- Quick specs
- Price: Free
- Operating system: Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 2000
- Date added: November 06, 2008
- Total Downloads: 95,535
- Downloads last week: 279
- 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: Seth Rosenblatt on November 07, 2008
If Firefox and iTunes hooked up, their hatchling could very well be Songbird. Almost ready for prime-time and still a bit 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, and Songbird is now stable enough to 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 1 RC 1 features improved audio/playback functionality using GStreamer, UI experience improvements including new keyboard shortcuts, refining the column heading property list, "Show File" now available for any selected track, smart playlists can now be used as rules within other smart playlists, and the ability to show/hide display panes via individual buttons, as well as numerous performance and stability enhancements.
What's new in this version:
Improved audio/playback functionality using GStreamer, UI experience improvements including new keyboard shortcuts, refining the column heading property list, "Show File" now available for any selected track, smart playlists can now be used as rules within other smart playlists, and the ability to show/hide display panes via individual buttons, as well as numerous performance and stability enhancements.
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User reviews of Songbird 1 RC 1
- Average user rating: 3.7 stars out of 121 votes
- My rating: 0 stars Write review
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Showing 5 of 8 user reviewsSee all 8 user reviews
This software version | All versions -
Version: Songbird 1 RC 1
"It is a very customizable, well put together program."
Pros: It is straight forward and easy to use.
Cons: The add-ons are hard to activate.
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Version: Songbird 1 RC 1
"Very pleased, particularly with added lyrics feature."
Pros: Very fast selection
Cons: Nothing I do not like
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Version: Songbird 1 RC 1
"Impressive set of features, but too resource intensive"
Pros: Got lots of features and is greatly customizable like Firefox.
Cons: Main drawback is that this thing is far too massive for a media player. easily uses up to 200 MB of RAM after some time and starting it takes forever if you have a number of add-ons installed.
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Version: Songbird 1 RC 1
Pros: easy to navigate
Cons: needs more functions
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Version: Songbird 1 RC 1
Pros: the download is from a reliable source, CNET!
Cons: I am the negative in this equation. I am not a patient person when it comes to anything to do with a computer.
Summary: Call me stupid, but once I had downloaded songbird and returned to login, I repeatedly got user name and password errors preventing me from using songbird. I think that may be due to a problem with the Norton Internet Security I have running. In ord... read more >>
- See all 8 user reviews Write review
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