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Songbird Flies Today
fr1kk writes to tell us that with the recent advent of a preview version for the new open source response to iTunes, Songbird, BoingBoing has taken a few minutes to interview team lead Rob Lord. While this program may be a great alternative to the DRM ridden iTunes and Windows Media Player platforms it is still only a Windows release. The good news is that by being open source that will (hopefully) not last very long. The Songbird site appears to be swamped right now, but there are several different mirrors available to download the client.
Yes. But who gives a crap about teenaged (schlock) music fans? They're well served by their corporate masters. We're talking about people with real musical taste here who want more than they can get from the corporate teat. Live music can only go so far... There's nothing better than a really well done recording of an obscure and creative artist. And that is what Songbird promises.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
You sir, are an idiot.
There are plenty of things wrong with iTunes: The mp3 encoder is inferior to LAME. The Windows version autoloads iPod programs that steal system resources -- even if you don't have an iPod, and even if iTunes isn't running. The tagging system is nonstandard. There are no options (such as with Predixis MusicMagicMixer) to create playlists based on the audio itself, rather than id3 tags. There is no intelligent handling of files on servers or external hard drives. There is no intelligent handling of duplicate or missing files. I could go on and on...