really easy to match the look of your OS. Anyone who hasn't given it a shot yet ought to give it a spin because it really is quite nice.

Since iTunes won't sync it I was hoping that some open source solution existed. While I was very impressed by how far Songbird has come as a music player, the lack of sync options made me go back to iTunes :(

You went back to a player that had less features (except for certain Apple lock-in/DRM features), why?

Additionally, Amarok has full syncing options.

BUT, since songbird can use fancy plugins, maybe some smart person will realize that we need music sync support for non-ipod devices (and ipods too, I suppose) and write some plugins.

In my first Google search, I found http://addons.songbirdnest.com/addon/12

I haven't bothered exploring the other addons.

According to the the Songbird Licensing FAQ, Songbird is entirely open, mostly under GPLv2.

On installation, the Songbird binary presents you with a EULA, and unless you accept it, installation will abort. This is unlike the Mozilla EULA of a few months back which you could choose to ignore without stopping the installation, and which Mozilla removed entirely after receiving masses of negative feedback about it.

Fully free/open-source software doesn't need a EULA to be agreed, because you obtain all of your rights merely by complying with the terms of the copyright/copyleft license. No agreement of any kind is required in order to merely *USE* the software (only to distribute it). Usage is entirely unrestricted.

Why then does Songbird require a mandatory pre-agreement on usage?

That media player -- it's called Songbird

Actually, it's a licensed fork. Songbird has licensed our technology to Qtrax and we provide support to them. It works well for everyone and we're delighted to see some little birds leave the nest.

Songbird as a platform is making leaps and strides right now. If you're a Mozila-developin' fan of the project, we're in the middle of a Top 40 extensions contest to port cool extensions from Firefox. Come by #songbird on irc.mozilla.org or check us out at http://songbirdnest.com/top40 . Win cool schwag! Meet great people! Hack on something fun!

As a daily-use media player we're still not quite there yet. We are, after all, only at version 0.4. Still, many people are discovering all the cool things that having an extensible framework in your media player enables you to do.

Squawks,
-pvh

As much as the No DRM makes sense from a political & ethical point of view, the fact that people are recognizing DRM as a bad thing is starting to dawn on people. When Apple iTunes wanted DRM out of the way (for audio, though not for video), I thought of it as a win-win-win situation for everyone including the artists, APPL and the users (screw the RIAA).

Now Y! is doing the same thing and very intelligent of them too. Yahoo! music engine is not something I would use (or *could* use) despite getting a promotional offer (*disclaimer* as an employee) and tying down people to such idiotic client lockins (*cough* jukebox) is not working out well for it at all. If it would work well with Amarok or even the less popular Songbird, I'd happily use it over Last.fm (which streams directly into amarok happily).

Finally, it is a good thing that Y! is realizing that Convenience is a Feature++ - one way or the other.

Yeah! MusicMatch does everything, but everything badly. Try Mozilla based, cross-platform Songbird http://www.songbirdnest.com/

For those of us (maybe it's just me now, I don't know) who don't use, and don't ever wish to use iTunes, that's actually not a bad thing.

I'll stick with Songbird, thank you very much.

If you read and subscribe to mp3 blogs, good DRM free music isn't hard to find at all. Many of the bands whose music is featured in mp3 blogs have their songs available in DRM free format on sites like zunior.ca, emusic.com, etc.

Mp3 blogs are the way to go. You can use the excellent songbird software to subscribe to most mp3 blogs and automatically download songs from featured artists. I've really expanded my musical horizons doing this, and discovered all kinds of great indie/small label bands along the way.

http://www.songbirdnest.com/ has a great application freely available to do all this.

2) No official/maintained Linux client, just an old one they used to support.

• Want to listen to mp3s? XMMS or Songbird.
• Want to watch movies? VLC. Ports installs a heap of cd ripping software with VLC too, and I package managers for Linux do as well.
• Want to share files? KMLDonkey.
• Want to play some free games? Here.
• Want to do office stuff? OpenOffice.

In the 90's, the idea that scared Microsoft into creating a web browser in the first place was that the web browser could be a platform that made the underlying operating system irrelevant. In the Browser Wars 2.0, it seems like that idea has been put on the backburner so far. There are very few third party developers who create applications on the Mozilla platform. The notable ones that come to mind are Flock and Songbird. Firefox is one of, if not the most popular cross platform applications existing today, so it makes sense that people would want to build on top of its success. However, the developer interest in XUL doesn't seem to be that high. As someone who is looking to create a cross-platform application in the near future, why should I pick XUL, and what are you doing to make it a more attractive platform?

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Songbird here. Its still a ways away from final release but looks like a pretty promising alternative to iTunes bloat and MS DRM. Plus, its built from Mozilla, available for Linux/Mac/Win, and open source.

You can't possibly offend my G4, its slow PowerPC CPU renders it useless in any production environment. I only used it for web surfing and music listening, for which it was barely "okay". However, I had no such performance problems with Quod Libet, which can do mostly everything iTunes does, and if not built in, then through plugins. Except for the DRM infested music store, that is, but the up-and-coming new music player Songbird has focus on web content, and thus also alternative online stores. If I was paying money for digital files, I'd never buy some lossy file which I couldn't use freely, thanks to DRM. FLAC audio, on the other hand...

Even more fun - their actual audio playing stuff is XPCOMized VLC, used under GPL2.

Songbird is open source, will run on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux and supports user contributed, cross-platform extensions.

Uh, it IS open sourced. All of it. Including the non-script components.

http://publicsvn.songbirdnest.com/trac/browser

I haven't tried it yet, but if it doesn't, why don't you file a feature request at their bugzilla? If there is enough demand, and given that the project is in active development, I think it will be implemented in later versions.

