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.

Comments

More on Lord

[eldavojohn]

If you're interested in more of Robert Lord's background and experiences, check out his resume.

Although I dislike Winamp for it's complexity, I did thoroughly enjoy his simplistic (and very well designed) homepage called "smudges of wisdom."

He seems to be an interesting fellow with odd musical tastes:

Mostly sadcore (tm), not to be conflated with common ennuicore (tm).

Also interesting is that he goes through a list of decent books, some of which I'm familiar with. The best part about them is that they aren't at all the typical programming books you'd expect.

Re:More on Lord

[Anonymous Coward]

Although I dislike Winamp for it's complexity

v1.82 man, v1.82.

Re:More on Lord

[code65536]

If you dislike Winamp for its complexity, then Songbird would not be your cup of tea. Running Winamp 5 (I never bothered to install modern Winamp3-style skin support), it fires up in less than a second. Songbird takes about a quarter of a minute. Changing skins on Songbird is a 10-second ordeal that involves the window disappearing for a while. Complexity? In 2006, Winamp is by far the lightest, fastest, and least complex of all the major Windows media players.

I tried Songbird for a few minutes and gave up. The interface was simply too sluggish (even slightly worse than the bloated Windows Media Player) to be comfortable (even though Firefox doesn't seem to have this problem). I'll stick with Winamp for my media player needs (fortunately, I never really got into the whole media library thing). Small footprint and instantaneous startup.

Re:More on Lord

[WhoDey]

I really don't trust anyone who uses the word "uberleet" on his professional resume.

Then again, he uses lots of thesaurus words like prevenient, paradigmatic, and seminal.

Re:More on Lord

[moosesocks]

Winamp.....complex?

Maybe 5 years ago when it was in vogue, it was a tad complex, but today, winamp is by all means a very slick piece of software. It's one of the few applications I've seen that's successfully implemented an entirely plugin-based architecture. Because of it, you get support for virtually every file format as well as support for some esoteric output devices.

Personally, I'd just like to see VLC tied to some sort of music managment interface. I know that's the goal of songbird, and I hope that they can speed it up. Why they ever chose XULRunner is completely beyond me. It would seem that in my experience, XULRunner takes a great deal of time and work to optimize properly.

I have faith in Rob Lord. Muse.Net was an amazing service while it lasted, and winamp will remain installed on my computer for many years to come. It might take some time, but I think songbird holds great promise. Remember guys, this is a 0.1 release! Go ahead and install one of the old Mozilla Milestone releases and see how it runs if you want to compare the two.

Re:More on Lord

[strider44]

I sort of gave a chuckle when it said "Windows Only". Like when they tried to make a Linux version of Nero, even if they made a Linux version of this or Winamp or whatever, it'll be just too little too late. I don't think there's any way it'll be as good as Amarok.

Yes, 'cuz that's what teenaged music fans want...

[Caspian]

Source code.

(Disclaimer: I'm pro-open-source. But, seriously, how many "music fans" (of the sorts who presently tote about iPods) would even know what source code is, much less give a crap about it? They Just Want It To Work(TM), man.

I predict...

[Anonymous Coward]

...the same overwhelming success as Ogg. And for the same reasons.

Re:I predict...

[pintomp3]

ogg won't play on a lot of portable music players. i'm assuming this will install on most computers..

Here's the thing

[Spytap]

Unless it syncs with my iPod, I really don't have much use for it. Honestly, that's where my music listening is done, not in my office at my computer...

Re:Here's the thing

[Overly Critical Guy]

I see nothing wrong with iTunes. I take issue with the submission's "DRM ridden" phrase. iTunes is not "ridden" with DRM; you don't even have to buy any music from iTunes and have a completely DRM-free experience. iTunes functions just fine as the best music management software without you having to use anything with DRM. I used iTunes for a whole year that way. I imagine most people use it that way, actually.

However, if you do buy from iTunes, Apple provides the most lax DRM in the market. I have never, ever come across any limitation. I can burn as many CDs as I want, share the music with multiple computers, and copy them anywhere at will. When someone rattles on about iTunes DRM, it's clear to me they don't really use iTunes at all. If they did, they'd know the DRM is so invisible that most users don't even know it's there. I always forget it is.

So you read about the software and then realize, this thing is designed to connect to multiple online stores, so it will be just as DRM ridden as anything else! Looking at the screenshots, I suddenly recognize this as the iTunes clone that Mac fans were ripping on last year. The interface is a 100% brain-dead clone of the iTunes interface, widget for widget. They couldn't even come up with their own idea. This makes OSS look bad. I can certainly guarantee this software will never take off in this state, and making goofy claims that "FairPlay is the 8-track of our generation" (huh?) doesn't help any. The developer is very arrogant and claims shopping in one central location like the iTunes Music Store is some backwards idea, when in reality, we've already DONE the multiple stores thing for years, and people have gravitated to one central source (the majority choosing iTunes). It's been the natural progression of the market. That seamless vertical experience is needed to connect it all together. Steve Jobs has stated that relying on 3rd party support in the consumer hardware space doesn't work, and so far, he's been proven correct.

I have no experience with Windows Media Player's offerings, so I can't comment on its DRM. But I find most of the DRM commentary on Slashdot to be alarmist and inapplicable to the real world, and stuff like this just makes OSS look like kooky copycat artists fighting some unseen force that most users aren't even coming into contact with in their daily experiences.

The developers should probably expect a response from Apple's lawyers shortly. The iTunes interface is patented, and this is just blatant! Get an original idea, guys.

Re:Here's the thing

[gnud]

Well, no reason why it shouldn't, at least under linux. Give it some time (you do know about libipoddevice?).

Re:Here's the thing

[gstoddart]

I see nothing wrong with iTunes. I take issue with the submission's "DRM ridden" phrase. iTunes is not "ridden" with DRM; you don't even have to buy any music from iTunes and have a completely DRM-free experience.

Thank you for pointing this out, because I was just about to.

My music is all MP3's ripped on FreeBSD using lame, mounted over a samba share, and managed by iTunes. iTunes then gets used to play from the computer, rip CDs, or populate my iPod shuffle.

DRM doesn't even factor in to the equation.

The iTunes software is nicely designed, works well, has a lot of features, and came free with my iPod. Why would I start looking for a v0.1 FOSS replacement for it?

Re:Here's the thing

[shokk]

My beef with iTunes is the memory footprint. However, because I can do a Rendezvous stream over an SSH pipe, it's the tool for me right now.

Re:Here's the thing

[uradu]

> If they did, they'd know the DRM is so invisible that most users don't even
> know it's there. I always forget it is.

I've bought plenty of albums off ITMS, and it is indeed easy to burn them to a CD and then rip that, especially when buying a whole album. When buying individual tracks, things get a bit messier, since CDEx can't lookup the metadata anymore.

But saying that the DRM is invisible is silly. I have a Roku SoundBridge, which works just fine with iTunes, except for DRM-ed tracks. None of the ITMS albums and tracks will play on the SoundBridge, unless burned and re-ripped into iTunes. And this won't ever likely change, since Apple seems to have no interest in licensing their FairPlay (ha!) DRM to third parties.

Re:Here's the thing

[LnxAddct]

As far as the interface goes... Apple was actually sued because someone patented a similar interface for software a few years prior. Apple came up with it themselves independently, as I'm sure many others could do simply because the interface makes sense. If I had never used a music app before and were designing one from scratch, I doubt it'd be all that different. I'm a fan of Apple, but you're giving them a little too much credit. Its like saying firefox invented tabs and nobody else should use them (you'd be wrong about both firefox inventing tabs and that nobody else should use them).
Regards,
Steve

Re:Here's the thing

[CMiYC]

ITMS is just the first one RIAA let slide. MP3.com tried to do the closest thing they could, and got their asses sued. And you can't get music from multiple stores and play it all from the same player (without cracking it). That, capitan, is what we call a monopoly. Keep using us (the first one to market), and if you switch, you can't listen to all your old music.

I fail to understand anything you've said in this section. iTMS was the first the RIAA let slide? It is pretty amazing how easy a company will let something slide when you pay them a per-song fee. If they didn't do that, say like MP3.COM, the RIAA would probably crack down on them. Oh wait. That is what happened.

And you can't get music from multiple stores and play it all from the same player (without cracking it).
How is this any different than Songbird? If I download DRM'd music from random-music-store iTunes won't play it and neither will Songbird. If I download non-DRM from allofmp3.com, iTunes will play it and so will Songbird.

That, capitan, is what we call a monopoly. Keep using us (the first one to market), and if you switch, you can't listen to all your old music.
Okay sure. This now means I have to always use the iTunes player to listen to the iTunes songs. Again, if I go to a new service that uses DRM, iTunes won't play that music and neither will that service play my iTunes. So again, I fail to see your point.

For any non-DRM music I have now or I buy in the future, iTunes will never "lock-me-in" to its player. If the RIAA will only allow music stores to sell music online with DRM, I don't see why that makes iTMS the evil entity.

Based on your statisical sample of 1, 100% of people never see a limitation. GOooooddd.
No the parent is not basing things on a statistical sample of one. The parent is basing their comments on being a member of Jonny-Q-Public. For the majority of iTunes users, we don't care about the DRM that is there. It is almost entirely transparent to us. However, as soon as a RSS feed from slashdot mentions DRM, hundreds of geeks piss and moan. For example, (and this is just an example so not feel the /.-need to argue it to death) how many often have you burned an mp3 to a CD more than 7 times? The opinions of Slashdotters are not a significant stastical sample, either.

Re:Here's the thing

[DeadCatX2]

iTunes functions just fine as the best music management software without you having to use anything with DRM.

I have an issue with this. A friend of mine had a bunch of songs on his iPod. He told me the mp3 filenames were mangled if you used iTunes to manage the music. I told him "That can't be, mp3s dont have DRM, the files should just be available."

Sure enough, we plugged the iPod into my laptop, and I started browsing the directory structure, and everything was COMPLETELY mangled. I mean, worse than how compilers mangle some function calls. Filenames appeared to be random strings of alphanumeric characters, and songs from the same album were separated across MULTIPLE subfolders!

I dunno about you, but to me any software that mangles the names of my music when transferring to a music player that functions as an external hard drive is hardly "the best music management software."

Thanks, but I'll copy my intact hierarchial folder setup (music/artist/album/01-trackname.mp3) directly over to my Archos.

Re:Here's the thing

[vertinox]

I see nothing wrong with iTunes. I take issue with the submission's "DRM ridden" phrase. iTunes is not "ridden" with DRM; you don't even have to buy any music from iTunes and have a completely DRM-free experience.

True, but I think having an open source counterpart is a good idea.

Remember when they added the mini-store and there was all that stink about it being spyware? I was aggravated because it took up too much screen space with ads. Well luckily, they gave the option to turn it off.

What happens if Apple goes evil and decides to make these options always on after a compulsory upgrade that you can't bypass or uninstall? Or what if Apple goes bankrupt or decides you have to use AAC format from now on instead of MP3?

Even though I would seriously doubt these worse case scenarios will ever happen, there is a reason for having open source alternatives.

Secondly, if the open source alternative becomes more popular and has better features than the proprietary then chances are the proprietary version will upgrade its features as well after being stale for a while.

You know... Like IE7 and Firefox.

Re:Here's the thing

[vijayiyer]

There is no limit to the number of CDs you can burn in iTunes. There's only a limit to the number of times identical playlists can be burned (7). You can therefore always burn a purchased song to CD. I find it hard to believe that anyone would burn 7 CDs of exactly the same playlist of copy protected songs (the burn limit doesn't apply to non-DRM music) without doing anything illegal. And if you still want to, you can take one of the burned CDs and duplicate it ad infinitum.

Re:Here's the thing

[pintomp3]

all you are stating is that itunes drm has the loosest handcuffs. no thanx. i kind of like having multiple shopping options for buying stuff. why should music be any different? i don't know about the interface being patented, it looks a lot more like the winamp media library interface than itunes. it is kind of interesting to read the posts as /.ers are caught between open source love and apple love.

Re:Here's the thing

[aeoo]

Try to move the files from iPod back to PC.

Re:Here's the thing

[Chardros]

iTunes functions just fine as the best music management software... -snip-

I love iTunes. But I wouldn't call it "the best". Tried accessing a common music repository from multiple box's? Get's annoying real fast.

Re:Here's the thing

[jb.hl.com]

Well, I would have put it less swearily than that but yes...neither of the grandparent posts were trolls at all, they seemed fair criticism to me.

Re:Here's the thing

[poopdeville]

Yeah, this is probably iTune's best 'feature', even though it's a bit of a hack. I have a big mp3 collection -- bigger than my laptop's hard drive, so I just keep it on an internet connected linux box running mt-daapd. I can get at it from anywhere I care to.

Re:Here's the thing

[jwdeff]

The point I was getting at is Open Office is a lot like Microsoft Office, which was a lot like the office suite before that. XMMS is a lot like winamp, which was a lot like audio players before it. AIM is a lot like ICQ. All software is to some extent a derivative of something before it. That's how progress works. It's good because it makes things better, and it adds some consistency for users. So Songbird looks a little too much like iTunes. Big whup.

It's probably not worth posting anything not positive about Apple anymore, since most of the anti-iTunes comments (outside of relating to its memory footprint) are being modded troll.

Re:Here's the thing

[kponto]

iTunes 6 embeds a DRM hash to any files that it encodes from CD. So while your rebuttal was true with previous versions, the original statement is now true. iTunes is "DRM Ridden".

However, if you use an external encoder, like the iTunes LAME, that hash is not embedded.

Re:Here's the thing

[jwdeff]

I fail to understand anything you've said in this section. iTMS was the first the RIAA let slide? It is pretty amazing how easy a company will let something slide when you pay them a per-song fee. If they didn't do that, say like MP3.COM, the RIAA would probably crack down on them. Oh wait. That is what happened.

If you failed to understand it, how could you have commentary on it???

I thought (and I might be wrong on this) that you had to buy the CD to download it from mp3.com. That just seems like fair use to me. Regardless, if they were allowed to, mp3.com would have had a music store. The music industry didn't trust the online thing at all, and postponed it as much as they could.

Okay sure. This now means I have to always use the iTunes player to listen to the iTunes songs. Again, if I go to a new service that uses DRM, iTunes won't play that music and neither will that service play my iTunes. So again, I fail to see your point.
I never said "dude, switch to Walmart Connect because ITMS sucks".
My point is, being able to play music from multiple music stores using the same software is a good thing.

For any non-DRM music I have now or I buy in the future, iTunes will never "lock-me-in" to its player. If the RIAA will only allow music stores to sell music online with DRM, I don't see why that makes iTMS the evil entity.
I never said it would. I thought we were discussing online music stores, not DRM free music. I think you are responding to the EFF community, not so much as my particular comment.

For the majority of iTunes users, we don't care about the DRM that is there.
People will care when some other company makes an MP3 player that's more trendy then the iPod.

Re:Here's the thing

[Lumpy]

If they did, they'd know the DRM is so invisible that most users don't even know it's there. I always forget it is.

Buy music from itumes. get a new computer. copy music to new computer.

Get pissed because music will not play.

download jhymn and pray you were not stupid enough to upgrade to itunes 6

Hard drive crash? too bad.

Itunes would rock if you could download the songs you bought more than once to overcome this nastiness waiting to bite people.

It bit me.. I had to violently and ruthelessly violate copyrights to get my music back. (bittorrent, got better copies of the music I bought off of pirate bay than what I got off itunes that I lost in a hard drive crash.

not everyone is a techno-genius either. a crash or new pc will upset many users because of the DRM.

Re:Here's the thing

[jollespm]

In order to un-mangle the songs, just drag and drop them onto iTunes and have the "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library" and "Keep iTunes folder organized" selected. They get organized and renamed into /artist/album/01-trackname.mp3 automatically.

One should be able to do this in any program that lets you rename the files from the ID3 tags.

Re:Here's the thing

[mapmaker]

The iTunes software is nicely designed, works well, has a lot of features, and came free with my iPod. Why would I start looking for a v0.1 FOSS replacement for it?

Ever try using iTunes to move songs from your iPod to a computer?

Re:Here's the thing

[Overly Critical Guy]

Buy music from itumes. get a new computer. copy music to new computer.

Get pissed because music will not play.

Take the 30 seconds to authorize the computer, music plays again.

download jhymn and pray you were not stupid enough to upgrade to itunes 6

Hard drive crash? too bad.

Has nothing to do with Apple.

Itunes would rock if you could download the songs you bought more than once to overcome this nastiness waiting to bite people.

Record labels won't let it happen, but it's moot since you can make as many backups as you want.

not everyone is a techno-genius either. a crash or new pc will upset many users because of the DRM.

Which is why iTunes pops up a dialog reminding you to back up your music after you purchase it. Your fault.

Re:Here's the thing

[Fordiman]

"'And you can't get music from multiple stores and play it all from the same player (without cracking it).'
How is this any different than Songbird? If I download DRM'd music from random-music-store iTunes won't play it and neither will Songbird. If I download non-DRM from allofmp3.com, iTunes will play it and so will Songbird."

Plugins, baby, plugins. How long after the first pluggable release of songbird do you think it will be before there's a SongBird plugin for translating each and every major music stores content transparently into _real_ music files?

Re:Here's the thing

[engagebot]

If you think everyone's going overboard about the DRM, I think you've missed some points.

First of all, how often do you either:
A) get a new computer or
B) format your drive and re-install windows.

You are unaffected by iTunes DRM only if your answer is:
1. "never" or
2. longer than ((number of years left in your life)/(number of times you can authorize tracks))

And no, if i PURCHASE tracks, i don't want to have to burn my own cd's and re-import them. Thats ridiculous. You're buying music that at one point or another, you won't be able to play. Granted, physical media doesn't last indefinitely, but guess what? I can currently play CDs i bought 10 years ago. I'll check back with you in 2016, and we'll see how much of that DRM'd music you paid for still works.

Re:Here's the thing

[neves]

Why would I start looking for a v0.1 FOSS replacement for it?

Because it doesn't work in linux? So you wouldn't have to buy a windows box just to use it.

Ooops! Songbird also just work in windows:-(

Re:Here's the thing

[Blakey Rat]

Why didn't you back-up your data? How the hell could this possibly be Apple's fault? Do you blame Apple for your lost spreadsheets and images also?

iTunes specifically reminds you to back-up your music every time you buy some.

Re:Here's the thing

[Squozen]

iTunes will happily let you use an iPod in disk mode and drag the files from your library onto the iPod on your desktop. Then connect the iPod to the other computer and drag them off again. Easy.

Re:Here's the thing

[Blakey Rat]

I never said "dude, switch to Walmart Connect because ITMS sucks".
My point is, being able to play music from multiple music stores using the same software is a good thing.

Yeah, but since all those stores use WMP DRM, it's basically guaranteeing a Microsoft monopoly in the music DRM market. I don't see that as a good thing.

Re:Here's the thing

[Omestes]

Actually the DRM can make itself appearent at times. When you are sharing your library over a network, for example.

