I love MM but after installing Songbird 1.0 it's looking VERY interesting. It has excellent dark skins, some interesting cool extensions: seeqpod.com music search and download to your library, same as hypemachine music search and library download, and those tabs are great. It took me a week to fiddle around MM to get it set up right due to extensions being all over the forums etc.. All the modular stuff seems to integrate well in SB, whereas Media Monkey feel disjointed after installing a lot of extensions.

At this point MM has many more features that I need, but man, Songbird is picking up quick. Interested to see what the next what MM 3.1 is bringing.

I wasn't impressed with early versions of Songbird, but could see its potential (XULRunner back-end, great development community, etc). Decided to give it a whirl and am impressed with the 1.0 effort. It's not MM yet, but the gap is closing.

A few pros of MM:
Much more robust tagging capabilities.
File monitor (though it appears planned for a future version of Songbird).
Multiple artist support
Performance

What Songbird offers:
Tabbed interface - surprisingly refreshing even in a media player app
Add-ons website - much better than the hunting a pecking around the forums and websites for MM extensions
Add-on base - Some Firefox/Thunderbird add-ons can be utilized in songbird, which means they're hitting the ground running with extensions (Adblock, stylish, etc)
Many innovative ideas - concerts, download integration.

Fortunately MM is still a more polished product and 3.1 has already begun to add some exciting new features. Can't wait to see the future of both products.

Actually First impression in that Article was, "Why I haven't seen that skin for MonkeyRok?!?!?!?"

songbird was made after mediamonkey paulmt. so mediamonkey did not take any ideas from it.

but rather they took ideas from mediamonkey.

the only use i can see for needing songbird is if you are using a non windows system that song bird can play on.

i'm sticking with the monkey.

Peke wrote:I wonder Why songbird pic looks so familiar ?

Yeah your right, I thought that too!
My first thought was that they has stolen ideas from MM but then I couldn't remember whether MM had some of those features first or were adapted from Songbird or other programmes.
Most noticeable was the track browser but also the tree layout and album art pane.

Still maybe that's why I found SB1 appealing

I wonder Why songbird pic looks so familiar ?

Well, IMHO Songbird 1 is moving in the right direction.
I really like the new UI and the speed is very good. All round the phrase "fast becoming the the FireFox of music players" is probably accurate.

Of course MM still remains the choice for large collection and serious database users but I do like the feel of songbird overall.
I am certainly not dismissing it as a serious contender, but then I have no idea where MM will be in the near future either.

On the purely visual side I like the look of Songbird better than MM and hope that MM's theming engine will improve to provide opportunity to produce skins that have the clean modern look of Songbird.

Here a review from Ars Technica. Apparently SongBird supports iTunes store DRM tracks.

tried but i never like it

ArtistformerlyknownasSebastian78 wrote:Sorry, but the layout in Songbird is just what I have been looking for since I bough a license for MM. MM is better, still, but this is the way I want to go.

What does the "layout" mean? Is it e.g. "Show Track Browser" in MM view?

Sorry, but the layout in Songbird is just what I have been looking for since I bough a license for MM. MM is better, still, but this is the way I want to go.

I've heard on the grapevine that they are going to rename it 'turkey' because it won't ever grow any wings and soar to the heights that users demand. It's just like the new wamp -fat, ugly and totally dominated by commercial interests. Let's face it, there's tough opposition out there and not everybody wants an 'iphone style' media player with so many gidgets and gadgets you'll never get out to meet any good looking women/men. Which reminds me!

Form and function = Monkey

For me, Songbird is barking up the wrong tree.
Gimme MM anyday

Haha, you need a special script to enable that function...let's see Songbird do that!!!

ToeAndno wrote:Songibird does look very nice, but technically it currently doesn't come close to MM3 which in my opinion is the most powerfuk program out their for your music needs.

What kind of program is that??? Hahaha