Check this screencast: http://songbirdnest.com/screencast/ and try to do that in Winamp, MusicMatch, WMP, etc. =)

best, r0b

If you think the original logo was bad, take a look at the songbird bugzilla page.

THey have the logo with cramps, the runs and throwing up.

lovely.

Though it's in it's earlier development stages (currently version 0.1.1), song bird looks promising as an open-source alternative to Windows Media Player or iTunes. It's being built off of the Mozilla Firefox codebase, and from their website they suggest that it will allow you to, "Play any MP3 on the Web without leaving the page. Songbird can view Web pages as dynamic playlists that it can play, save, or automatically download every day. . . . Songbird has all the features you expect in a desktop media player. And Songbird constantly improves. Like Firefox, Songbird's features may be improved with user installed and contributed cross-platform extensions." FWIW, the builds just look attractive, too.

You can find the screenshots here.

No, seriously. Am I the only one who thinks that the screenshots are rather unimpressive? I clicked through every single shot and read the description of the features. I can't find anything special.

This is similar to another open-source endeavor called ACTLab TV, with which you can stream TV programs from multiple users in real-time. A story about ACTLab TV appeared about a year ago.

It is also similar to Songbird, the Itunes-like application that focuses primarily on enabling users to download DRM-free music from independent artists. Songbird was also covered recently.

I cannot purchase music from the iTunes music store and play it under Linux.
You will be able to soon when they release v0.2, and sync it with your iPod

Eh? Where the hell does iTunes get their music? It's making the record companies suffer? Using iTunes, Google Music, Rhapsody, Yahoo Music, Amazon, et al, supports the miserable music industry. It lets them think you want 'Fair' content that can only have 5 copies of. That's still being treated like a criminal, just with a bigger cell.

Buy DRM-less independent music if you want to be treated fairly.

eMusic Subcription-based, very cheap, a lot of great artists and indie labels (New Pornos, Spoon, Blackalicious, CCR, Thelonius Monk)

BLEEP A-la-carte, most electronic but has a lot of small labels, some stuff in FLAC (Warp records, Ninja Tune, One Little Indian/Bjork)

AudioLunchbox Subscription and a-la-carte, a little pricier than emusic but has some different artists (Death Cab for Cutie, The Sounds)

Calabash Mostly world and folk music (Tinariwen, reggae)

There are more. Hopefully Songbird will make it easier to access them all through a single interface.

It's an interesting thought, certainly. Check this out: http://www.songbirdnest.com/ It has a much better chance of eclipsing the stereotypical desktop experience with its multimedia capabilities than iTunes does.

Files that are our original creations are copyright Pioneers of the Inevitable LLC. We plan to keep the vast majority, if not all, of our source code available under a GPL license.[emphasis mine]

We need a firefox for media....

They're working on it, it's call Songbird

We need a firefox for media....

You mean something like Songbird? :)

Awesome news--more excellent open source projects are coming soon!

There is no reason why anyone would buy DRM-infested music from iTunes isBogus when there is such a wide selection of DRM-Free music by independent artists.

This is especially true with the release of Songbird, which not only has many more features than iTunes, but also downloads songs from a greater variety of sites. All DRM-free and legal!

iTunes? Is anyone still using that old thing? I now exclusively use Songbird, even though it's still alpha.

Tsk, and I thought this was Slashdot... bleeding edge, people!

Cue all the apologists who will make claims about Apple "ripping off" other interfaces (without any citations, of course).

Meanwhile, look at this. It isn't just the use of some similar widgets, or a generally similar interface. The interface is exactly the same, aside from the black shade of color. Now playing, source list, browse area, and so on, are all in the exact same places. Even the play and pause button.

As usual, apologists will defend the blatant rip-off and unoriginal ideas and get modded up by iPod-hating OGG lovers...

Indeed. In fact, considering that amarok (and other OSS projects) have already taken care of so much of this, the question becomes "why a whole new project?" Why not just code the parts that one needs in order to interface with various music stores and various mp3 players, and release that stuff as a library that any OSS project (such as amaraok) can interface with.

According to one of their pages:

We've taken xulrunner and sqlite and vlc and glued them together with some xml, javascript, and C++.

So, yes, they are aware of (and using) other OSS projects. That's good. But do we need to get used to a whole new UI? Most people already have a good music UI that they like and are comfortable with. Of greater use, as I said before, would be some plugins that any music player software could use to interface with various music stores and devices.

You look like a windows user, and I feel your pain. Apple's ports to Windows have a reputation for sucking. I should point out that iTunes and Quicktime don't suck anywhere nearly as much in OS X -- I know this will sound somewhat fanboy-ish, but it's definitely true that the GUI conventions used in iTunes make a whole lot more sense when compared to the rest of OS X.

Likewise, on the mac, quicktime is an excellent application, and is really more of a framework than a media player. It supports virtually every format, or can do so with the proper codecs. Virtually every program that needs to interact with some sort of multimedia content will simply use the Quicktime framework, because it just works. iTunes and Final Cut Pro are little more then complicated interfaces to quicktime (final cut especially. it's really a testament to the power of the quicktime format once you understand how little work final cut itself actually does). More importantly, it's fast (optimized for OSX/PPC), and very stable compared to its Windows counterpart.

iTunes is about to get some real competition from SongBirg, a new OSS media player built on the Mozilla platform from the same people that made Winamp and Muse.net. I'm excited to see if any real competition ensues.

Also, apple does not skin its apps. That's a microsoft and linux thing. OS X has never had official skinning support.