In college dorms (at least where I went) there is a very large, per dorm network, with roughly 30-40 people sharing their libraries at any given time, but half of them are at their 5 user per day limit. This limit only exists because of one or two purchased songs, but inflicts itself on your entire playlist.

This doesn't make sense for two reasons. The first of which is that only one or two songs are purchased/DRM'd (on my computer 3 out of a couple thousand), making it nonsensical to block the entire playlist. The second reason is that we are dealing with a listen-only transmition, 99% of users will just HEAR the song, there is no copying (in a technical sense there is, but not in a practical sense), and there is no piracy. Granted there might be someone out their using OurTunes, or grabbing the stream, but generally the listening is legit.

This has also effected other small networks I've been on (family, work, and freinds).

Other than that, your right, the iTunes DRM is pretty good, as much as DRM goes. Though Hymn is still a good thing, for the above reason, and for principled reasons. Controlling my property is always a bad thing, in my eyes.

Re:Here's the thing

[Spytap]

Ah, you sound like an i-tard to me, locked into a losers format.

Did you buy your new car because it has an i-pod slot?

I'll bet you did..

Normally I'm a fan of not feeding the trolls, but I'd like to point this one out real quick. Notice the aggression, the name-calling, and the clear and obvious distain for anything that might be considered "popular." This is known as the "emo troll."
Naturally congregating on places such as Myspace.com and Friendster, they tend to amass as many friends as possible to show that they don't care what people think about them. To an emo troll, counter-culture is cool, despite how mainstream that sentiment is. They rally against anything that someone else has heard of, eventually being known to claim they listen to bands which haven't actually formed yet. Truthfully though, they rock out to Fall Out Boy and old school hip-hop when no one is around to catch them. They are also known colloquially as "Poseurs" and "a bit of an asshole, really."

That being said, yeah, I've had an iPod since they had scroll wheels, and having been collecting music since I was in college, I've got a bit of it to carry about. And being that I'm looking into getting a new car, an iPod slot would be nice. I'm sorry if I'm not as "cool" as you, but sometimes I just want to drive around and listen to whatever music I like, without consulting you first. I'll do the same with my computer, my car, and whatever device I choose to connect them. Have a nice day though, I'm sure your swoopy longish bangs get all the friend invites on myspace. =)

Re:Here's the thing

[jwdeff]

I suppose not.

Re:Here's the thing

[McFadden]

You fucking fanboys. I hope you feel warm and fuzzy modding down... (etc) I read your post before I saw the parent, and I thought you were being an ass. But I have to say, I agree.

Re:Here's the thing

[slide-rule]

Ever try using iTunes to move songs from your iPod to a computer?

Taking the 'joe user' perspective about this... my music is already on my computer. The question is rather moot. The iPod is a portable extension of what my computer has on it. ::puzzled::

Re:Here's the thing

[mapmaker]

That's fine if you only have one computer in your house, and don't have one at work, and don't have any friends that you might want to share music with. For the rest of us, being able to move songs to a computer from our iPods would be very handy.

Re:Here's the thing

[Dominatus]

"I have never, ever come across any limitation."

Try buying a song from iTMS and (without circumventing anything) putting it right on any other portable MP3 player on the market, except of course the iPod.

Have fun trying.

Re:Here's the thing

[tepples]

That's fine if you only have one computer in your house, and don't have one at work, and don't have any friends that you might want to share music with.

If you've recorded some music yourself and want to share it with people, or if you've discovered some Free music and want to share it with people, then use the iPod player in USB disc mode.

Re:Here's the thing

[Zhe Mappel]

You fucking fanboys...Why don't you guys just trade in your modpoints for porn.

Because when you already have all the money and porn you can stand, the last pleasure is power, baby.

Just ask Larry Flynt. He mods here all the time.

Re:Here's the thing

[Weedlekin]

"It's MY MUSIC (they did not say "purchase a limited use contract" they said "BUT IT NOW")"

Amazon.com also have a "buy it" button. It does not say "Buy a box and plastic disk together with a limited license to whatever is recorded on said plastic disk". People who take your money at checkouts in record stores also tend to omit phrases such as "You are of course aware that you are only buying the box and plastic disk, not what is recorded on it". But guess what? This does not alter the fact that you have not bought anything more than a box, a piece of plastic, and a limited license.

"They want me to play fair? then they need to play fair by not lying to people anymore over CD's Music and Movies. Advertise you are buying a limited use contract that can be nullified at any time for any reason and then I'll be happy."

There is a "terms of service" statement that you must agree to before creating an iTunes store account. It clearly and unequivocally tells you precisely what you are buying, and what you can do with it. The agreement can also be reviewed at any time by clicking the "terms of service" link at the bottom of iTunes store pages. Apple are not therefore "lying": you have the option to cancel the account creation process if you do not agree to their terms, and thereby avoid buying any limited licenses from the iTunes store.

"their sales will drop so far below ground not even the core of the planet will be ableto look up to see them."

See above.

Re:Here's the thing

[Captain_Chaos]

However, if you do buy from iTunes, Apple provides the most lax DRM in the market. I have never, ever come across any limitation. I can burn as many CDs as I want, share the music with multiple computers, and copy them anywhere at will. When someone rattles on about iTunes DRM, it's clear to me they don't really use iTunes at all. If they did, they'd know the DRM is so invisible that most users don't even know it's there. I always forget it is.

This is the problem with iTunes. It brainwashes the masses into thinking that there's nothing wrong with DRM. That it's necessary and inevitable; even normal.

It's nice for you that life is so comfortable inside your Apple Golden Cage (TM), but what about people like me who would like to buy U2 songs online and then be able to play them on their Creative Jukebox Zen? Or their Empeg car MP3 player? Or their Linux workstation? And what happens to your precious music if Apple goes out of business? Or the RIAA decides they don't want to play along anymore?

Re:Here's the thing

[slide-rule]

Just to continue the 'joe average' argument... "more than one computer in house" means you have iTunes on all of them and then share the playlists between (and/or get an AirTunes receiver -- yeah, its not cheap and not the perfectly golden solution for all people). At work, and this is a preference, just use the earbuds (or get a dock player of some variety). For friends, if you must share, iPods do serve as a USB mass storage discs... what's the problem of sharing things that way? It's likely to be a one-time deal until you/friends are all in sync w/ each other.

Now... that's not to say an iPod is in fact perfect for all people (different strokes fer different folks) but the argument that always comes out about how limiting the iPod is b/c you cannot copy the songs out of [the music playing portion of] it is just not a real problem.

Re:Here's the thing

[mapmaker]

Here's what I heard when I read your post: "Just hop on one foot while touching your nose and juggling these flaming torches and you can move music off of your iPod easy!"

I love my Nano, I really do, and iTunes is mostly a great program. But let's not kid ourselves or become Apple apologists here. It isn't like this is a hard-to-implement feature or Apple accidentally forgot to include it. They deliberately set up roadblocks in iTunes and the iPod file system in order to make it difficult to move songs from iPods to computers. Let's call a spade a spade, and crippleware crippleware.

Re:Here's the thing

[slide-rule]

It isn't like this is a hard-to-implement feature or Apple accidentally forgot to include it. They deliberately set up roadblocks in iTunes and the iPod file system in order to make it difficult to move songs from iPods to computers. Let's call a spade a spade, and crippleware crippleware.

My reply to this may sound more argumentative than I mean to; apologies if that's the case. I sympathize that a small percentage of users (power-users or whatever) might have a need to off-load songs from their iPod... but in all honestly, the only place I hear this ever being a problem is /. posts. We're a pretty niche collection of people who just Know Too Much (tm). You may have a unique need here; IMO that's fair. Apple, bowing slightly to recording industry pressure about "piracy" (yeah, I know), choose not to add that in; IMO that's also fair. But the biggest point I'm trying to raise here is that, based on non-/. people I've talked with, this "issue" isn't even on the radar screen; this goes beyond any sentiment of "ignorance is bliss" on their part too. Of the small fraction "power-user" crew, the majority know they can drag-and-drop *.mp3 files (or whatever floats their boat) into and out of disk mode. For the small fraction of that small fraction for which this isn't good enough for, well, sorry; it just sucks.

Beyond that, there are [allegedly] tools that can pull the music files off the music portion of an iPod's file system and work out the song info (given the file name is hashed). I haven't looked into them b/c this isn't anything I need. True enough that if you step outside the shiny playground Apple makes, you'll have to do some of your own heavy lifting. That's a spade I'm willing to agree with you on... but I really can't get on board with calling it "crippleware". No doubt we'll just disagree on that.

Re:Here's the thing

[shokk]

That's exactly what I do. I rip from my personal CDs using the old Obsequieum tools on the Linux box which houses the music repository. I run mt-daapd, samba, and Twonkyvision so that the muic is accessible from various client systems in my home.

Once the Linux version does come, I'm sure lots of people will give it a spin, but there had better be UPnP and Rendezvous plugins to take care of exising setups.

Not invented yet?

[mccalli]

From the article: Songbird can connect to any a la carte media store -- downloadable music, radio, video, P2P networks, and classes of services that haven't been created yet.

It can connect to classes of service that haven't been invented yet? Impressive. I shall go away and ponder the transdimensional time-travelling inplications of this statement. Over a large brandy.

Cheers,
Ian

iTunes, DRM-ridden?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Only on slashdot can iTunes be equalled to Windows Media Player...

Get your facts straight: files encoded from your own CDs do NOT have any DRM in them. Only tunes bought from the built-in on-line music store have DRM.

iTunes is a player/ripped/jukebox/music store program. You DO NOT NEED to buy DRM tunes online, you do not even need an internet connection (although it comes in handy for the CDDB feature when ripping your own CDs).

Re:iTunes, DRM-ridden?!

[paiute]

Totally agree. I have 85+gigs of ripped music in iTunes, not one track purchased from the Music Store.

Re:iTunes, DRM-ridden?!

[LightningBolt!]

Only on slashdot can iTunes be equalled to Windows Media Player...

OK, here we go...

Get your facts straight:

A very good idea.

files encoded from your own CDs do NOT have any DRM in them. Only tunes bought from the built-in on-line music store have DRM.

True.

iTunes is a player/ripped/jukebox/music store program.

Windows Media Player is a player/ripper/jukebox/music store program.

You DO NOT NEED to buy DRM tunes online, you do not even need an internet connection (although it comes in handy for the CDDB feature when ripping your own CDs).

Also true of Windows Media Player. Like iTunes, Windows Media Player 10 will rip your CD's to mp3, with no DRM.

Re:iTunes, DRM-ridden?!

[EntropyEngine]

I'm guessing that the point being made was that Windows Media Player is piss poor, while iTunes really isn't.

Anyway, I just want to know how long this SongBird thing is going to last before Apple's legal Eagles swoop in and sink their collective claws into the guys & gals behind the interface...

Re:iTunes, DRM-ridden?!

[node 3]

Also true of Windows Media Player. Like iTunes, Windows Media Player 10 will rip your CD's to mp3, with no DRM.

It would be fair to note that mp3 ripping is new to WMP 10, which is XP-only, and wasn't installed by default on most Windows PCs in use today.

All copies of iTunes currently installed can rip to mp3, while only a fraction of the copies of WMP can, which puts things in a little better context.

Re:iTunes, DRM-ridden?!

[penguin-collective]

Yeah, that will be interesting, given that Apple has ripped off the interface as well. But, of course, their pockets are deep enough to get away with that kind of behavior.

Re:iTunes, DRM-ridden?!

[MrNonchalant]

All copies of iTunes currently installed can rip to mp3, while only a fraction of the copies of WMP can, which puts things in a little better context.

That's hardly fair. If the software exists, no matter its install base, it counts. Anybody can install it just fine. And not upgrading to XP is no excuse, you can hardly expect Microsoft (or Apple for that matter) to support 5 year old operating systems. No progress would ever be made that way.

Re:iTunes, DRM-ridden?!

[Draconix]

Um... bullshit? iTunes came out back before OS X, and you could rip MP3s with it then. You can't have the latest version of iTunes for OS 9, so you can't rip AACs or use the music store on OS 9, but you still have a good, functioning music player and ripper. Also, you might wish to consider that there are far more macs out there with OS X than otherwise. From my experience, maybe 1 in every 20 mac users, if even that, still don't have an OS X machine.

Re:iTunes, DRM-ridden?!

[node 3]

That's hardly fair.

No, it's very fair. Unfair would have been for me to either discount WMP 10 altogether (which you claim I've done, but I have most certainly not done), or to ignore older WMPs that are still in wide use.

If the software exists, no matter its install base, it counts.

This sentence sums up your whole argument, and it has a flaw. The flaw is "no matter its install base". Remove it and you're golden.

"If the software exists, it counts"

I agree with that. I never said WMP 10 didn't count. I just said there's some context to be addressed.

When you think of the phrase, "no matter its install base", alone, it sounds really absurd. If MS were to release a new version of IE that was in every way superior to Firefox, and had no possible way to infect a PC with spyware and the like, but was only installed on, say, 5% of Windows PCs, it would definitely "count", but it would not count as much as if it were installed on all Windows PCs. Hence the usefulness of context.

Anybody can install it just fine.

No, they cannot. But even if they could, for whatever reasons, they have not.

you can hardly expect Microsoft (or Apple for that matter) to support 5 year old operating systems. No progress would ever be made that way.

To begin with, Microsoft does support OS's for far longer than 5 years. If your statement was correct, then "no progress would be made". But one not need go that far to show the flaw you've made here. Quite simply, Apple, Google, Adobe, Microsoft... Well, basically just about everyone writes software that works on Windows as far back as Windows 2000, if not 98 and ME, and they are able to progress just fine.

But that's just a side issue. The fact is, WMP 10 does exist and many people use it. But many people still use WMP 9 and earlier. So it's only fair to take that into account to provide proper context. To not do so is to misrepresent the facts.

Re:iTunes, DRM-ridden?!

[EntropyEngine]

There is that, but I couldn't find the original story to back it up, so I kept shtum!

That said, from what I remember, the claim was pretty tenuous and broad...

Re:iTunes, DRM-ridden?!

[node 3]

And iTunes is OS X only, so only a FRACTION of Macs support it.

You are wrong. iTunes originally came out on OS 9, and it ripped to mp3 just fine, with no DRM at all.

Regardless, it's unclear what your point is. While I obviously don't have the numbers, it would seem a logical guess that the number of iTunes on OS 9 installs is insignificant compared to iTunes on OS X installs. While on the other hand, it's a good guess that the number of WMP 9 installs is not insignificant and is likely even higher than WMP 10 installs.

Re:iTunes, DRM-ridden?!

[soupdevil]

About 1/3 of the Macs I've seen in recording studios in the last two years were still running OS9 with ProTools. This is because OSX was so late to the game with professional audio capability.

Re:iTunes, DRM-ridden?!

[shawb]

How can you not compare that to WiMP (Sorry, I like that anagram.) From the features you listed (Sorry if the formatting is ugly) player ripper jukebox musicstore iTunes X X X X WMP X X X ? Windows media player allows you to play most downloaded stuff (as much as iTunes woulde anyways, I don't know how well OGG or other less common formats are supported) WiMP allows you to rip to one of three WMA formats, or to MP3, the only difference to iTunes is iTunes uses three different apple formats instead of Windows formats, and it allows rip to WAV. Jukebox? They both have them. I BELIEVE WMP had a library functionality before iTunes even existed, not sure how quicktime dealt with it. Music Store? WMP has a web browser like feature built in which allows for purchasing music through several different online music stores. I doubt the integration is as tight as it is with iTunes, but you are not locked into one vendor.

The biggest problem I've seen with WMP is that it doesn't have a good way to integrate with an iPod right out of the box (I'm sure someone has written or at least tried to write an app to do this. I've tried a couple plugins for Winamp, but they were just a royal pain to upload music to the iPod with. Compared to iTunes just being annoying to use as a media player in my opinion.) I believe this is more the result of Apple's design decisions on the iPod than it is any fault inherent in WMP. I do not know how well other portable digital audio players integrate with WMP, but I would imagine there is decent support on those devices (and I know Apple doesn't really like other devices being able to download directly from iTunes or other music stores allowing downloads of music compatible to an iPod without using iTunes.)

That said, I don't really like either music player and have generally enjoyed Winamp the best for actually playing music on my computer. The controls are intuitive enough and seem more responsive than many other media players. Forget trying to do anything with iTunes when it is updating an iPod (at least on a Windows machine... I have a feeling it is a lot smoother on a Mac.) And yes, I have tried a lot of the other players out there, but none of them felt as good to me as Winamp. Yes, loading up the media library takes a couple seconds, but I'd expect that in a piece of software reading ID3 tags on over ten thousand files. I happen to enjoy having a fair amount of relevant metadata embedded in the file. It's nice to know what album a song is off of, what year it was recorded, etc. I like to have my music player have the ability to organize my music by band name, song name, album, genre, length of time and whatnot. It's extremely helpful in making playlists or just finding that one song you want your friend to listen to. And I like looking at pretty visualizations to go along with my music. It's still neat to me after all these years. Then again that might be because Milkdrop comes pretty close to what I see in my mind when I close my eyes and listen to music, only more vivid and I can actually show it to someone else. I don't personally use a lot of features that Winamp carries, but I could see them being useful to some people.

When you find a piece of software you like, use it. If other people don't find it to be all that great, don't act surprised. If it's a security issue, then maybe you can try to explain it, but the majority of people won't care and will just use what they are used to anyways. And for all I know, the reason I might like Winamp is that it is the first piece of music playing software I really used, back in 1997 or whatever when I had a bunch of CDs and like 4 or 5 MP3s I had downloaded... off websites... on 28.8k dialup.

Re:iTunes, DRM-ridden?!

[hansonc]

Where as WMP 9 (or was it 8) decided to DRM all ripped MP3s by default.... I for one have never seen that from iTunes.

Re:iTunes, DRM-ridden?!

[GarfBond]

Also true of Windows Media Player. Like iTunes, Windows Media Player 10 will rip your CD's to mp3, with no DRM.

This has not always been true. WMP7-9 (maybe it was 7-8) defaulted to having all your music automatically copy-protected when you ripped it, which made absolutely zero sense for the average user.

Re:iTunes, DRM-ridden?!

[Fordiman]

Actually, they're both kinda piss-poor. iTunes is just sucks its ass more prettily than WMP does.

Meanwhile, the interface is (supposed to be) skinnable. At the first hint of Apple saying 'you can't do that', they'll stop being lazy about the interface build and design a new default skin; Legal Eagles Declawed.

Re:iTunes, DRM-ridden?!

[EntropyEngine]

Got to disagree with you on the first part, there fella!

If I thought for a atto second that iTunes wasn't any good, I'd be using something else.

In terms of raw UI, there's clear blue water between iTunes and whatever the hell is second.

Besides, I sort of grew out of the the whole skinnin' thing in college...

Re:iTunes, DRM-ridden?!

[zachdms]

It was silently on by default only in WMP7, after which point people realized that people were ripping without checking settings, so ... yeah, that changed in a hurry.

Re:iTunes, DRM-ridden?!

