Songbird Portable for Windows

Songbird is a free, open-source media player/Web browser. It's built around Mozilla's Firefox browser engine, VLC media player, and SQLite's database engine, with lots of extensions and other capabilities available, and more added all the time. Songbird's capabilities are too many to summarize, let alone describe, but they include dynamic playlists, automatic and manual importing and exporting, integration of Web radio and media streams, CD ripping, song data lookup, feed aggregators, and user-developed extensions of every kind. Songbird Portable is fully portable version of Songbird converted by PortableApps.

As portable freeware, Songbird Portable can be saved just about anywhere and run on any XP, Vista, or Windows 7 machine. PortableApps packages an installer that saves the program and any other files to any directory you choose. There's no need to extract the downloaded PAF file or choose a program to open it; just click it to start the installation. The installer doesn't specify a directory, just the new subdirectory, so you'll have to choose one to create or browse to an existing one. We simply typed C:, and the installer created the directory and folder and installed Songbird Portable's application as well as App, Data, and Other folders and a browser-based Help file. Near as we can tell, Songbird Portable is practically the same as Songbird, including choosing extensions to install, importing our music files, and setting up options such as ShoutCast.

Songbird's interface is unique, but its features, controls, and displays are all familiar, and a well-designed layout makes starting up easy. The music, videos, and downloads we specified appeared in the Library, just above our Radio feeds, with expandable Playlists at the bottom. A small preview pane displayed Now Selected media files, though not all files have cover art. The VLC-based player controls worked well, of course, and up-to-date codecs get the best sound from your music files. The main browser window displayed Songbird add-ons; these aren't as numerous as the birds in the sky, but they're catching up. Songbird Portable is compatible with these add-ons and extras, including the program's skins, called "feathers." This is one Songbird you can take with you.