Simplify your laptop buying
- Quick specs
- Price: Free
- Operating system: Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 2000
- Date added: June 13, 2008
- Total Downloads: 91,772
- Downloads last week: 357
- See full specifications
A newer version of Songbird is available.
(Download doesn't provide access to previous versions of this program.)
- CNET editors' rating: stars
- Average user rating: stars out of 121 votes
See all user reviews
CNET editors' review
Reviewed by: CNET Staff
If Firefox and iTunes hooked up, their hatchling could very well be Songbird. Although it's in beta and plenty buggy, it's also a very fun app that's part music player, part Web browser, and all about music discovery, management, and playback.
During installation, it'll ask if you want to load your iTunes music directory or another media directory, or perform the task later. Processing 5,000 songs took about 3 minutes, not a bad pace. It then asks you which of the pre-installed Songbird extensions you want to load. Most of these, like the iPod and USB device manager, only make the app stronger.
The left sidebar provides quick links to bookmarks, downloads, your music library in an iTunes-style interface, and several music discovery Web sites to get your started. When you're looking at any Web site with MP3s available for download, Songbird will open a new window at the bottom main browsing pane. Double-click on a song to play it, while links on the right let you purchase the track from Amazon, iTunes, eMusic, and Amie St. They also tell you the format of the track--MP3 or AAC, for example, and provide a blog link for more info.
Songbird has a growing library of extensions, and support is slowly growing for those written originally for Firefox. Many of the improvements from the last version make for a dramatic change, but Songbird is definitely a beta: caveat emptor. Still, it could really take flight for the music-loving, Web-surfing fanatic in all of us.
Watch the CNET video review of Songbird:
Publisher's description
From Pioneers of the Inevitable :Songbird is a media browser and Web player built from Firefox, VLC Player, and SQLite. Songbird is open source and supports user contributed, cross-platform extensions. Version 0.6 adds better support for large libraries, smoothing scrolling through libraries, faster filtering, speedier search, improvement memory managment, and new features like metadata writing, better MTPSync support, and the ability to find text on Web pages.
Note: Beta or prerelease software is not intended for inexperienced users, as the software may contain bugs or may potentially damage your system. We strongly recommend that users exercise caution and save all mission-critical data before installing or using this software.
What's new in this version:
Version 0.6 adds better support for large libraries, smoothing scrolling through libraries, faster filtering, speedier search, improvement memory managment, and new features like metadata writing, better MTPSync support, and the ability to find text on Web pages.
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User reviews of Songbird 0.6
- Average user rating: 3.7 stars out of 121 votes
- My rating: 0 stars Write review
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Showing 5 of 6 user reviewsSee all 6 user reviews
This software version | All versions -
0 out of 2 people found this review helpful
Version: Songbird 0.6
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0 out of 1 people found this review helpful
Version: Songbird 0.6
Pros: Works as it should.
Cons: None
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0 out of 1 people found this review helpful
Version: Songbird 0.6
"Great concept, terrible quality"
Pros: I fell in love with this idea of a browser. It is exactly what I want, except...
Cons: It is extremely buggy and slow. It takes forever to restart when downloading a new add-on or skin. Images do not fully load correctly and I had to hover over menu/side bars to see the text. I will definitely return to this browser if it becomes more developed in the future.
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Version: Songbird 0.6
"Can't wait for initial release!"
Pros: This is one of the best music players in the world! It plays music and video and is a web browser. All in all a great player
Cons: As it is in beta, it is buggy. But the initial release looks promising. *btw i have been using it since alpha release*
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Version: Songbird 0.6
"Attractive Adaptable Music Player"
Pros: Adaptable, works with a range of audio codecs and supports iPods.
Has a very attractive and very customisable interface. It natively takes commands from Logitech G15 keyboards and Mediaplay mice, VLC media player does not.
I use Songbird to avid the nuisance of installing iTunes and having it push quicktime and Safari on me.
I also prefer songbird for its plugins. The plugin I use the most is LiveTwitter, which automatically twitters my currently playing song. (I use it the most because I use it automatically in the background. I suppose you could say it uses itself the most...)
Cons: A few of the interesting plugins haven't been updated in months and thus no-longer work.
Also it has not ability to keep music folders organised.
Not compatible with Logitech G15 LCD screens.
As with firefox it suffers from the worry that the next update with disable all of the plugins. As the plugins are a major part of this software this *is* an issue.
Some of the plugins don't encorporate cleanly, for example I am running a plugin that allows me to create a fill a 'now playing' list, which works fine. But if I select a song in my library while it is playing It will go off the list and play songs from my library instead. this is very annoying.
- See all 6 user reviews Write review
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