[geekee]

"It would be fair to note that mp3 ripping is new to WMP 10, which is XP-only, and wasn't installed by default on most Windows PCs in use today.

All copies of iTunes currently installed can rip to mp3, while only a fraction of the copies of WMP can, which puts things in a little better context."

You can't get iTunes for pre-XP machines either, and iTunes isn't installed by default on any Windows PCs, so how is iTunes any advantage for ripping mp3s?

Re:iTunes, DRM-ridden?!

[node 3]

You can't get iTunes for pre-XP machines either,

Incorrect.

and iTunes isn't installed by default on any Windows PCs

It was, although that's not directly relevant to the discussion.

so how is iTunes any advantage for ripping mp3s?

I never said it had an advantage. I merely said that when comparing iTunes and WMP, it's fair to present WMP 10 in proper context.

Of course, it's also fair to put iTunes in proper context, but since all versions of iTunes have always been able to rip mp3s, there's no real context to bring up in that regard. If WMP 10 were fairly universal to the extent that there was no significant install base of WMP 9, then the WMP 10 context would not be worth bringing up either, but there is a significant install base of WMP 9 (and earlier), so it is worth bringing up.

Don't make the mistake in thinking that I'm implying that WMP 10 doesn't count, or that iTunes 6 is superior to WMP 10 just because WMP 9 couldn't encode mp3s. I'm just providing relevant context for comparing iTunes and WMP support for mp3 encoding as reflected in the real numbers of the real world.

MS has always had a hard time getting people to upgrade, even when the upgrades are available as free downloads. This is just another example of that difficulty in action.

If you want to compare up-to-date iTunes users with up-to-date WMP users on XP, then certainly they can all rip to mp3 just fine (excepting the DRM CDs). If you want to leave it at that, by all means, do so. But it's certainly fair and appropriate to point out that, in the real world, WMP 10 is not the version installed and in use by many people.

That WMP 10 is not universal amongst WMP installs does not change the fact that WMP 10 can rip mp3s, and that WMP 10 can rip mp3s does not change the fact that there is still a significant install base of older versions without the mp3 plug-in. These facts are not contradictory, but are both relevant. Someone incompletely pointed out one of those facts, so I thought it fair to point out the other to help fill in the complete picture. Why would you have a problem with that?

Re:iTunes, DRM-ridden?!

[Squozen]

You're right, iTunes works fine on the Mac while updating an iPod. I've had my lowly PowerBook playing an H.264 vidcast, downloading more podcasts and syncing with two iPods at the same time with no problems.

Re:iTunes, DRM-ridden?!

[shawb]

And iTunes plays stuff just fine when doing iPod updates, it's just that the UI gets HORRIBLY sluggish, IE I click and then it might take 30 seconds to register (if it registers at all.) I was thinking it might be USB or IRQ related, except the mouse cursor moves just fine, iTunes just doesn't register the clicks.

Re:iTunes, DRM-ridden?!

[MrNonchalant]

Ah, but the argument was whether or not Windows Media Player can rip, burn, and so forth. The answer is yes. You can't say "partially, because people haven't bothered to upgrade it." Let's go back to your IE analogy. If Microsoft released a version of IE that was superior to Firefox and only 5% of the people installed it then the problem isn't Microsoft's product. The problem is the 95% of the people who haven't bothered to install it. You can't then say that IE isn't better than Firefox, because as of the latest version it clearly would be.

wonderful

[Anonymous Coward]

it's always nice to see someone doing what's been done before, only prettier, with a GPL, no support and random crashes.

Re:wonderful

[CMiYC]

and by prettier you meant uglier? This is one of the worst UIs I have seen in a while. I don't understand why every developer on earth thinks their application should look like nothing else.

When I tried to change "skins", I lost access to the menu bar.

Re:wonderful

[Fordiman]

Its nice to see that people can still judge an unfinished product as crap, rather than enjoy what's been accomplished by it. I'm pretty sure people have been doing that since 1984 (start of the GNU project).

Re:Yes, 'cuz that's what teenaged music fans want.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not just the source that's open. The program is also a convenient user interface to buy music online, not just from a single monopoly (e.g. iTunes music store) but from all sources. DRM-free. Note in the screenshot, they have an icon to buy MP3s from amazon.

Open Source Music

[inKubus]

It's too bad more MUSIC isn't open source, where someone writes pieces of a tune and then releases to the public domain so others can enhance and build upon the original project...

Back in the early days of the internet, .MOD files and the whole Fasttracker scene was at it's peak. With a .MOD file, when you distribute your music you distribute all of the samples used to make the music and the charts itself. Anyone out on the internet could then edit or improve your music. A lot of the music I wrote early on was based on the works of others.

The amazing thing about iTunes is it's ability to make .99 per song, not really the search capabilities. Most of the time, I can't find the song I want on iTunes, unless it's some pop bullsh*t. How songbird intends to do the same (for the artists who list on there)--rather than turn into the next (insert Napster, Gnutella, etc here)--remains to be seen..

Re:Open Source Music

[The NPS]

"It's too bad more MUSIC isn't open source, where someone writes pieces of a tune and then releases to the public domain so others can enhance and build upon the original project..."

Definitely -- I wish I had musical ability, because I'd give it away free to everyone.

Re:Open Source Music

[misleb]

Back in the early days of the internet, .MOD files and the whole Fasttracker scene was at it's peak. With a .MOD file, when you distribute your music you distribute all of the samples used to make the music and the charts itself. Anyone out on the internet could then edit or improve your music. A lot of the music I wrote early on was based on the works of others.

For as much as I loved .MODs (and .S3M, .669, etc) back in the day, it really is a rather limited form of music. Or rather, it is just one form of music. Musicians of all types DO base their work on the works of others. That is how you get genres of music. Musicians don't need the "source" for music to base new music off of it.

What made .MODs and all that so special is not the openness of it, but that it made musical expression more available to amateurs. No expensive instruments or MIDI equipment needed. Just a home PC. Anyone could throw together some tracks and have it sound better than the cheesy FM synth built into sound cards back then.

The amazing thing about iTunes is it's ability to make .99 per song, not really the search capabilities. Most of the time, I can't find the song I want on iTunes, unless it's some pop bullsh*t.

Well, it wouldn't be "pop" if they couldn't get at least .99 per song. ;)

-matthew

Re:Open Source Music

[soupdevil]

What abilities DO you have? Do you give them away for free, or do you work for a living?

Re:Open Source Music

[jfengel]

Try GarageBand. You can download public domain loops, and build your music that way.

Re:Open Source Music

[TeknoHog]

I don't think open source works in any artform in the way it does in software. In a program that does one thing, there's usually an objective idea on how it could be improved, but art is more subjective. If you let many people work on the same piece of art, it doesn't necessarily get any better -- though the same applies for software in some cases. On the other hand, musicians in a band can often produce a good collective vision, better than that of a single composer.

I actually started composing music with trackers in 1992, and did some collaborations and remixes, but mostly good tracker pieces come from single authors. Ideas and samples, on the other hand, can flow freely and influence others. It happens in any kind of music, even if you don't have the 'source'.

Now that I work more with MIDI equipment and other instruments, it's a lot harder to share the source. Most of the notation is only in my head anyway. Plus, it isn't practical to put all those gigs of unorganized material available online. But of course, if anyone's interested in tinkering with some of my music, I'll be happy to provide the source material.

Re:Open Source Music

[aconkling]

Back in the early days of the internet, .MOD files and the whole Fasttracker scene was at it's peak. With a .MOD file, when you distribute your music you distribute all of the samples used to make the music and the charts itself. Anyone out on the internet could then edit or improve your music. A lot of the music I wrote early on was based on the works of others.

This is the case in most of the history of Western music. (I can't really speak about other cultures' music as much.) Bach, for example, arranged many Vivaldi and Marcello instrumental concertos for solo keyboard, which became not only an exercise in theory for Bach (which inspired his subsequent works) but also became great pieces for others to perform.

Bach's actually an excellent example because of the amount of "recycling" he did within his own work also. When he was writing cantatas every week, he would often pull out some of his better themes and retool them for the piece. To complete the analogy, it's almost like he wrote a common library for reuse. ^_^

The same goes down the pike: there are many pieces that were written as variations on a theme by so-and-so, and these often end up being seminal works that remain popular.

It was in this framework that I started reading about and using open-source software; it's no wonder I was almost immediately taken by it. :) It's certainly something I think about when programming: reading other's source is a learning experience, but also affords me the opportunity to reuse portions of it that are useful and/or elegant.

Re:Open Source Music

[The NPS]

I work at help desk for my college, but it's free to students, teachers, staff, alumni (as most college help desks are, I'd assume). But anyhow, if my friends have computer problems, I help them for free.

Aside from that, art is not a job. It's ok to sell art for profit, and I don't mean to condemn those who do, however, there is a big difference between an artist selling his trade, and what the RIAA does. I'm just saying, that I wish I had musical ability so that I could give it away for free. I'd love art to be free, and if I had artist talent, I'd give my art away for free, while making money at a real job.

We Need an Extension

[jgbishop]

Is there a SongSomething extension to rename this program? I prefer Songfox to Songbird...

Re:We Need an Extension

[RingDev]

Yeah, Bird just isn't powerful enough. How about 'SongHawk' or 'SongBadger' or some other respectable animal.

-Rick

Re:We Need an Extension

[Afrosheen]

Yeah but you gotta love the icon choices. An egg for the installer and a feather for the Songbird player itself.

  Too bad he doesn't have one theme that's worth a shit. Black or dark red? What is this, the vinyl choices for the interior in a 57 Chevy? Give us the iTunes gray, or a glossy white theme, anything but these dark, hard-to-read interfaces.

Re:We Need an Extension

[Midnight Thunder]

I don't know, but 'SongBadger' makes me think of this madness: Badger Badger Badger.

Re:We Need an Extension

[Kenshin]

Fuck that! How about "Songvelociraptor"?! /lame

Re:We Need an Extension

[seanmeister]

"Give us the iTunes gray, or a glossy white theme, anything but these dark, hard-to-read interfaces."

chrome\skin\bland.css is in the Songbird install dir.

hack away!

Re:We Need an Extension

[seanmeister]

erm... ok, perhaps you need to do more than edit that specific CSS file, but my point it that it's XUL & CSS, and you can change it.

Re:We Need an Extension

[Afrosheen]

I'll loan you this humor detector, set it to high. ;)

Re:We Need an Extension

[seanmeister]

No actually, I think your point is valid - the current Songbird theme looks like ass.

Say what what?

[SEWilco]

"a preview version for the new open source response to iTunes, Songbird, BoingBoing"

Which what what?

Re:Say what what?

[fr1kk]

The paragraphed version of my submission may have made it a bit obfuscated =\

Re:Say what what?

[SEWilco]

Obfuscated and still not clarified. Who did what to whom for what?

Re:Say what what?

[fr1kk]

hahahahahahaha, nicely done.

Mozilla-based?

[eMartin]

Right after I opened it, I noticed the column header control, and that the popup menus look more like the Firefox ones than the Windows native ones, so I checked Songbird's directory, and yes, it appears that it is Mozilla-based.

Now, maybe that's common knowledge, but it's the first I've heard of it, and I think it's worth mentioning. Especially since talk of cross platform porting is.

Re:Mozilla-based?

[eMartin]

Of course, if I'd read the welcome page in its browser view, it would have been even more obvious.

Re:Mozilla-based?

[papadiablo]

From the Welcome page, the first page shown when you launch the program:


Songbird is a media browser and Web player built from Firefox's browser engine.

Re:Mozilla-based?

[jalefkowit]

It's actually a pretty significant milestone for Mozilla because Songbird (AFAIK) is the first major product released that is built on the XULRunner platform.

XULRunner is exactly what it sounds like -- a small runtime to allow deployment of XUL-based applications on machines that may not have Firefox installed. Think of it as a JRE for XUL.

Until XULRunner, there was no practical way to build full-fledged apps using Mozilla tech that didn't run inside one of their products (Firefox, Thunderbird, Sunbird, Seamonkey) because that was the only way to get access to a XUL interpreter. Songbird is an interesting demo of how XULRunner gets you beyond that.

Re:Mozilla-based?

[iabervon]

You should know it's Mozilla-based because the name ends with "bird". Of course, they'll probably have to rename it to "Songfox", which should clarify things further. (For that matter, foxes are cuter than birds.)

Re:Mozilla-based?

[eMartin]

That part I know about. :)

I actually use XULRunner for running the ChatZilla extention without a browser.

Re:Mozilla-based?

[sethadam1]

Yes, and now that it works, it's only a matter of time before someone turns FireFTP into a standalone program, which is pretty exciting!

Re:Mozilla-based?

[Flwyd]

With a name like "Songbird" I assumed it was Mozilla-related before I knew what the program did.

Re:Mozilla-based?

[db32]

I havn't even downloaded it and I know that its Mozilla-based. "Built on the same platform as Firefox, Songbird acts like a specialized web browser for music."
Straight from the TFA. But hey its slashdot right? :)

DRM Ridden?

[TheBigMacMan]

As far as I know, and I may be wrong here, iTunes will play standard mp3's. At least mine does. So what would the "...a great alternative to the DRM ridden iTunes..." gain you? I would rather have a player that can play drm'd songs, if I were forced to play a few, and still be able to play standard mp3's.

Re:DRM Ridden?

[tsa]

Good point. I was also a bit put off by the term "DRM ridden". I find the DRM that iTunes uses is not very restricting, and fair.

Re:DRM Ridden?

[Afrosheen]

DRM with iTunes may seem fair, but their policies are definitely not.

  One of my clients had an iPod and an Apple laptop. He got tired of lugging the laptop around with him and wanted something smaller and lighter. He purchased a tiny little Sony VAIO. When we got to plugging the iPod into it, we found that the battery was dead. Not only that, but iTunes on Windows said the iPod was unreadable and would do nothing until we formatted it. I tried using a variety of tools to get his songs off of the iPod but nothing worked. We ended up formatting it.

  So he lost all his music.

  Now, normally this wouldn't be so bad. You reformat the device then transfer..oh wait. There was no backup of his music since his Mac laptop was long gone. We both (stupidly I admit) assumed the iPod would just work and he wouldn't lose his music. He did. All of it.

  The nail in the coffin that had him steaming mad was that the iTunes store, being fully aware of the fact that you paid for your music already, wouldn't let you download your songs again without paying again. If you're logged in, why not let you re-download something you already bought? Does Apple really think their software and hardware is so perfect as to never lose data?

  Needless to say that iPod hit the trash can minutes after I left. I wanted to grab it from him, take it home and use a battery kit on it, but he was too pissed off to keep it. Turns out last Christmas he got the big black video iPod instead, so he turned it into an upgrade excuse. It's still bullshit that he had to pay twice for the same songs, but in an Apple world, that's how things work.

Re:DRM Ridden?

[gnud]

I've never used iTunes, but i don't think it plays ogg vorbis, flac and other open formats, do it? I don't have any mp3s, since all my music is self ripped, and I want it lossless. I use FLAC.

Re:DRM Ridden?

[TheBigMacMan]

http://www.snappingturtle.net/jmc/tmblog/archives/ 003518.html explains, iTunes uses quicktime to play audio files. Since quicktime supports plug-ins, all you need to support flac or ogg is to get a plugin for quicktime. The link refers to a flac plugin (haven't searched around for the best one) and the following link has a ogg plugin. http://jsp.vs19.net/osx/oggtunes.php

Re:DRM Ridden?

[SlamMan]

The issue you have is that an iPod uses different files systems for the Windows and Mac version (used to, not quite sure how things stand now). To read the files from a Mac formatted on an XP machine, you need an additional piece of software.

This is really an issue of someone not checking out their backups.

The iTunes Music store thing is a legitimate grip. But none of that has anything to do with the iTunes app, which is what the article is about.

Re:DRM Ridden?

[Overly Critical Guy]

Okay, let me try to step through this crazy story.

1.) The guy had an iPod and an Apple laptop. The laptop had his music, which he synced to his iPod.

2.) He decided to buy a Sony Vaio, but he didn't copy any of his music from the Apple laptop to his Vaio. Even iTunes reminds you to make safe backups.

3.) You don't say whether he sold his Apple laptop or not, so presumably he did, which means he got rid of his own music collection.

4.) The iPod wasn't readable in Windows, which was your friend's fault. When you first get an iPod, you're given the option of formatting it for Windows/Mac or just for Mac. Your friend obviously formatted it for Mac, which puts the HFS+ filesystem on it which is unreadable by Windows.

5.) You decided to reformat the whole thing instead of finding a freeware third-party app that would read the HFS+ iPod (there are plenty out there).

6.) You're surprised that formatting the iPod would eliminate the music on it. Yeah, formatting tends to have that effect.

Your friend lost from the very beginning. Strike one was GETTING RID OF THE COMPUTER THAT HAD HIS MUSIC ON IT. He didn't make any backups (as iTunes tells you to when you buy music), and he didn't copy his music over. He just magically expected the music to be transferrable to a brand new computer? You have to have music in iTunes to transfer it to the iPod--it's a one-way transfer. He should have copied his music from computer to computer. What a dumbass.

However, you can transfer the other way using freeware apps if you're using a FAT32-formatted iPod, as most are. Yet, your friend formatted for Mac. If he's going to buy a Windows computer and expect to communicate with his iPod, he needed to format it for Windows. Again, his fault. He should have formatted the iPod for Windows and resynced before he got rid of his Apple laptop.

Finally, you formatted his iPod and then got mad that the music was gone? What did you think, formatting it would keep the music on it? Formatting erases files.

What a ridiculously dumb story.

Re:DRM Ridden?

[PCM2]

As far as I know, and I may be wrong here, iTunes will play standard mp3's.

It will quite nicely. In fact, with a little free help, it will play Ogg Vorbis files also.

Re:DRM Ridden?

[bogie]

"I find the DRM that iTunes uses is not very restricting, and fair."

I hear what your saying but to play devils advocate...Can you resell the music you bought in a few years? Can you legally loan it out to your friend to listen to? Can your local library with public money switch away from CDs to Itunes and then loan the music out to patrons?

My biggest fear has already been realized when seemingly inteligent people like yourself consider locked down untransferable music "fair". This fly's in the face of what we have been able to do for 20 years with CDs and yet now people are just accepting DRM as "normal". It's sad.

In reality your probably right, it isn't very restricting, and it's easy to work around DRM in Itunes. But it sure as hell isn't fair to consumers, not by a long shot.

Re:DRM Ridden?

[velgor]

Um, not only does Apple make it a point of telling you to back up your music to other media, but they will also allow you to re-download your library (on a one-time only basis) should something catastrophic happen. I've recently lost my backups and a quick email to Apple had me downloading my purchased tracks within a day.

Re:DRM Ridden?

[shorgs]

I can think of a few reasons that this could be handy.

I think itunes is a bit resource greedy. This is just a proof of concept release so it'll be some time till we know for sure but it would be nice to have a music app that's similar to itunes but lighter. I don't think there is native support for itunes under linux, once this guy is released on a cross platform basis there will be another advantage.

So yea, they are probably pushing this too soon. And hopefully they will come up with less abrasive wording for their later marketing pushes.

Re:DRM Ridden?

[Richard_J_N]

Why didn't you use Knoppix or something to get the music off it? Apple enforce a policy that you can only sync an iPod with one computer, but GTKPod doesn't. Or even use iPod Linux.

P.S. The iPod Linux GUI for the nano beats the native one by some way :-)

Re:DRM Ridden?

[Afrosheen]

I'll readily admit that ignorance and assumptions were the modus operandi of this whole debacle. I come from a world where things that have portable hard drives use compatible filesystems that any box (mac, linux, windows) can easily read. Apple giving you the option to format the iPod for Mac-only is just retarded, these devices should shoot for compatibility rather than some wacky Apple-only concept. I made the assumption that any iPod would work on any box with iTunes. I was definitely wrong there.

  Funny how you made no reference to the fact that Apple will only let you download songs once, which is in essence a rental fee. If I purchase Counter Strike Source via Steam, I can download the thing 20 times, because I've already paid for it. It only requires a login and password. It's how everyone but Apple handles downloaded content.

  I will accept fault to a certain degree because it was a learning experience and I didn't know all the variables going into it. However, there should be more than one way to skin a cat. The iTunes store should've let me leech everything that was already paid for.

Re:DRM Ridden?

[Damek]

Well, that comment was a tad abusive of the GP comment, but still it was accurate.

The GP says: Does Apple really think their software and hardware is so perfect as to never lose data?

No, they expect their customers to be responsible for their property once obtained. If you buy a song from their store, it seems pretty obvious (if they don't say it outright, it's in the terms somewhere, and it's obvious from the interface I think) that you can't download the songs again and that you should make a backup of them.

Kinda like if you buy a CD or a chair or something else. Once you own it, it's yours: be responsible for your property. Don't expect the company who sold it to you to take care of it for you (unless of course you've made an agreement to that effect).

Re:DRM Ridden?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's actually not a 'one-time only' deal. You can re-download it as much as needed. I've redownloaded my collection 2 times and one of my close friends who also uses the iTMS has downloaded his entire collection 6 times. But I will agree that they do allow it on a case by case basis. Generally speaking a quick email explaining the situation, and in a day or so you get a notice back saying you can re-download everything now (and don't lose it this time ;-) )

Re:DRM Ridden?

[Damek]

The iTunes store should've let me leech everything that was already paid for.

Perhaps for an additional bandwidth fee...

Re:DRM Ridden?

[Bklyn]

As far as I know, and I may be wrong here, iTunes will play standard mp3's. At least mine does. So what would the "...a great alternative to the DRM ridden iTunes..." gain you? I would rather have a player that can play drm'd songs, if I were forced to play a few, and still be able to play standard mp3's.

The problem with iTunes (and one that I am hopefuol Songbird will not have) is that you are limited to MP3 and Apple's AAC format; perhaps a couple of others that I don't care about too. I'm not crazy enough to care about OGG, but I do have a large amount of music in FLAC format that I'd love to be able to load onto my iPod (dream on), but failing that at least being able to manage it in a nice front-end like Songbird will be a plus.

Re:DRM Ridden?

[Afrosheen]

Dude, you're completely sidestepping the issue here. You can't equate *data* that you've acquired a license to download to an actual, physical *product*, you're using the same straw man debate that the RIAA uses when dealing with theft of intellectual property via piracy. Sure, if you drive your new Mercedes over a cliff you can't just call the dealership up and get a new one the same day. That's dumb and it's your fault. However, a piece of sotware that you paid to license and download should be downloadable again at no additional fee. Why? Because you've already paid for it and the company isn't losing any money by letting you download it again. Even now, if you go to the store and buy a copy of Battlefield 2, scratch it all to hell, and call EA, they'll probably send you a new CD if you provide proof of purchase.

  Ultimately it seems this is coming down to the terms of the license, which rather than being granted by Apple, is being granted by the bastards in the music industry. When you 'buy' music from the iTunes store, you're not buying anything more than a very limited license; in effect, even the purchase terms nullifies your argument.

  I guess Apple needs to make a clear distinction between what is typically known as buying and what is truly licensing.

Re:DRM Ridden?

[SeaFox]

The nail in the coffin that had him steaming mad was that the iTunes store, being fully aware of the fact that you paid for your music already, wouldn't let you download your songs again without paying again. If you're logged in, why not let you re-download something you already bought? Does Apple really think their software and hardware is so perfect as to never lose data?

No, but the idea your computer (Mac, Wintel, or Linux) may someday lose data is not something new. You client sounds like one of those morons I talk to who's Outlook Express corrupts and they expect me to be able to recover all the email and contacts they lost from some magic backup of the POP server. I imagine one reason Apple doesn't let you redownload the song is it gets counted as a second copy (for DRM purposes) on your machine and there's some clause in the RIAA agreement that says they can't you have open redownloads of songs. Whenever there is a problem with what happens DRM-wise or anything involving the iTMS, people always seem to blame Apple like they are solely responsible for every aspect of the experience and have the power to change anything they wish.

It's still bullshit that he had to pay twice for the same songs, but in an Apple world, that's how things work.

I'll remember that next time I pay for a CD of something I previously bought on tape, or buy a CD to replace one I lost/broke through some stupidity. Yup, having to buy that music over again is entirely Apple's fault...

Re:DRM Ridden?

[Afrosheen]

While I appreciate your thoughtful comment, you're a little late. I already posted an extension to my original post further down the thread that blames the licensing term, not beloved Apple, for the redownload issue.

Re:DRM Ridden?

[Blakey Rat]

I come from a world where things that have portable hard drives use compatible filesystems that any box (mac, linux, windows) can easily read.

Which world is this? I want to move there.

My 250 GB external HD is too large to format as Fat32 (the only format that OS X, Windows and Linux all read/write.) Windows and Linux won't read the HFS+ format OS X likes, OS X and Linux won't read the NTFS format that Windows likes, and OS X and Windows won't read the EXT3 format that Linux likes.

What the hell world are you in where this problem doesn't exist? What magical format are you using for your external hard disk?

Re:DRM Ridden?

[Afrosheen]

Having an entire drive that size the same partition is a liability and a foolish thing to do to begin with. If FAT32 can't cope with a 250GB partition (which it can), then split it up. AFAIK OSX can read/write fat32 just like linux and windows can.

  Oh and btw, what the hell world do YOU live in where linux can't read NTFS? It's been able to read it for years. Now writing to it, that may be a different story. Also, according to an earlier reply to my grandparent thread, there is a HFS+ utility for Windows that allows read/write.

  So, what was your uninformed point again?

Re:DRM Ridden?

[Blakey Rat]

1) Having an entire drive that size the same partition is a liability and a foolish thing to do to begin with.

That's your opinion.

2) If FAT32 can't cope with a 250GB partition (which it can), then split it up.

Windows XP won't format a 250 HD as Fat32. Neither will OS X. The very page you link to says Fat32 is limited (practically) to 124.55 GB. (To be fair, I did find a hack using Partition Magic that let me format the entire 250 GB as Fat32, and that's what I'm using now. It works ok, except OS X Finder likes to crash very often when the drive is plugged in.)

3) Oh and btw, what the hell world do YOU live in where linux can't read NTFS?

Point out in my post where I said Linux can't read NTFS. Go on, I'm waiting. ... What's that? You say I never typed that and now you're putting words into my mouth? How interesting! I'll get my revenge by putting words in your mouth.

4) Also, according to an earlier reply to my grandparent thread, there is a HFS+ utility for Windows that allows read/write.

Ok, but 1) this doesn't help for Linux, and 2) it also means I can't cart my HD to a buddy's house and use it without installing software on his computer.

Re:DRM Ridden?

[Seanasy]

Point out in my post where I said Linux can't read NTFS. Go on, I'm waiting. ...

My 250 GB external HD is too large to format as Fat32 (the only format that OS X, Windows and Linux all read/write.) Windows and Linux won't read the HFS+ format OS X likes, OS X and Linux won't read the NTFS format that Windows likes, and OS X and Windows won't read the EXT3 format that Linux likes.

Unless my reading comprehension is really bad, I think you owe someone an apology.

Re:DRM Ridden?

[Damek]

I'd prefer it not to be thought of as a license, because a license to listen to music I've purchased is something they can reasonably take away at a later time. Licenses can be revoked. My possession of information I've purchased can't be reversed unless I screw it up somehow.

The way it should be seen is that the information itself is free, but you have to pay for access to it because there is still a cost associated with its production and distribution. For books & CDs, it's the cost of printing, duplicating, shipping, etc.

For digital music, it's the cost of digital storage media, servers, bandwidth, etc.

The way it should be is that I pay Apple for the cost of downloading the song, and once I have it, I have it, and if I want to download it again at some later date I should have to pay them for the same cost. Of course, if that were the way things were, the price for songs on iTunes Music Store would be much lower

Re:DRM Ridden?

[Phroggy]

Apple tells you, when you sign up for the iTunes Music Store, that it's your responsibility to keep all your purcases backed up. I believe they suggest burning them to CD or copying them to another computer. They make it clear that you won't just be able to re-download them... but I have heard that if you call Apple and explain your situation, they'll usually let you re-download them.

People in this country seem to have forgotten that when a product or service you've paid for doesn't work the way you expect, the correct response is to talk to the company and see what kind of a solution you can agree on - not throw the product in the trash!

For future reference: iPods can work with either HFS+ or FAT32 formatting; when you format them on a Mac, they get HFS+ formatted which was the case here (this is so you can do cool things like install OSX onto the iPod and boot a computer from it). I believe there is a product out there that will let you access an HFS+ iPod from Windows, but I don't remember what it was called. However, if you've got a Linux box available, you shouldn't have any trouble - you'll probably need to recompile your kernel with support for Macintosh partitions and the HFS+ filesystem (or these might be available as modules, I don't know). Linux does SCSI emulation for FireWire devices, so you should just be able to mount the iPod as /dev/sda6 or something (Mac drives have lots of partitions, so you might need to try a few before you find the right one).

Anyway, once you get access to the files, you should be able to just copy them to whatever computer you want, and drag them into iTunes.

And yes, I'm aware this is not a viable solution for non-technical people. I'm only suggesting it for people like you who work for non-technical people.

The moral of the story: remember that Apple doesn't allow you to transfer music from an iPod to a computer, they never have, they probably never will. Apple also doesn't allow you to re-download music you've already purchased from iTMS. I believe these are part of their agreement with record companies, to make copyright infringement somehow less convenient. Keep a copy of all your music on your computer, and treat it the same way you'd treat any other important files: keep regular backups of everything. If it's not important enough to back up, then it's not important enough to whine about when you lose it.

And none of this had anything to do with the fact that his battery died. Take a look at http://www.apple.com/batteries/ for information about how to take care of your batteries.

Re:DRM Ridden?

[tsa]

My biggest fear has already been realized when seemingly inteligent people like yourself consider locked down untransferable music "fair". This fly's in the face of what we have been able to do for 20 years with CDs and yet now people are just accepting DRM as "normal". It's sad.

That's just not true. There is no copy protection on CD's because back in the early eighties when CD's came out the only feasible way to copy them was using a tape recorder. So the copy would be of worse quality than the original. And back then it was also illegal to sell copies to other people, or re-sell the CD, or even to lend the CD. On every CD you buy there is this notice that says something like `unauthorized selling, lending etc punishable'. The fact that you can now easily copy CD's with no quality loss is an unwanted side effect of computer hardware getting better faster than anyone imagined. So yes, I accept this DRM as normal. I can make copies for my own use, play the files on multiple devices etc. I can even loan it to a friend, provided (s)he has an iPod.

Re:DRM Ridden?

[DirePickle]

And that's precisely why all of those stores that sell used CDs don't exist.

Oh, wait. What's that? There are tons of those stores?

Re:DRM Ridden?

[tsa]

I guess part of what you pay for used CD's there goes to the RIAA. These stores are authorized to sell CD's.

Re:DRM Ridden?

[DirePickle]

Not so much. To the RIAA's great displeasure, I'm sure, It's part of the doctrine of first sale.

THE FIRST SALE DOCTRINE AND DIGITAL PHONORECORDS

"Notwithstanding the provisions of 106(3), the owner of a particular * * * phonorecord lawfully made under this title, or any person authorized by such owner, is entitled, without the authority of the Copyright owner, to sell or otherwise dispose of the possession of that * * * phonorecord."

The disposal 109(a) speaks of allows two options: distribution of a particular phonorecord to another or to destruction of a particular phonorecord. Thus, this section allows me to sell a vinyl copy of a phonorecord to a friend or destroy my phonorecord without requiring permission from the author.

Re:DRM Ridden?

[tsa]

That's interesting because that means DRM imposed by most manufacturers is against the law in America. I live in Holland; we have Buma/Stemra instead of the RIAA, but they are comparible qua `lunacy'. I wonder what the rules are in my country. We don't have many second-hand CD shops so I guess maybe the rules are stricter here.

Thanks for your comment!

Re:DRM Ridden?

[DirePickle]

Ah, okay, you being from Holland makes sense. I was confused as to how anyone over here could think an entire used CD store was illegal. :)

But, yes. The content industry hates the whole thing, and the DRM thing is definitely an attempt to

Re:DRM Ridden?

[DirePickle]

...to plug that little hole. I'm not sure what happened there.

So???

[pythas]

So the "open source" response to iTunes is just a knockoff of iTunes, that runs only on Windows, and connects to music stores that no one wants to buy from?

FANTASTIC!

DRM Ridden?

[binaryDigit]

While this program may be a great alternative to the DRM ridden iTunes and Windows Media Player platforms

So what, are they going to offer the same content without DRM? Think not. How does DRM play in here? If iTMS has DRM it's because the copyright holder has agreed to allow iTMS to distribute content based on the DRM. Being OS isn't going to help this new system out in that regard. Now they may cater to those who are searching for content that is not DRM'ed, but that's content.

Been waiting for this one...

[fak3r]

As much as I used to like Rhythmbox, and now like aMorak, the idea of a more 'iTunes' style player for Linux has been sorely needed. I hope this get's ported soon, until then, anyone have luck running this via Wine? I have the 9.5.0-pre version, and it's so fun to just have a simple shortcut now to run IE6 (installed easily with Wine Tools).

Re:Been waiting for this one...

[tsa]

I wonder why Apple doesn't make iTunes for Linux. That must not be too hard for them, and may increase their profit by a (admittedly tiny) amount.

Re:Been waiting for this one...

[fak3r]

Dunno, one would just assume that they're afraid that ppl would then consider Linux over OSX as a desktop, but I can't think that would happen. Yeah, having it avail to Mac/Win/Lin would be a coup for them one would think, and don't think anyone would be swayed towards Linux just for iTunes. Also, looks like Songbird WILL be on linux:

Songbird is a media browser and Web player built from Firefox's browser engine. Songbird is open source, will run on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux and supports user contributed, cross-platform extensions.

Re:Been waiting for this one...

[antifoidulus]

It was like pulling teeth to get them to release a windows version, iTunes was mac only for a while till they realized that the software they bundled in with the iPod on windows wasn't all that great. The real reason they don't support Linux? I'm sure slashdot users have some great conspiracy theories, but the long and short of it is that supporting Linux doesn't really make financial sense. You have to then port it, and then pay people to maintain/support it. Yeah, it might increase your user base a little, but it is probably not worth the extra cost/hassle.

Re:Been waiting for this one...

[Overly Critical Guy]

Because the iTunes team doesn't want to sift through a bunch of feedback emails that say "Where's the Ogg support?" or "Why doesn't my random, esoteric GTK app magically work with some random archaic feature of iTunes?" or "RMS SAYS U R EVIL BECUZ U DONT RELEASE UR SOURCE CODES AS GEE PEE ELL."

Re:Been waiting for this one...

[Afrosheen]

Sorry but I can't think of a single reason to run crapware like IE6 on Linux. You already have Firefox, Konqueror, Opera, lynx/links, and a few others. What's the point? To say you can or to visit all 3 sites that break under any browser except IE6?

Re:Been waiting for this one...

[Curunir_wolf]

I wonder why Apple doesn't make iTunes for Linux.

Yea, that would be nice, because iTunes is one of the 2 things I still use Windows for, and it would be nice to sync my iPod in Linux. Alas, this Songbird thing won't even sync with the iPod in Windows, so I don't know what good it is.

Frankly, iTunes isn't really such a great music player anyway - even for those rare occasions I want to listen to music on the PC. Xmms is a perfectly capable music player, although I usually use Totem these days. Although, again listening to music on the PC just isn't something I do much of. I have iTunes to maintain my iPod music, and it's the best thing for that - nothing else comes close.

What's the point of this thing?

Re:Been waiting for this one...

[fak3r]

"What's the point? To say you can or to visit all 3 sites that break under any browser except IE6?" Exactly, there are some sites that my wife hits that simply will not work in Firefox, even when you spoof the useragent to appear as IE 6 on XP; the page may load, but it's unreadable and unuseable. She always emails complaints to point this out to the webmasters, but still, again, some sites HAVE to have IE to work.

Re:Been waiting for this one...

[AdamWeeden]

Sorry but I can't think of a single reason to run crapware like IE6 on Linux.

Web Development. If your site doesn't look good in IE you can stomp your feet and claim it's not standards compliant all you want, but if it drives away up to 80% of your potential customers off the bat, then it makes sense to make sure it works.

Re:Been waiting for this one...

[niXcamiC]

Don't by any chance mean amaroK do you?

Re:Yes, 'cuz that's what teenaged music fans want.

[tpgp]

Yes, 'cuz that's what teenaged music fans want...

Source code.

Well - thats pretty much answered in the article:

The opportunity to innovate is stymied by architecture.... ....Justin Frankel created a collaborative jamming service, and you can't do that inside any commercial media player now. You'll be able to do those kinds of things inside Songbird.

How many people write extensions for firefox? Not many, but how many people enjoy said extensions?

The source being available mightent directly benefit most people who use an open source program, but they sure as hell benefit from others having access to the source....

allofmp3

[lordkuri]

I only want to know if it supports AllOfMP3 ^^

Their Explorer app is nice, but Access databases suck, especially when I haven't used it for a while, and have to wait 15 minutes for it to update.

Benefits

[gunpowda]

Feature-wise, what does this offer that's superior to iTunes?

Re:Benefits

[theurge14]

The ability to listen to different streaming radio sources is neat, but then I learned that iTunes opens Shoutcast links just fine.

"DRM ridden iTunes and Windows Media Player"

[joetheappleguy]

...Nice troll.

Last I checked my .mp3's and CD rips are still DRM free in both iTunes or WMP.

Re:Let me pretend to be a mac fanboy for a second.

[MoneyT]

Were one a mac fanboy, one would have to accept or dismiss it without downloading it because it's windows only. Not exactly the best way to win over the fans.

The Lord Giveth

[digitaldc]

"Songbird can connect to any a la carte media store -- downloadable music, radio, video, P2P networks, and classes of services that haven't been created yet."

Only the power of the Lord can make something that can connect to things that haven't even been created yet!

Seriously, this is a great idea whose time has come. I sing the praises of Songbird!

Proxy settings

[nullvector]

I didnt see a menu for proxy settings in the app. Might be helpful for those who are at work right now.

You can add the following lines into your config.js in the Songbird directory.

pref("network.proxy.http", "type proxy here in quotes");
pref("network.proxy.http_port", YOURPROXYPORT);
pref("network.proxy.type", 1);

Of course, replace the port and proxy values, and you're in. Its based on firefox, so I just got the settings from the Firefox config and changed from user_pref() to pref().

A solution to a need that doesn't exist

[Anonymous Coward]

How exactly is iTunes "DRM ridden"? Here's my take on iTunes: it's free, it's got a decent feature set, and it's easy to use. Other than if you need to run it on an unsupported OS, what's the problem? The only DRM is for songs purchased from the iTunes Music Store, and even that DRM is pretty non-invasive. If you don't want Apple's DRM (queue whining about not being able to play iTMS music on non-iPod MP3 players), just get your music elsewhere. Rip it from CD into numerous formats with pretty solid codecs. Buy standard MP3s from some place like allofmp3.com. Download it (legally, of course) from the 'net.

Honestly, if the software "just works", doesn't force DRM on you, and has the features you need, why spend the time making a product that just attempts to do the same thing? Are there compelling new features in SongBird that iTunes doesn't provide? The way I see it, iTunes is a very nice, free digital audio player that also has the ability to sync with an iPod and use iTMS if you want to take advantage of those things. If you don't want to use iTMS music or an iPod, then just don't use those features.

That being said, hopefully SongBird will have some great innovations that'll push other software makers ahead as well... I'm just not sure there's any more to it than "we don't have DRM and you can see our sourcecode - yay!" and if the developers stick with that mindset it'll never go anywhere.

Re:A solution to a need that doesn't exist

[cybersavior]

I personally feel that any open source app that can replace a niche monopolized by a closed source app is a step in the right direction.

Great, iTunes doesn't install anymore

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

The recent 6.02 release of iTunes won't install anymore on my Windows machine and it corrupted my old version of iTunes. I am iTuneless as of this moment so I will give it a try....

But alas, Songbird is garish, slow, and overwrought with features. Trying to be everything to everyone by embedding web browsing and access to many alternative music stores and sponsored websites, Songbird misses out on the point of being an iTunes replacement, simplicity. Like most open source projects, people have to learn where to draw the line between duplicating someone else's success to doing too much to surpass it.

Perhaps being a proof-of-concept product they will tweak it and streamline it enough to be both usable and simple. But I don't think we need a Mozilla based web browser that builds multimedia playback into it. Nice try. Should have just made a FireFox extension.

I guess I am forced trying to get iTunes running again, in the short while at least.

Re:Yes, 'cuz that's what teenaged music fans want.

[Anonymous Coward]

> Open Source is a good start. But it appears that there is only a Windoze version...how open is that?

It's called "Open Source" because you are allowed to see the code, it's not "Omni Source!"

FUD, FUD, FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

While this program may be a great alternative to the DRM ridden iTunes...

I'm calling FUD and misinformation on this one. I've been using iTunes since it's inception, I've got well over 10,000 songs loaded, and *none* of them are encumbered with DRM. Why? Because I ripped them from CDs I own. And you know what? *You* can do that too! Look, no DRM!

It's just bad journalism to call iTunes "DRM ridden".

Go find yourself a new job, because accurate reporting is not your forte.

For someone not familiar with DRM downloads

[dr_canak]

I'm late to the game of personal MP3 players and what can and can't be played on any given device. The Songbird site is down, but i did read the article. So my main question is:

Can I use this new app to purchase music from any site that supports purchases (i.e. Apple, Napster, Rhapsody, Amazon, etc...), get a plain old MP3 file, which I can then play/burn onto any device I choose?

I had some experience with Rhapsody a few months back, but it seemed to be in some proprietary format, and I could only use their software to play/transfer/burn the file to my media. Will Songbird get around all of that?

thx in advance,
jeff

thx,
jeff

In re: "from the free-as-a-bird dept."

[Caspian]

In re: 'from the free-as-a-bird dept."
Attn: Robert Commander Taco Malda, Jeff Hemos Bates

I represent the law firm of Dewey, Cheatham and Howe, on retainer for Apple Corps d.b.a. Apple Records. Our clients hold international legal and commercial rights to the recording Free As A Bird.

Your unauthorized distribution of lyrics to this performance constitute, at a minimum, a violation of U.S.C. 666-69-3117 and of the provisions on distribution laid out in the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). You are thus ordered to cease and desist the distribution of these and any other Apple Corps lyrics in your "dept" headings. Our firm has not ruled out further legal action to enforce our clients' Intellectual Property rights.

Signed,

Robert Cheatham, Esq.
Dewey, Cheatham and Howe

Re:In re: "from the free-as-a-bird dept."

[Kiaser Zohsay]

In re: 'from the free-as-a-bird dept."

What song is it you want to hear?

maturation of open source projects

[drDugan]

Has anyone else noticed a significant maturation in the capabilities and professionalism of open source projects? Just over the last 6-12 months I'm seeing a steady stream now of major software classes all being copied rather well by open source teams. Before this, my general rule was that open source was buggy and alpha (with notable exceptions - kernel, apache, openof^H^H^...) -- but seeing this story, reminds me that maybe RMS's vision will come true.

Re:maturation of open source projects

[Tankko]

>>I'm seeing a steady stream now of major software classes all being copied rather well

Copied! Copied! Is that all OpenSource is? Copying things other companies do? Why do I need this when iTunes is free and can play non-DRM .mp3 files?

Come-on OS people...start leading and quit following.

Re:maturation of open source projects

[oneiron]

Come-on OS people...start leading and quit following.

Give them some time. The community appears to, just now, be coming into maturity. They are *required* to play catch-up for the time being because joe-blow-end-user has expectations based on the companies/apps that OS guys are trying to "follow."

NOT "..still a Windows release"

[fak3r]

While this version is only available on Windows, the app's welcome screen tells you that:

"Songbird is a media browser and Web player built from Firefox's browser engine. Songbird is open source, will run on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux and supports user contributed, cross-platform extensions."

I for one say, Bring it on!

"hopefully"?

[Hemi Rodner]

The good news is that by being open source that will (hopefully) not last very long.

I didn't get this sentence. It seems incomplete. Why hopefully it won't last very long?

Re:"hopefully"?

[dwayner79]

'That' refers to the aformentioned Windows Only comment, not the app itself. Threw me for a minute as well.

Re:"hopefully"?

[stu42j]

Refer to the sentence before it: "it is still only a Windows release".

Is that iTunes?

[jpsowin]

Yes! Another open-source copy of a commercial app!

Re:Yes, 'cuz that's what teenaged music fans want.

[AKAImBatman]

The program is also a convenient user interface to buy music online, not just from a single monopoly (e.g. iTunes music store) but from all sources.

Yet the market has held tightly to iTunes despite the numerous alternatives that have entered the market.

DRM-free.

I see no such assurances, nor do I see the ability to purchase unencumbered music from Amazon. The player merely connects to the store. It doesn't do anything else that I can see. And many of those stores are evil in of themselves. Using the BeatPort example, you MUST have Flash installed and enabled to use the site. How does that help Linux users and Windows users who want to use unencumbered software?

There's a lot of noise here, but very few facts, IMHO. Songbird would be a nice step in improving media players on Linux (assuming a version is ever produced), but as far as I can see, it's not the revolution that you're making it out to be.

quite a few pages regarding iTunes problems on...

[ashpool7]

Apple Support. They're pretty detailed.

How is SongBird any different from musikCube?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.musikcube.com/

Open source, and at Release Candidate 2.

Re:How is SongBird any different from musikCube?

[Vaevictis666]

It's based on mozilla's XULRunner platform, allowing it to be cross-platform.

Re:Yes, 'cuz that's what teenaged music fans want.

[Firehed]

That or Sony rips that source code apart and uses it in their next illegal DRM schema.

I could care less whether software is open-source, tbh. If it's free (as in beer) and intuitive/functional, I don't particularly care if I can find their code comments. If other people use that open-source to make the app better, great, but I'm personally not going to bother with it. And I'd imagine this is true for most OSS users. Having the possibility for anyone being able to improve it is just a bonus to me.

If I had mod points, you'd get'em

[FirstNoel]

Thank you...I was going nuts with this thing trying to figure it out.

Sean D.

Re:If I had mod points, you'd get'em

[nullvector]

No prob. The file you'll need to edit is "songbird-prefs.js". Who knows why they didnt include that in the gui...

Re:Yes, 'cuz that's what teenaged music fans want.

[AKAImBatman]

P.S. Where's the BEEF?! I don't see any links to source code downloads, even in Google's cache of the homepage.

How long until it's mature?

[eMartin]

So far, it has a basic iTunes-like media library, it plays MP3s, and displays web pages.

How long until it becomes a mature media player with support for devices like iPods, offers playback features like crossfading and other effects (maybe through plug-ins like Winamp), visualization options, etc?

So far, it looks impressive for an 0.1 release, and they mention that people will be able to offer extensions for accessibility of music, but what are their plans for built-in support for common media player features?

Re:How long until it's mature?

[reverendG]

I agree. It's a great concept, and I eagerly await the next version. right now, however, it doesn't correctly go from one song to another for me, it doesn't have a lot of features that I'd like, and doesn't support my iPod.

I can live without iPod support, but things like re-ordering based on columns, proper shuffle, etc...especially playing more than one song without me having to click "next"...these are features that I'm willing to put up with "DRM ridden" iTunes for.

Somebody call me when version 0.7 comes out.

Ogg Vorbis wedge

[Medievalist]

I predict... the same overwhelming success as Ogg. And for the same reasons.

Actually, this could be an effective wedge to help Ogg Vorbis gain traction. Everyone knows Ogg is technically superior, and everyone gives it lip service, but lack of players means lack of incentive for recording artists to use it.

If songbird keeps a clean and easily understood interface - not descending into the usual "intuitive... if you're a psychotic fanboy!" interface hell that has claimed so many media players - it will grow marketshare, which in turn could help reduce the barriers to Ogg adoption by artists.

The iPod has a simple, easily learned interface. Thus iTunes prospers. From where I'm sitting, the iPod has no features that are as big a selling point as its sweet ergonomic UI - discounting the UI, my Pez MP3 player is actually much cooler.

Re:Ogg Vorbis wedge

[Tim Browse]

Everyone knows Ogg is technically superior

Very far from the truth. Most people have never even heard of Ogg.

And to prove my point in an instructive way, I assume you actually meant that "Everyone knows that Vorbis is technically superior" (which is also not true, of course).

Otherwise your statement is akin to "everyone knows that QuickTime is technically superior".

Re:Ogg Vorbis wedge

[falcon5768]

worse than that, its been proven in a few sound quality tests that Ogg is infact inferior to a lot of the new standards including AAC.

Re:Ogg Vorbis wedge

[crwl]

According to a recent that's not true at all, but vice versa: Ogg Vorbis is still definitely ranked on the top.

http://www.maresweb.de/listening-tests/mf-128-1/re sults.htm

Re:Ogg Vorbis wedge

[GlassHeart]

the iPod has no features that are as big a selling point as its sweet ergonomic UI

How about price?

The cheapest Dell DJ Ditty (512 MB) sells for $99. The 512 MB iPod Shuffle (which has no screen) sells for $69. Your Pez player (512 MB) appears to cost $99.99, and also doesn't have a screen. The most expensive DJ Ditty (still just 512 MB) sells for $156, while the iPod Nano 1 GB sells for $149 with a color screen (but no FM transmitter or three color cases). The Creative Zen Vision M (30 GB) sells for $329.99, and probably has some additional features, but the 30 GB iPod sells for $299.

I'm not saying that the other players are not worth the money. I'm saying that if you don't really care about those additional features, the iPod can actually be cheaper. Of course, you could load up the iPod feature-for-feature and compare prices again, which is what the typical Mac defender would say. That's right, too, but for a specific given feature set the iPod can be the cheaper choice.

Re:Ogg Vorbis wedge

[Medievalist]

Do you also berate people for saying TCP/IP when they mean IP?

And anyway, everybody does know that QuickTime is technically superior!

I kid, I kid - thanks for the correction.

Re:Ogg Vorbis wedge

[GlassHeart]

If the iPod came with a Power Adapter to charge it without a computer like other brands include with theirs, base price might be a valid comparison. But otherwise you'd have to add $30 to the price for the same functionality.

Not for a repeat customer. Like I said, the products are not comparable feature-for-feature, just as I'm not counting whatever value the UI and integration with iTunes has to the customer. I'm just saying that if what's in the box is good for you, you can actually have an iPod for less money out of the pocket.

UseFree.org/drm -- list of DRM-free music sites

[UseFree.org]

Here's a list of sites that sell DRM-free music by independent artists:

UseFree.org/drm

Songbird works with most if not all of these sites, and thus makes it easier than ever to break our dependency on RIAA's music and the cancerous DRM technology that it is pushing.

Disappointing + searching iTMS

[Hemi Rodner]

I was under the impression I can connect to the iTunes music store using this program.. but I guess I can't.
Can I purchase MP3s with this program? Even if I'm not in the USA?

And another question - is it possible to search the itunes music store without installing itunes? (and without having a US IP address)

Microsoft should hire these guys!

[Deep Fried Geekboy]

A clone of iTunes which doesn't interoperate with the iTunes store, play any of my DRM'd music, work on a Mac or under Linux, or interface with my iPod. Its only selling point being vaporware plugins.

Bzzt! Next!

Re:Microsoft should hire these guys!

[zakarria]

See the thing is though, this is the first vaporware I've ever tried that can import my entire music collection and play it quite well. Also, it plays music off my iPod if I tell it my iPod is a harddrive, regardless of my iPod not being set to 'harddrive' mode or whatever. Pretty damn good for a 'user preview' release.

Songbird looks awesome...

[ShadowNetworks]

Looks awesome, but won't load my library. Perhaps because it's the preview version. I like the fact that I'll be able to connect to lastfm and such. I'd love for it to sync with my iPod as well.

Yeah, but how does it sound?

[Maxim Kovalenko]

An open source media player that organizes music and looks like Itunes is all well and good.... But how does it sound? Is the EQ any good? You can organize music with most players out there...whether it sounds good is a bit more important than whether it can use services that don't even exist yet.

Re:Yeah, but how does it sound?

[TeknoHog]

I don't think sound quality is a concern with player software. If the software plays the files at all, it's very unlikely for it to make mistakes with the data. On the other hand if the player is buggy, the errors are very noticeable and will result in not playing the file at all. If there are subtle quality issues, it's usually something with the hardware and/or the encoding (like low bitrate MP3s).

[flamewar alert] As for the EQ, I don't see a reason why anyone should use it when listening to music, except to correct for some really bad hardware, in which case you have bigger problems than the quality of EQ. [/flamewar alert]

features

[gigel]

but where are the party shuffle or the srs wow effects?

Short Answer: Moderators Are Not Responsible

[eldavojohn]

Probably because the moderators are not responsible enough to RTFA before moderating comments. I did, however, RTFA and discovered that Rob Lord is one of the primary developers of Winamp--making my post about Winamp on-topic. Yet, what happened was the moderators took a quick glance at the topic and looked at my post (which probably read like I had an axe to grind with Winamp, I don't know).

What I tried to offer readers was a link to his homepage and resume (which lists the companies he's done work for). Why do I think this is pertinent? Well, because open source developers trying to write something like Songbird are not common. I feel that we should be heralding Rob Lord for his work in providing us an alternative to iTunes--whether it flies or not, god bless him he tried. I think the best way to do that is to visit his webpage and find out what he's about.

If you actually visit his page, he's a witty and interesting man. Am I some sort of Lord fan boy? No, and I'm not even religious to boot! Alright, that pun was a license to mod this post as low as you want.

One thing you'll notice about stories like this is that if you post additional links to information on the stories, some people don't care. Everyone suddenly focused on "iTunes" and "DRM" when they read this article. These are some very negative caveats of this story, in my opinion. What did I find to be the positive aspect? The man behind the code.

Re:When will everyone get over it already?

[AdamWeeden]

You're confusing statistics a bit here. Do 90% of desktops use Windows? Though I can't verify that, I'd be willing to agree that it's probably close. That number, however, is meaningless in this context. What is Songbird's major draw? It's freedom (i.e., open source, drm free, etc). So the important question becomes "How many people who are in that 'market' run Windows?" While it still may be a majority (such as myself, who enjoys and contributes to OSS, but still prefers Windows to Linux), you'll find it is a MUCH more level playing field than 90% vs. 10%.

Expecting too much from version 0.1!

[GoGoGadgetFeet]

Calm down, people, this is only version 0.1! I wouldn't write it off for crashing or for being platform-limited just yet!

And as for the "no one wants to buy from those stores anyway" argument, competition provides us with some choices. Apple's iTunes might be great for you, but it's probably not for everybody. If these developers want to work on an alternative choice, I think that's great. If you don't like it, don't use it.

Speaking of birds...

[Anonymous Coward]

...what kind of bird doesn't fly? A jail bird - and that is just what all of you heathens with your new fangled technology are going to be if you keep abusing it. I know this for the RIAA tells me so.

People seem to be missing the point...

[twem2]

The point of this seems to me to be that it will let you buy from more than one store, it does not force bought music to have DRM. In other words it offers choice and freedom. iTunes restricts you.
It is designed to be extensible. Hopefully there will be an iTunes plugin in the future, it also offers people a chance to use music differently.

It is only release 0.1. I'm sure iPod etc syncing is in the works.

Perhaps it will flop, but at least people tried.

no iTunes for Linux, *BSD, Irix, Solaris, etc.

[barutanseijin]

iTunes may be the greatest app ever, but it doesn't run on just any old platform. You might be able to run iTunes under Wine (can you?) or mol on ppc, but that's not ideal even if you can.

I like using iTunes to check out what people are listening to -- even if it's usually utter crap that makes me lose my faith in humanity. Sometimes I boot into OS X on my powerbook just to listen to other people's playlists. (There are a lot of ibook/powerbook users here in Montreal). It'd be nice not to have to use OS X for this. I'm looking forward to the linux port of Songbird.

You're missing the point., but its pointless.

[crovira]

If SongBird could replicate the iTMS experience of looking for cinema, music, video and podcast as media from anywhere on the 'net that would encode their music as an XML enclosure in addition to the actual media file, DRMed or not, it could be a front-end and generate business for ANY store.

Just by replicating the MP3 tags, you would be able to set up a store. Of course processing of payments would be something your store would actually have to do.

This means any indy artists with CD burners, label printers and PayPal accounts just got themselves a way in as powerful as the 'majors' with their DRMed content and their current lock on the market.

As for the 'major' labels, it means that they can charge as much as they want for their music, which is a major sticking point with Apple.

Hopefully it will be a humbling experience when they suddenly have competition on a equal footing from the very artists that they dismiss as 'non commercial' (meaning that they can't generate enough of a revenue stream from to support their continuing mismanagement.)

But it won't be more that a commercial outlet until the customers/consumers can contract for the content they want.

The 'pull-side' of the market place is currently ignored and grossly underserved by a 'push-side' economy; despite staging protests against the distribution channels which cancel the contracts for the content consumers/viewers/listeners want because they figure that they can maximize profit with some other content.

As long as the 'push-side' can push aside the considerations of the 'pull-side' we're never going to get what we want.

Business, not artistic, considerations will always interfere and bring us whatever crap they hope we'll fall for.

Don't like a Brittany Spears?

Your alternatives are whatever else somebody produced, through the SAME system that produced a Brittany Spears, instead of what YOU need/want to hear.

Don't like the latest bal, uh, block-buster?

Your alternatives are whatever else somebody produced, through the SAME system that produced the latest drek, instead of what YOU need/want to see.

Don't like the latest Danielle Steele?

Your alternatives are whatever else somebody produced, through the SAME system that produced the latest Danielle Steele, instead of what YOU need/want to read about.

THAT is when the revolution will happen.

Re:You're missing the point., but its pointless.

[Fordiman]

Hold on, passionate as that sounded you don't state two things:
What is 'push-side' and 'pull-side' economically?
And your last two semiparagraphs are confusingly stated; reiteration of 'same system different day', followed by a event-driven statement with no preceeding event statement.

What I infer:
A 'pull-side' economy is an ideal free market (market as a noun, not 'free-market' as an adjective), one with a very large number of unassociated players all competing for a pool of consumers. (Known in economics as a 'contestable market'.)

A 'push-side' economy is a market failure or near market failure where a small number of very large companies (oligopoly) cooperate in an effort to behave as a monopoly (thus creating a non-contestable market).

With new technology, the music market is migrating from a monopoly market failure to other market failures:
information asymmetry market failure (Consumers are increasingly unaware of the problems with the products they buy, re Sony DRM Rootkit)

externality market failure (the business of music distribution is compromised by widely available distribution channels that are outside of the music industry's control; the business of music production is compromised by widely available music production tools that are outside of the music industry's control; the business of music marketing is increasingly becoming compromised by services such as MySpace Music, grass-roots advertising, etc)

public good market failure (a public good is defined as a good that is nonexcludable and nondepletable; p2p filesharing becomes an excellent example of this; my download of 'Hit Me Baby One More Time' doesn't preclude another person from downloading the same file - in fact, it helps - and you can make infinite copies of the same file without degredation)

moral hazard market failures (there are two examples here: one is, of course, the consumers, practicing the morally ambiguous action of downloading music they love; the other is the music industry trying to lock out fair use in an effort to prevent piracy)

Now for the nitty and the gritty: You can't have that many market failures in the same place without the market infrastructure (ie: the system built to exploit a market) collapsing. Essentially, the RIAA is presently on VERY shaky ground and trying desperately not to die.

Course, like a man in quicksand, if they stop thrashing and take a look at the situation, they might be able to save themselves. Or not.

I for one say goodbye to our corporate RIAA masters and greet our millions of new Independant Musician Overlords with open arms.

viva la revolucion.

wxMusik

[Tephyrnex]

After going through every music player that I could find, both closed and open source, I have definitely landed square on wxMusik http://musik.berlios.de/. It Plays mp3, ogg, APE ,MPC ,FLAC, mp2, wav, aiff and wma (win only) files...sorry no AAC as of yet...but it's open source and cross platform, so you can make it happen.

there is a need

[penguin-collective]

Honestly, if the software "just works", doesn't force DRM on you, and has the features you need, why spend the time making a product that just attempts to do the same thing?

Because iTunes has numerous problems. For example, the way it organizes MP3s into directories is broken. Its interface for adding metadata to MP3s has problems. Its handling of classical music is deficient. It has used weird versions of id3. It doesn't interface well with many non-Apple media players. It doesn't handle moving iPods between different machines well. It doesn't integrate well with music stores other than Apple. And on and on.

iTunes is a decent application, but it is also an application that is optimized for generating revenue for Apple; it is not optimized for user convenience and choice. Open source applications are.

Re:there is a need

[Anonymous Coward]

Look, nobody has anything to prove to you. The fact is that enough people don't like the way iTunes works that there is reason enough to write something new.

Re:When will everyone get over it already?

[node 3]

And Windows is used by the vast majority of computer users as well as music downloaders so being Windows only is not something small. If it was *nix or OSx only then 90% of people couldn't use it, but that's not the case here.

Of those 90%, over 90% of them will never even hear of Songbird until it's become quite popular with the 10% or so non-Windows users. By definition, technology-wise, most of those 90% are followers, not leaders. These sorts of things tend to work best starting on Mac or Linux.

These first early releases of Songbird will be extremely "not ready" for the masses. If they want to build a following, they will have to target Linux users (since that's where the biggest demand is given that iTunes is not available for Linux).

It's all but guaranteed that the first releases of Songbird will be a really crappy clone of iTunes. Why would your average Windows user skip iTunes for such a thing? They won't. In fact, I really don't see this taking off on Windows or Mac for a very long time, if ever.

While I laud the efforts of the Songbird team, I think they are really going about the project the entirely wrong way.

- They are apologizing for copying iTunes.
- They are overly worried about making a good first release (it's much better to release early, release often).
- They are releasing for Windows only at first, which is the least receptive market they are targeting.

Still, Open Source has a tendency to correct those types of mistakes over time. If there's a demand, Songbird will indeed fly.

Songbird won't have the general appeal that Firefox has, because unlike the case with IE, most people have a media player that they like, and not one that they use only because there are no useful alternatives, so they'll really need to find their niche.

Re:iTunes is overrated.

[countb]

AAC is a standard and will play on many devices, don't confuse AAC with Fairplay.

Nail, Head, Nuff Said

[doublem]

Normally I ignore AC posts, but you hit the nail on the head.

The fact that you can only download ONCE is well publicized when buying through iTunes. You're warned to back up your music several times. The fact that getting music OFF the iPod is also well documented.

They guy and his client were morons for not backing up all the data from the old MAC before ditching it. They're trying to blame someone else for their mistakes.

As for only being able to download once, that's why I get my audio books through audible.com. When you buy something from them, you have a license to download it as many times as you want, in one of four different quality levels. While they have limits on how many computers you can authorize at once, I've never had any problems when asking them just do a blanket deauthorization when I'd reformatted a computer before deauthorizing it.

Re:Let me pretend to be a mac fanboy for a second.

[Overly Critical Guy]

Yeah, uh, the fact it doesn't run on Macs might be a big reason for Mac users to dismiss it and not download it.

DRM is fine, unless you're a podcaster.

[crovira]

I have permission from a performer, in writing, to put some of his music on my htp:///msb.libsyn.com podcast media site but the album I just bought/downloaded from the ITMS doesn't let me convert it from a protected AAC to an MP3.

Guess what podcasting needs? Right.

I'm going to have to use someone else or he's going to have to send me the original files as an MP3 (Thank Heavens nobody records to tape anymore.)

Re:DRM is fine, unless you're a podcaster.

[mindstrm]

But you knew what you were getting when you downloaded the tracks from iTMS, right?

The terms were made loud and clear.

Re:DRM is fine, unless you're a podcaster.

[poopdeville]

As shitty as it sounds, you don't have Apple's written permission. And since you got the file from them, you're not allowed to use their version of the track that way. You need the distributor's permission to do that sort of thing. You'd be in the same legal standing if you got the author's permission and ripped a track from his RIAA distributed CD.

Presumably, since you got the author's written permission, you could get him to send you a copy of the mp3. Then he would be both original copyright holder and the distributor (for that file). This isn't a DRM issue per se. It's a copyright issue.

Re:DRM is fine, unless you're a podcaster.

[GlassHeart]

As shitty as it sounds, you don't have Apple's written permission. And since you got the file from them, you're not allowed to use their version of the track that way.

Actually, it's the other way around. Apple doesn't have permission to give you that track, because it doesn't know about that "written permission". Now, in an ideal world, you'd show Apple the permission letter, and Apple would let you download an unprotected AAC. The problem, as anybody can imagine, is that Apple derives so little benefit (20 cents?) and incurs quite a bit of hassle (like having to verify signatures on that letter) that it'll likely refuse to be the middleman.

One can blame Apple for a lot of things, but this one is just whiny.

Re:DRM is fine, unless you're a podcaster.

[That's Unpossible!]

I'm going to have to use someone else or he's going to have to send me the original files as an MP3

This is a cop-out. It's like saying an artist agreed to let you use his music, but he handed you a tape or a record so now you can't use the music. AAC from iTMS is just a format. It can be converted. (Burn to a CD and rip as whatever format you want.)

Re:DRM is fine, unless you're a podcaster.

[joeljkp]

"Burn to a CD and rip as whatever format you want."

Wow, that's an ugly hack. Do people really do this kind of stuff, and consider it normal? That's almost as bad as hooking up a tape recorder to the line-out jack and just recording the audio as it plays.

I'd rather get in my car, drive to the store, and actually buy the CD than buy it online, burn it, and re-rip it.

Re:DRM is fine, unless you're a podcaster.

[That's Unpossible!]

Wow, that's an ugly hack. Do people really do this kind of stuff, and consider it normal?

What do you mean "normal"? No one buying on iTunes really needs to do this. It's just that it's possible if you for some reason need the stuff in MP3 format.

I'd rather get in my car, drive to the store, and actually buy the CD than buy it online, burn it, and re-rip it.

I'd rather buy it online, listen to it immediately, copy it to my ipod immediately, send it to my brother's computer immediately, share it to my friends on my LAN immediately -- and that's what I do with iTMS.

Re:Paying twice is the point of DRM

[vertinox]

It's still bullshit that he had to pay twice for the same songs, but in an Apple world, that's how things work.

The point of DRM is to make legitimate customer pay twice for songs. Not to prevent piracy.

Re:iTunes is overrated.

[soupdevil]

I'm not confused. I'm a freelance composer and sound designer, and much of my work involves sending mp3 files to clients for approval. AAC files don't play on my mp3 player, which I use to transport my music, and they don't impress potential clients who can't figure out how to play them on their own computers. AAC is not proprietary, but neither is it mainstream.

Doesn't work on XP SP2 thinkpad

[tcoady]

When I try running this is says it's missing a DLL. When I search this in google it says msvcp71.dll was found locally in C:\Program Files\Songbird\xulrunner\msvcp71.dll

warning, apple fanboys attack

[geighaus]

More than 100 comments are already posted and the general opinion is that this piece. I guess if someone would release an open-source alternative of WMP, everyone would rave about it. Or wait a second, does not everyone and their dog love WMP Classic? What's wrong with Songbird then? The fact it competes with the beloved Apple? Come on, isn't that the choice is all about? Providing alternatives, free speech, modifying source for own needs, providing extensions and stuff like that? Where is the cheer then? For the record, I think iTunes is a bloated piece of crap. It is slow (comparing to Winamp), unmanagable (I prefer to organize my music myself, thank you), completely useless if you don't maintain id3 tags (I don't), annoyingly intrusivee (no, I do not have an iPod and there is no need to install ipodservice everytime I boot my computer). I've never understood much hyped smart playlists and I prefer to manage the music collection on my portable player by hand through a standard file manager and sane filenames skipping all the proprietary shit. Not to mention the famous iTunes synchonization is not practical, when you have more music than the size of your mp3 player. Even WMP is better in comparison to iTunes, even though I think WMP is crap as well. At least it does not put completely random stuff to Windows/CurrentVersion/Run. Granted I haven't tried the Mac version and I hear it is much better than the Windows equivalent, but that's my experience with the Windows version. Songbird, on the other hand, whilst being a blatant iTunes clone, seems to be ok'ish far. Integration with relevant web service (not just sponsored crap) is a big plus. Oh, and it is great to see stores like Beatport there (it seems to demand a flash plugin installed separately, but hopefully it will be fixed). Don't think I'll switch to it in the near future, but I am glad something like this exists.

Re:warning, apple fanboys attack

[db32]

Not that you don't have some valid points here. But half of your problems arise from not using the ID3 tags. There are plenty of iTunes things I'm not terribly fond of, but I still like it over all. Smart playlists are a very nice thing if you use the ID3 tags well. I rip all my music in linux, throw it on a samba share, and then use iTunes from there for my windows boxes. I name all my files in a sane pattern to make them easy to find in a command line/file search type enviroment, but I also maintain all my ID3 tags to make things work better in the majority of the media players. The idea behind smart playlists really shines in large collections. Say I want to listen to my alternative stuff one day, heavy stuff another, and punk on yet another. Instead of sorting through Xthousand mp3s I just create smart playlists that say everything in the alternative genre. Or maybe I just want a playlist with all of my music except for the few things on there that are humor songs, commedy routines, or speaches, I can create a smart playlist that excludes all of those by type instead of making a huge playlist of what I do want. Incidentally gtkpod supports smart playlists as well, and that is what I use to manage my pod.

Re:warning, apple fanboys attack

[theurge14]

If you like Songbird instead of iTunes, may I interest you in all these Rolex-y watches I have here in my jacket?

Re:warning, apple fanboys attack

[theurge14]

Maybe Songbird should incorporate customizable SQL queries when they copy the Smart Playlist feature.

I'm sure that would gain a few geeky fans.

Re:warning, apple fanboys attack

[slysithesuperspy]

Is it a big bloated puffer jacket like itunes? I dunno what its like on the mac, but it seems so completely bloated on the PC, and requires quicktime. I mean- 20mb for a fucking mp3 player, and then you have to install quicktime as well.

Re:And that's that problem...

[Kenshin]

You're not renting the music. Renting implies that there's a limited time period.

You're licensing the music.

iTunes Music shares?

[Brother Dysk]

The one thing that would make this a useful replacement for iTunes for my use, is the ability to access iTunes shares, and share in a manner that allows iTunes users to connect. Living in halls of residence at uni, I have access to several terrabytes of music to stream over the iTunes shares. That is the only reason I use iTunes. Can songBird do this?

Re:And that's that problem...

[Belial6]

No, licensing the music implies that you have a right to use the music. That would mean that if you get new hardware you could still use the music. In fact there IS a limited time period. It is limited to the life of the perticular product you original tied the song to.

And, either work you want to use. They misslead customers into thinking that they have have permenent access to the music by using the words sell and buy. You tell me, does the iTunes store say "Buy a license to a song", or does it say "Buy a song". The two mean very different things.

GTKPod anyone?

[Apostata]

I know it's not perfect, but it seems no one is mentioning the open source iTunes-ish app, gtkpod. Syncs great with iPods and does most of the work that iTunes does (minus the ripping).

Link: http://www.gtkpod.org/about.html

Re:GTKPod anyone?

[Apostata]

So, uh...are you asking me to come over and set it up for you? Are you lacking an external media player? I see no problem with using an external player, like XMMS - there are already too many for Linux.

Broken Maximize and other issues.

[moultano]

When I maximize the player it covers the taskbar, even though I have the taskbar immobile and set to stay on top of other windows. It also takes an incredibly long time to read all of the metadata of my music. Granted, I have a ton of music, but it's still annoying that I've had it installed for 10 minutes and I still can't find half of my music in it. I also can't figure out how to edit track metadata. The edit button doesn't seem to do anything, and it has all of my various artist albums split up by the individual track artists.

Overall, so far I can't say that its going to get me to switch from foobar2000 anytime soon, particularly since I haven't been able yet to verify whether it supports musepack files.

And no stop button.

[moultano]

I can pause tracks, but how do I stop them?

Re:And no stop button.

[slim]

On non-physical media, what's the difference?

iTunes doesn't have a stop button either.

Re:And no stop button.

[moultano]

On non-physical media, what's the difference?

iTunes doesn't have a stop button either. Suppose I want to screw with the file in another application without closing Songbird?

Re:And no stop button.

[slim]

Suppose I want to screw with the file in another application without closing Songbird?

What's to stop you? ... ... ah .. Windows.

OK.

iTunes DRM Bites Hard

[DreadSpoon]

I have a nice speaker system setup with my Linux box. There's no way to play any of my $250 worth of iTMS-purchased songs on that machine. None. All of the files bought from iTMS are DRM-locked and can only be played on machines which are authorized through iTMS.

Unfortunately, there is no software for Linux which is capable of doing that. DVD Jon had released FairPlay and some other tools which could unlock those files, but Apple broke those utilities with the release of iTunes 6. You have to log into iTMS with a computer to generate a key for the computer. The tools can no longer log into iTMS, and so they cannot generate a key for my Linux box.

I can't copy the files off my Mac to my Linux box, I can't copy the files from my iPod to my Linux box, I can't copy the files to any machine that can't run iTunes, including any other portable music players made by companies other than Apple.

Sure, the several thousands songs I ripped from CDs to MP3s are fine and I can move those around, but at my current rate I would soon surpass the number of MP3s I have with the number of DRM-encumbered MP4s I have. (I don't plan on purchasing so much as one more song from iTMS until there is a way to transfer them to my other computers and devices.)

iTunes is fantastic if all you want to do is rip CDs onto your Mac or sync songs to an iPod. My iPod is breaking down (and is well out of warranty) and any replacement I buy will definitely not be an iPod, and my only Mac is an old iBook with horrendous sound ouput quality compared to the sound system on my Linux desktop. I've had to resort to burning my MP4s to CD (a lot of CDs), re-ripping them into Vorbis on the Linux box (losing some sound quality due to encoding the music twice), and then manually retagging all of the songs since the meta-data is lost when burned to CD. Whatever convenience I gained by using iTMS has now been lost.

iTunes *IS* DRM encumbered. Well, more accurately, iTMS is. [b]And that's what Songbird is competing with - the music store, not the music manager.[/b]

Re:iTunes DRM Bites Hard

[Fordiman]

Seriously, though dude. That's what you get for leaving them in a DRM'ed state for more than ten minutes. Or for having an iPod.

Really, I don't think they're worth the trouble.

Re:iTunes DRM Bites Hard

[Blakey Rat]

Yes, but for 99.99% of the market, all of that is a non-issue. You're not really contesting the OP's premise, you're just setting yourself up as a counter-example.

Re:iTunes DRM Bites Hard

[jZnat]

99.99% seems far too high a number; I'd predict it to be about 80% of iTMS users who don't know or aren't affected by the DRM. Everyone else is because either they know about DRM, or they have something other than an iPod, or maybe they use a real OS other than OSX (Windows not included).

Re:iTunes DRM Bites Hard

[Bobsledboy]

How can you read /. and not have heard of Hymn by now?

Re:iTunes DRM Bites Hard

[rafa]

Hymn doesn't work with iTunes 6 either. At least it didn't when I looked at it this past week. My mother bought me a Tea Leaf Green album* as a Chinese New Year's present - and sent me the .m4p files, unfortuantely Hymn wasn't able to free them. I've asked her to burn me an audio cd with the music instead.

* Yes, TLG even has flac available from their website, but my mother didn't know about iTMS' DRM.

Re:And that's that problem...

[Kenshin]

That would mean that if you get new hardware you could still use the music. In fact there IS a limited time period. It is limited to the life of the perticular product you original tied the song to.

Do you even check into this nonsense you're spouting?

You can play your songs on up to 3 computers concurrently. If you get a new computer, you can "de-authorize" an old one and then authorize the new one through a simple menu command. Do it as many times as you get new hardware. You can also play them on unlimited iPods, and burn them to CDs to play anywhere.

Sure, it's still somewhat annoying, but far better than any other legal download service.

"OMGDRMWTFBBQ!!!"

Re:Paying twice is the point of DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah! And that's why, if he had kept a backup, he wouldn't have been able to use it again and would have had to buy a second copy! And that's why, when I buy a CD at the store, they replace it for free (or at-physical-cost) when I break it so I don't have to buy it again!

Christ, do you even think before you post?

What's the draw to this?

[Oz0ne]

Is the main reason for this simply because of the DRM on songs downloaded from iTunes? I can definitely understand that being an annoyance, but personally don't find it very restrictive. I've put purchased iTunes on a couple computers, I guess if you use quite a few computers day to day and want to access your music on all of them it could get troublesome.

Or is it just the concept of having any type of restriction on a purchased product?

Open Source Sucks!!

[riversky]

The fundamental problem with open source is they COPY proprietary software and do not INNOVATE new things. That is why open source will be nothing more than a tool for geeks and a cost cutting tool for big corporations and big government.

Re:Open Source Sucks!!

[leenks]

Oh yeah, of course... So MS didn't copy anybody elses software along the way, or Apple? I wonder if Unix was open source before the commercial software scene ever existed? True, this is basically a copy of proprietry software, and in some cases copying functionality is necessary - people *need* and office suite compatible with Microsoft (at the moment), they need something that works with their iPod, they need something that browses the web (although MS used open source code to build IE, so technically that one is the other way around). There are plenty of innovative apps in the open source world. The commercial world builds what generates money. The open source world tends to build apps that have useful functionality.

Winamp the lightest?

[eldavojohn]

Complexity? In 2006, Winamp is by far the lightest, fastest, and least complex of all the major Windows media players.

I'm sorry; I can't idly sit by and watch that be posted without repercussions.

From other slashdot users, I've been alerted to foobar2000, the light quinnware, a crude hack of XMMS2 for Windows, etc. Just check out this site if you want to look up new lightweight players. There are lists everywhere.

Honestly, I was afraid that Songbird would be too bloated--trying to do everything for everyone a la Winamp.

I do not agree with your assessment of Winamp being the lightest audio player. It probably has Windows Media Player beat but I use better alternatives in alternate operating systems.

Re:And that's that problem...

[Belial6]

I noticed you didn't answer the question.

"And, either work you want to use. They misslead customers into thinking that they have have permenent access to the music by using the words sell and buy. You tell me, does the iTunes store say "Buy a license to a song", or does it say "Buy a song". The two mean very different things."

Is the "de-authorize" on the client or the server system? Also, are you saying that the guy who claimed to have lost his music because the ipod died, and the Mac was sold, was lying?

Of course either way, if they say "Buy a song" when they are delivering a "license" is still at best a bait and switch.

Re:And that's that problem...

[Kenshin]

I think the guy lost his music because he was stupid.

If you sell your car, and your CDs are in your car when you sell it, the record store isn't obligated to give you new CDs.

BACK STUFF UP!

Re:iTunes is overrated.

[infinityxi]

so you're saying we should just all accept inferior products as is and just get on with it? If there is room for improvement, then it should improve. I mean, getting back to tne encoder thing. While I think thats a minor complaint, apple could take an BSD core and build an OS around it, I am sure that Lame could be incorporated into their encoder. Yes, Windows has a lot that is inferior to OSX, there should be improvement, not the attitude of "why bother?".

Re:Let me pretend to be a mac fanboy for a second.

[Tsiangkun]

Whatever.

1) Does not sync with iPod. How can anything be an iTunes replacement if it can't sync with the iPod. There are F/OSS projects that sync with iPod, so why can't this project do it ? iTunes is a way to manage music on my iPod. I think the thundersongbirdfox team missed a critical feature by not including sync support.

2) How many F/OSS projects were initially windows only, and then went on to be a major cross platform success ? Right, so already we can see that this team is not interested in the bulk of the F/OSS community.

3) Does not support music I already own. Weather or not they agree with my choices, I own music with fairplay DRM, and I want to keep playing those songs. They will have to support DRM laden songs if they want to replace iTunes.

This project is destined to fail. Too many things are working against them for it to gain any momentum.

Ironicaly.....

[niXcamiC]

It doesn't support m4a/aac tags.

Yep, DRM'd iTunes

[christian.einfeldt]

Everyone to whom I have spoken has said that iTunes and an iPod will only let you sync to one computer at a time. To me, that sounds like DRM. I'm kind of astounded that Mac fans would not recognize this. Maybe these Mac fans are too much in love with an image projected by Apple's prodigious marketing team, and are not seeing reality.

There are other open source options, such as this Oboe service from MP3tunes, which was slashdotted here by Scuttlemonkey. This service will allow you to stream and sync to any computer with the open source Oboe software package, and the download is free, although the service is not free as in beer, but costs $40.00 USD per year:

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/23/164323 4

Chiggers writes to tell us that Mad Penguin has an interesting look at Oboe, the new music service from MP3Tunes. For a monthly fee Oboe allows you unlimited space to create a cross-platform music playlist available anywhere you have an internet connection via their AJAX-enabled GUI. The audio player still needs a little work but overall it is an interesting idea.

Re:Yep, DRM'd iTunes

[stikves]

Yes I had a friend who own an iPod, and he said the same thing: "it works with only a single computer".

However this is not totally correct. (I found out after buying my own iPod).

The summary is like this: You can manage your iPod from as many iTunes installations as your want. But in order to do this, you have to disable synchronization from Preferences window.

I know it's still a limitation, however it's not DRM related. Actually the problem is with the sync algorithm. Consider this: you add "Metallica.mp3" to PC A'a library and another unrelated "Metallica.mp3" to PC B'a library. After that you sync with PC A, then sync with PC B and then delete the mp3 on PC A and then to the both syncs again. What should happen?

This is a very difficult question, because there is not one anwser to it. So they chose the obvious solution: sync works with a single copy iTunes, however you can upload songs from as many PCs as you want if you disable sync.

(Btw, sorry my moderations will be undone, hope someone else redoes them).

Re:Yes, 'cuz that's what teenaged music fans want.

[FellowConspirator]

I'd point out that the number of people writing extensions for FireFox is pretty big. The issue there is that many of them are not very generic. I know several companies that use such extensions internally for all sorts of things.

Re:iTunes is overrated.

[idsofmarch]

Maybe I'm stupid, but how would you create a playlist based on audio? By beats per minute?

audio-based playlists

[soupdevil]

Predixis does it by a proprietary algorithm for their MusicMagicMixer, but I'm sure it measures BPM, dynamic range, amount of change over time, the unique sonic characteristics of different instruments, etc. In practice it's not perfect, but it is a great tool for creating unusual and effective mixes.

Re:Yes, 'cuz that's what teenaged music fans want.

[petenz]

True enough - but assuming that it does Just Work, surely this is a good way to introduce them to the idea of, and ideologies behind, open source software? Then maybe when they start their productive or creative working lives they'll look for open source tools like Thunderbird/Firefox/The Gimp etc.

They might not care now - but they may in the future, particularly if their experiences of open source software have been positive.

Sky King will be so happy!

[slacktide]

Songbird flies today?

Sky King will be so happy!

Re:And that's that problem...

[idsofmarch]

Is the 'de-authorize' on the client or the server system?

On the server system.

Also, are you saying that the guy who claimed to have lost his music because the iPod died, and the Mac was sold, was lying?

It's possible he didn't understand that when he sold the Mac he should have de-authorized it from one of his 5 computers and didn't contact Apple letting them know what he did; they can deauthorize a computer for you by phone. However, if your Mac's hard-drive and your iPod are both erased you are totally screwed--unless Apple decides to allow you to re-download everything.

You're right in that one licenses songs from iTMS and this distinction isn't made clear and most consumers wouldn't even if you put it on the front page of the store. Consumers don't understand the licensing in DVDs either, nor the restrictions in paperback books.

The licensing aspect of digital music is problematic and not very well understood by most consumers, however this isn't specific to iTunes, but to the most of the digital download industry. I'd suggest eMusic.com or your neighborhood used record store if DRM bothers you.

Thanks!

[ultrabot]

Thank you.

While there are several good open source music library progs on the linux side, I've been held captive by the piece of sh*t iTunes in Windows.

wxMusik seems much more like my style, and this was the first time I heard about it!

Re:And that's that problem...

[Belial6]

You may have misunderstood my question. It sounds like the action to deauthorize must happen from the client side, and that the data is stored on the server. Is this correct?

"You're right in that one licenses songs from iTMS and this distinction isn't made clear and most consumers wouldn't even if you put it on the front page of the store. Consumers don't understand the licensing in DVDs either, nor the restrictions in paperback books."

The fact is, Apple, as well as most of the other media barons are commiting fraud. They are clearly telling costomers that they are "Buying" the music, then only delivering a "license". While I would still have a problem with DRM if they didn't pull this bait and switch, I would at that time consider it a situation of the companies lie Apple, suppling bad customer service. As it stands I consider Apple and the other media barons to be criminals.

Do you think that Apple just forgot to tell people that they are not actually "buying" music. No. They say "Buy a song", instead of "Buy a license" because they are intentionally misleading the customer. People would start to ask questions if you said "Buy a license".

The problem isn't that consumers are stupid and don't understand this new fangled thing called digital music. The problem is that the media barons have been allowed to steal from the population. And your right. I should, do abstain from taking part in the blatent theft that is digital music downloads. That doesn't mean that I shouldn't warn others about the crime being commited against them.

I don't think the guy is a typical consumer

[Call Me Black Cloud]

Maybe I'm closer to being a typical consumer than he is, as I use Yahoo Music Unlimited and I'm very happy with it. I disagree with some of the things he stated.

Services like iTunes -- where everybody has to shop from the same store -- are like walled garden online services back in the early days.

How many people search using only Google? If the store has everything I want, great! One stop shopping. Now my store (Yahoo Music) doesn't have everything I want - it lacks the Beatles. Songbird won't help...at least legally. The only way for me to get the Beatles legally is to pop a CD in and rip it.

All of the popular media players out there have pretty much the same feature set on the desktop ... they all do pretty much the same thing these days. Rip, mix, burn, play, organize playlists.

That's because 95% of the people only want to do those things. I think it's great that Songbird is going to innovate and be open...who knows what will come of it? Just don't expect the openness to be a killer feature that will attract "the masses".

Why wouldn't you buy your bluegrass in one place and your trance music in another? ... Even if you could buy all your music in one place, like Wal-Mart, would you want to?

Apparently the answer is yes. You don't see a lot of butchers and bakers around anymore, do you? That's because people like getting all their stuff in one place. Think Amazon.com. If one store has all my bluegrass and all my trance, then great.

The interface looks a lot like Yahoo Music's as well (or maybe iTunes...I'm not that familiar with it)

Re:I don't think the guy is a typical consumer

[microbrewer]

The guys who developed Songbird developed the Yahoo Music engine,
Rob Lord was a Product Manager at Yahoo after Yahoo aquired his company Mediacode before that Rob Worked at Winamp before it was sold to AOL...

Re:Yes, 'cuz that's what teenaged music fans want.

[fbnas]

I can list quite a few friends of mine who are teenaged and want to hack through the source... I was one at one point (being 21 forces me to not be a teenager, but at the age of 18 I was going through source).

And we're all hardcore music fans. Being a coder does not mean you don't listen to/love music, or am I missing something about being geek?
Unless of course you're not a pro-opensource coder if you're under 25...


And one reason why me and a whole bunch of my friends are dieing to get our hands on songbird is that it's pretty much iTunes with the source.... Meaning we get iTunes (almost our favourite music player) and we then get to change it to our heart's delight (there's a lot I wish I could do with iTunes)...
Reason enough for us to be interested in the source?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:iTunes is overrated.

[Fordiman]

That's like saying if your mp3 player doesn't play ogg vorbis, then you have an inferior player.

Or, heavens forbid, if your mp3 player is built by Apple, then you have an inferior player (or at least you do compared to my PocketPC. Sure, your flashy new iPod video can play music and movies like my PPC, but can it play ScummVM games or read html-and pdf-encoded books? Didn't think so.)

An mp3 player is a device. It doesn't need to do anything but play mp3s and have a place to store them. If we're talking a pocket media player, that's different; it should have support for as much as possible.

But me? I stick to the standards. LAME MP3 for audio (with MAD for decoding, if I can choose); FFMPEG mpeg4 for video, preferably using the same lib for decoding; and AVI as the wrapper (why AVI? 'cos TCPMP, KPlayer, Media Player Classic, and just about everything except iTunes / Quicktime can demux it more quickly than any other media container.)

Yes. I like my media burrito hot and open. yeeah, baby.

Smart playlists

[slim]

I've never understood much hyped smart playlists

Yeah, what is it with those? Peoplel crow about how useful they are, but what for?

I have *one* useful smart playlist: because my whole collection won't fit on an iPod, I have to choose what goes on. However since *almost* my whole collection fits on, it's easier to maintain a list of stuff to stay off than it is to maintain a list to stay on.

So, I maintain an "off iPod" ordinary playlist, and a smart playlist that's "everything except what's in the 'off iPod' list".

It works, but it feels like an awful hack, and if you mark other playlists to go onto the iPod, those don't take into account the 'off iPod' list (one would have to make a smart playlist corresponding to every normal playlist, and mark those for synching to the iPod. Ugh.)

The query mechanism for smart playlists means that to do anything vaguely sophisticated you have to start nesting lists, and the fact that iTunes only lets you have a linear list of playlists means that you really want to minimise the number of playlists to keep it manageable.

Songbird, please:
  - give me hierarchical folders of playlists
  - give me a prominent view where playlists, automatic playlists based on queries (let's not call them Smart Playlists to avoid Apple's lawyers), and albums all appear together intermixed (polymorphism, OO fans!) ... and I'll be happy.

Not really..

[Digz]

...you could always rip to MP3 in WMP/9.. You just had to buy the codec and install it (I think it was $15 or so)..

Do you still have to buy the codec with WMP10, or is it included now?

Re:Paying twice is the point of DRM

[vertinox]

Yeah! And that's why, if he had kept a backup, he wouldn't have been able to use it again and would have had to buy a second copy!

Um... But with DRM you aren't able to make a backup most of the time! And if you do so you might be breaking the DMCA law if you bypass the DRM security.

when I buy a CD at the store, they replace it for free (or at-physical-cost) when I break it so I don't have to buy it again!

What store do you buy CDs at? No seriously, I want to know because all the major stores I shopped at won't let you return CDs without going through a fuss with a manager or two about "because of copyright laws" (actual quote of a Target employee) that they can't exchange it for money and what happens if they don't have a copy of the original?

Oh. You are shit out of luck.

What is up with the iTunes fellatio?

[slaker]

OK, I looked at Songbird. It's slow. Clearly it's meant to be some kind of heavyweight application that'll maybe-someday compete with the features of itunes.

But, um, what's up with even thinking itunes is a good thing to copy?

itunes is itself slow, installs a bunch of helper apps on my Windows computers that aren't very helpful since I don't have an ipod, and it uses a bunch of non-native UI elements that don't behave quite the same way as the Windows equivalents. The all-important library feature that seems to be the main cause for sucking at the itunes-cock doesn't appear useful to me. I don't know why. Maybe because I use a sensible system for identifying my music files using the filesystem? Or maybe because classical music doesn't lend itself as well to what I see as the overly simplistic and under-customizable identifiers itunes has? Regardless, the itunes library didn't do anything I couldn't do five other ways, without using itunes, and the Songbird version is no different.

itunes can rip music, something I've done with cdex for a while. itunes isn't as good at it as cdex, which lets me choose my codec and even my file naming scheme. It can make my organization for me, if I let it.

itunes can play music, too? Meh. So can XMMS. So can WinAmp, Foobar, VLC or, hell, PowerDVD. I have m3u playlists. They work fine.

What is itunes giving that I don't already have? Why are so many here worshipping that specific program?

Re:What is up with the iTunes fellatio?

[theurge14]

itunes is itself slow, installs a bunch of helper apps on my Windows computers that aren't very helpful since I don't have an ipod

You must be speaking of the single "helper app", namely iTunesHelper.exe, which is little more than an iTunes bootstrap, much like the one Microsoft Office has/had. If iTunes is slow for you, perhaps your computer doesn't meet the minimum requirements for iTunes.

, and it uses a bunch of non-native UI elements that don't behave quite the same way as the Windows equivalents.

That's because, being OS X UI elements, they work better.

The all-important library feature that seems to be the main cause for sucking at the itunes-cock doesn't appear useful to me. I don't know why.

Well that is definitely a fair and convincing argument.

Maybe because I use a sensible system for identifying my music files using the filesystem?

Is that system you use an improvement on the Artist/Album/Trackname system that iTunes uses?

Or maybe because classical music doesn't lend itself as well to what I see as the overly simplistic and under-customizable identifiers itunes has?

I have a few classical tracks in my library. What identifiers are too simplistic or missing to properly categorize this music?

Regardless, the itunes library didn't do anything I couldn't do five other ways, without using itunes, and the Songbird version is no different.

I'm curious to know what method you use to duplicate the iTunes Library's Smart Playlist feature.

itunes can rip music, something I've done with cdex for a while. itunes isn't as good at it as cdex, which lets me choose my codec and even my file naming scheme. It can make my organization for me, if I let it.

Are you sure you've ever looked closely in the Preferences settings for iTunes? It doesn't sound like you have.

itunes can play music, too? Meh. So can XMMS. So can WinAmp, Foobar, VLC or, hell, PowerDVD. I have m3u playlists. They work fine.

M3U playlists? Are you serious? Do you still use ICQ too?

Re:What is up with the iTunes fellatio?

[slaker]

You must be speaking of the single "helper app", namely iTunesHelper.exe

Yup. That's the one. I loaded iTunes because I got a free song in off a Coke bottlecap. For that I was punished with an autostart application for a program I never particularly cared to start again. Yes, eventually it annoyed me enough to pull it out of Windows' registry, but why was it there to begin with?

That's because, being OS X UI elements, they work better.

Really? So it was worth all that developer time Apple spent reinventing the wheel? And the button? And the scrollbar? All so it could kinda-sorta look like an OS I don't have?


Is that system you use an improvement on the Artist/Album/Trackname system that iTunes uses?

Nope, as "artist" can mean several different things to someone who likes classical music (Composer? Soloist? Orchestra? Conductor?) and "album" doesn't mean much of anything.
If you've ever searched for music on a site like Amazon, you'll notice that the generic search system will say something like "For classical music, search with this other tool". That's 'cause our organization is a little more complicated, and metadata is a little more important.

I store my music in a set of folders that essentially works as "Composer/Work" (so all 14 versions of Beethoven's 9th Symphony that I have are in the same directory, Beethoven/9th Symphony) and maintain additional metadata with symlinks extracted from the ID3 tags (e.g. the name of the CD, conductor or performer if those are part of the ID3 data). Since I pretty much only work from CDs I own, I have control over those things, and organization is just a perl script away (so I have a Performer/Solti directory that symlinks to all the CSO performances that I have). This works just fine for me and works well for compilation albums as for recordings of a single specific piece; I can quickly get to whatever I want or need.
Another script scavenges my MP3s file share to create a list of the .M3U files I have (I generate one for every CD when I rip it). I can access and play the songs, sorting the list either by composer, performer or by the name of the work in the M3Us from the web.

Understand, this is something that I created seven or eight years ago. Presently, it serves for about 320GB of music (all CDs I own, FWIW).

And - for my needs at least - it works far better than the lame-ass library systems in programs like Songbird or iTunes. I own an Escient Fireball to index the music and movies in my CD and DVD jukeboxes, but when it comes to my digital media, I think I do a better job myself.

I have a few classical tracks in my library. What identifiers are too simplistic or missing to properly categorize this music?

As I recall (haven't seen itunes in a while), the sorting and search features were VERY limited. I couldn't find something by performer AND composer, for instance, only by whichever of performer or composer happened to be in the "Artist" descriptor in iTunes. iTunes also didn't offer a better tag than the highly generic "classical" (maybe "Baroque" or "Opera"... I don't recall) to describe my music. Again, that's not helpful. I wanted things like "Minimalist" or "Pre-Renaissance" or "Plainsong".


I'm curious to know what method you use to duplicate the iTunes Library's Smart Playlist feature.

itunes' playlist feature didn't look that smart to me. From the very generic description on Apple's site, it appears to be a way to shuffle around a playlist in some random or organized fashion. That tool probably wouldn't mesh well with how I listen to music. Skipping around random tracks isn't as much fun when the 40-minute long work you want to hear is broken up into four different MP3 files that should be heard in order.

Are you sure you've ever looked closely in the Preferences settings for iTunes? It doesn't sound like you have.

I dimly recall looking at it. I wanted the option to use LAME as an encoder. Tha

Re:And that's that problem...

[Kenshin]

Then sue all the traditional record stores, too.

You're not buying the music on the CD, you're buying a CD with a "licensed" copy of the music on it.

I Installed iTunes 6.0 in Linux (Wine)

[SlashdotOgre]

I happen to have installed iTunes 6.0 in Linux using Wine 0.9.7 (compiled from source) over the weekend (6.0.2 failed). This is in Fedora Core 4; iTunes didn't play well with the official Fedora wine rpm. The install took a few hours on a relatively fast machine (P-M 2.0), but iTunes does run. It was able to detect the music being shared via Rendezvous from a box running iTunes 4.8 in another room, and it played all the MP3 shared music fine (I didn't try AAC ones). I could browse the iTunes store, but I couldn't listen to previews (probably DRM issue). I used the instructions found here: http://frankscorner.org/index.php?p=itunes6

Nah, the price is not a big issue.

[Medievalist]

Excepting a few extreme edge cases, anyone who buys an mp3 player either has money to burn or is completely financially incompetent.

Granted, the financially incompetent group is probably larger.

Oh, nice price roundup, BTW.

Re:Yes, 'cuz that's what teenaged music fans want.

[westlake]

how many "music fans" (of the sorts who presently tote about iPods) would even know what source code is, much less give a crap about it

The more interesting question is:

Do kids give a damn about the independent labels or DRM free muaic?

What the hell does this thing do?

[sunwolf]

Or what doesn't it do, and why doesn't it do what I want it to do?

I'm so confused...

Re:Paying twice is the point of DRM

[Blakey Rat]

Um... But with DRM you aren't able to make a backup most of the time! And if you do so you might be breaking the DMCA law if you bypass the DRM security.

You've never used iTunes, I take it.

To back up your music files, you move the file to the CD drive and hit 'burn'. That's it. There's no DRM involved, it's just a plain ol' file like any other. (Heck, iTunes even has a setting for making its own backups-- you can set it to burn the music files instead of CD tracks, then burn any playlist you want for easy backups.)

Oboe doesn't have these problems with sync limits

[christian.einfeldt]

"The summary is like this: You can manage your iPod from as many iTunes installations as your want. But in order to do this, you have to disable synchronization from Preferences window."

Okay, that is one of the limitations that I was talking about in my original post. With Oboe, you don't have that problem. You sync by song name and album and artist. If you have duplicates of those songs, you will be alerted to that fact, and given the change to change the medata. But the sync still happens.

"So they chose the obvious solution: sync works with a single copy iTunes, however you can upload songs from as many PCs as you want if you disable sync."

With Oboe, you can also sync DOWN to as many PCs as you want, except that at some point, if you were to illegally share your password, MP3tunes would cut you off for two reasons: They don't want to share music illegally; they don't want to get sued; and they lose money if people share accounts, because each sharing user is a lost sale.

Failed to start: msvcp71.dll was not found

[Kris_J]

Not the best start, anyone know what msvcp71.dll is and why Songbird might need it but not include it?

Re:Failed to start: msvcp71.dll was not found

[Kris_J]

I found msvcp71.dll elsewhere on my PC, now it wants msvcr71.dll. Does the main site have an extra download package that the mirrors don't?

Re:iTunes, DRM-ridden?! - parent overrated

[zachdms]

That's not true. It was new in WMP8 ("Media Player for Windows XP"). WMP9 had it too, and has it downlevel.

Re:And that's that problem...

[Omestes]

Thanks for clarifying. Now I know that APPLE IS STEALING FROM ME! And each time I burn one of my authorized CDs (5/day), they will come to the door and kill me, since it is perfectly legal to RIP said music (not MP3, AAC) CD and have a non DRM'd track.

Through iTunes I do purchase the music, in that I have a copy of it, a copy which I can do pretty much whatever I want with. And when I stick that copy on a CD, I have a physical object, which I can do ANYTHING I want which, seems like property to me.

If iTunes refused to let me burn their DRM AACs to disk, then you'd be right, though.

You're reading the results how you like.

[default luser]

It's on top in your mind, but let's look at the truth. Even against mp3, Ogg is not impressive. Between lame -v5 and Vorbis -q 4.25, the lame files came out significantly smaller on all but a handful of cases...in fact, it averaged significantly larger filesizes than all other codecs tested.

So, significantly larger files, and in raw numbers it does slightly better, but statisically it ties with all other codecs worth mentioning. That's hardly a codec that's "on top".

THIS IS WHY Vorbis has already lost. Other vendors stepped up to produce the next-generation of codecs well before Vorbis became polished, and they made them very much free (as in beer). Most people don't care that Vorbis is also free (as in speech).

Me, I just stick with mp3, works everywhere, and Lame just keeps getting better. Who knew mp3 had this much room for growth? It's running strong with the next-gen codecs at similar bitrates!

Yes, really..

[node 3]

Not really ... you could always rip to MP3 in WMP/9.. You just had to buy the codec and install it (I think it was $15 or so)..

That's not coherent. It takes the form of a refutation, but is merely an addition of a fact and not a refutation.

WMP 9 does not rip mp3s. WMP 9 plus an mp3 encoder does.

This is similar to how Windows XP does not burn, nor does it play, DVDs. It would not be a refutation to say that you can, with add-ons. It would be a clarification, which is fine, but it's not a refutation.

Do you still have to buy the codec with WMP10, or is it included now?

The answer to that is in the post you are replying to.

Re:And that's that problem...

[Belial6]

Your welcome, because yes, they are stealing from you. Don't be so sure that it is legal to burn the tracks to disk, then rip them back to mp3. That is clearly a circumvention of copy protection, and thus is probably technically illegal.

"Through iTunes I do purchase the music"

And that is exactly why they don't advertise "buy a license." I hope those that argued right here in this thread that you are not buying the music, read what you have to say. Clearly there is a disconnect between you, and all of those that claim you are only buying a license.

I bet if you sent a certified letter to Apple, requesting clarification on what you paid for, they would tell you that you do not own the music, and in fact bought a "license to listen" to the music. That is if they would answer you at all.

Another mirror

[nocloo]

http://nocloo.com/Songbird_0_1_0.exe

Re:Yes, 'cuz that's what teenaged music fans want.

[rpdillon]

I see this type of comment a lot here...it really isn't a valid observation.

In essence, you're correct, they don't want open source. But they do want the things that open source offers: upgraded, new clients that provide features that the community wants to see, lack of DRM, cross platform code (eventually), open standards, etc.

This is like saying the average driver doesn't care about having a new-fangled fancy hybrid engine. You're right, they don't. But they do like to believe they drive a car with fewer emissions that is better for the environment, they do like being able to drive in the carpool lane even if they are driving alone, they do like getting 40-50 MPG, and they do like getting the tax break.

So, while the benifits aren't synonymous with the method, the engine that drives the development (or car) determines its features, some of which are desirable to more people than only the set that understand the engine in-depth.

Not quite singing yet..q

[mattpointblank]

I realise this is not a final build by any means, but my initial reaction to any new program is to poke around in the options/preferences and see what tweaks I can make. I couldn't find any in this (wasn't I looking hard enough, or aren't there any?) and that made me sad, one of my favourite iTunes features (although it occasionally truncates stuff) is the library organising stuff, keeping my music well labelled. Also, it was a little overwhelming with all the bookmarks and services all down the side. I turn all that crap off in iTunes, and when I minimised it and then restored it they all expanded themselves again.. not cool! I'll keep an eye on this though, as an OSS equivalent to iTunes is definitely something I'm interested in.

Re:Yes, 'cuz that's what teenaged music fans want.

[catwh0re]

I like the article title "Songbird, the open source iTunes killer", it's about as much of a killer of iTunes as GIMP will take down the Adobe empire. The project needs more credit than being a program to replace another on my system.

Like they're both great, but sheesh, over stating your product just makes people have false expectations of your work. So a person like me comes along, tries it out expects this amazing application and feels let down. Instead of me trying out an unhyped application and being impressed with it's development so far.(clone or not.)

Moral of the story, hype is as bad for your software as it is for movies.

DRM ridden iTunes?

[Millenniumman]

iTunes doesn't have any more DRM than Songbird inherently. Music from the iTunes Music Store will, but you don't have to buy it, and can rip CDs for all of your music if you want and not have any DRM. iTunes gives you the option to use the ITMS, but doesn't require it. So what is Songbird actually doing about DRM that is better than iTunes? Not being compatible at all? Is that a feature?

Re:parent overrated (you wish)

[node 3]

That's not true.

Yes, it is. I refer you to Microsoft's own page. To save you some clicking and reading, I'll quote the relevant part:

MP3 encoding support is included at no cost with Windows Media Player 10. For Windows Media Player 9 Series, you can add MP3 encoding support by purchasing one of the following plug-ins

If you simply mean that you could add a plug-in to WMP 9, then sure, that's a fair statement. But I wasn't saying you couldn't buy a plug-in, so it's hardly a "that's not true/parent overrated" situation, now is it?

Re:Yes, 'cuz that's what teenaged music fans want.

[Millenniumman]

lack of DRM, cross platform code (eventually), open standards

In my experience, most people don't know what those things mean, and even if they did would not care a lot about them. People want software that Just Works(TM).

Party Shuffle/Smart playlists

[AussieVamp2]

Does songbird do this, or are they planning on doing it?

Never used iTunes except for finding the odd podcast, but those are nifty features, rather than having to make a manual playlist with multiple track copies to weight it how you want, a Party Shuffle non iTunes player would be handy.

Re:Let me pretend to be a mac fanboy for a second.

[Millenniumman]

I'm a Mac user and would certainly try this, but there is no Mac version.

The best feature I found on Songbird...

[nincehelser]

...was "Uninstall Songbird".

It was pretty unstable on my machine. Songs kept restarting, lots of stutter, then it finally croaked.

For the 30 minutes or so that it did work, I didn't see any feature that caught my eye. I do have some DRMed music files (iTunes Originals, for example) and they didn't seem to show up at all. Songbird died before I could try any Microsoft DRMed files.

Does it totally ignore anything with DRM? That's almost as annoying as DRM itself.

Re:Yes, 'cuz that's what teenaged music fans want.

[jZnat]

Hey, I'm a teenager who wants Free software and its corresponding source code, insensitive clod!

Re:parent overrated... quit trolling

[zachdms]

Your exact comment was "mp3 ripping is new to WMP 10". MP3 ripping was "new" to WMP8. "Free MP3 Encoder" was new to WMP10. And even that's fudging the line if you know the difference between the Advanced vs Professional flavors of FhG, since the FhG Advanced codec has shipped with MS/WM for about 7 years now. I did work with FhG on their ACM encoder back when it was created... this is an area I hope I know.

So yeah: I do think your comment was overrated, and misleading. Mp3 ripping is not new to WMP10, and that "a fraction of the copies of WMP" who can do it is probably every user on any supported configuration.

Again, I will respect that you're clarifying that you meant "free mp3 ripping was new to WMP10" (which is also not true, as WinSuperSite and others covered way back when in WMP8 beta days), but still... at face value I think what you said was misleading, and we should both know that people like to run off and repeat broken facts ad infinitum. As such, I like my facts straight-up, no chaser.

Sorry but Songbird sucks

[mnemonic_]

It's basically a crippled iTunes with an embedded Firefox window, with predefined bookmarks for online music stores (not iTMS) and shoutcast listings. No CD burning, no music sharing, no iPod sync, no smart playlists, etc. This is nowhere near an iTunes killer.

Got Rhythmbox? Got Firefox? Then you have Songbird, minus the clunky integration. It's not as bad as Sun's Windows desktop bullshit with StarOffice 5, but god damn it's close.

Let's face it folks; killing iTunes means killing the iTunes music store and the iPod. This Apple music trinity owns over 80% of the market. Among college students and younger, probably more like 95%, and they're the trendsetters. Tearing down iTunes is impossible without taking down the other. And unless the open source community can utilize the iTMS, while developing seamless iPod compatibility, taking out iTunes will be damned near impossible

Bloated?

[jheath314]

I can't believe this is FTFA:

BB: Songbird's logo is a cute, rotund, whistling birdie -- but what's up with that puff of gas coming out of his posterior? Is your mascot farting?
RL: Sorry, bad reception (SSSHHCSRRGRRR CRACKLE)

I'm afriad we can draw no other conclusion than "songbird does suffer from 'bloat'."

Re:Yes, 'cuz that's what teenaged music fans want.

[ConcreteClam]

Well, I'm 18, so I don't know if I'd count as a kid or not, but I do indeed care about indie labels and DRM free music. I buy almost all of my tracks on Beatport, and the rest is second-hand vinyl from random sellers online or from Ebay. I also go record bin diving at whatever place I can. (And check if it's not from the RIAA from RIAARadar.) Yeah, not really the norm, but still... it's existant.

MP3 is still patented

[tepples]

Me, I just stick with mp3, works everywhere

MP3 through LAME works everywhere except the United States, Germany, and a few other major developed countries where Fraunhofer happens to hold broad exclusive rights.

Re:MP3 is still patented

[default luser]

Yes, but you know damn good and well Fraunhofer won't waste their time prosecuting an open-source hobbyist project. Lame is doing so much for the mp3 standard, there are even for-pay ripping / encoding programs that pay Fraunhofer for a license, but then use the Lame encoder.

If game makers decide to use mp3 for all their audio tracks in a particular game, they still have to negotiate and pay Fraunhofer for a license regardless of how they encoded those mp3 files.

Lame is not on completely solid ground, but it's not exactly sinking into the mud.

That's not iTunes

[SenorCitizen]

Sure enough, we plugged the iPod into my laptop, and I started browsing the directory structure, and everything was COMPLETELY mangled. I mean, worse than how compilers mangle some function calls. Filenames appeared to be random strings of alphanumeric characters, and songs from the same album were separated across MULTIPLE subfolders!

That has little to do with iTunes. The iPod just works that way... try putting music on an iPod with any other manager software, it will turn out just the same way. Some 3rd party managers can also pull music off an iPod and rename the tracks based on tags.

iTunes only "mangles" track names if you have the "keep my music organised" checkbox checked, and even then it just sorts them into directories by artist and then by album.

That said, I don't think iTunes is a great music management application. With large collections it gets slow, really slow. And there's no way you can organise things by anything other than genre, album name and artist tags. I prefer foobar2000.

Re:Yes, 'cuz that's what teenaged music fans want.

[nacturation]

That or Sony rips that source code apart and uses it in their next illegal DRM schema.

Sony has produced illegal DRM XML? Where do I download the schema so I can validate it?

synchronizing music, an easier problem

[sita]

I know it's still a limitation, however it's not DRM related. Actually the problem is with the sync algorithm. Consider this: you add "Metallica.mp3" to PC A'a library and another unrelated "Metallica.mp3" to PC B'a library. After that you sync with PC A, then sync with PC B and then delete the mp3 on PC A and then to the both syncs again. What should happen?

This is a very difficult question, because there is not one anwser to it. So they chose the obvious solution: sync works with a single copy iTunes, however you can upload songs from as many PCs as you want if you disable sync.


It is not a difficult question: If PC A:Metallica.mp3 is meant to be different from PC B:Metallica.mp3 they should be treated as if they were different files, that is before you delete PC A:Metallica.mp3 you should have two Metallica.mp3 in all places (.

Actually, synchronizing music collections is somewhat different from rsyncing your home directory: Once ripped, you don't edit your music files (at least not insite in your music collection), so you can assume that two music files that have the same name whose content don't match are different.

Re:And that's that problem...

[Weedlekin]

"Do you think that Apple just forgot to tell people that they are not actually "buying" music. No. They say "Buy a song", instead of "Buy a license" because they are intentionally misleading the customer"

But to "buy" that music, you need an iTunes store account, and the process of signing up for one presents you with terms and conditions that clearly state (among various other things) how your purchase can (and cannot) be used. Anyone who goes ahead without reading these terms and conditions isn't being misled, as it is (a) the very first step in creating an account, and (b) you cannot move on to subsequent steps without agreeing to it (there are two buttons marked "Agree" and "Cancel").

Cases in point: BladeEnc and VirtualDub

[tepples]

Yes, but you know damn good and well Fraunhofer won't waste their time prosecuting an open-source hobbyist project.

BladeEnc binaries got shut down due to a cease-and-desist letter alleging infringement of an essential patent. So did VirtualDub's ASF (.wmv) reading code, for those who claim that Microsoft uses patents only defensively.

interested in your set up

[smilinggoat]

Hey, I hope you get this comment, you didn't have an email listed publicly in your /. profile. I'm interested in a music set up similar to what you described. Can you point me in the direction of the software, server stuff you're using? It would be greatly appreciated! smilinggoat at gmail dot com

tryed it

[allforcarrie]

I gave it a shot, its a big peice of crap. sorry.