Why Songbird will succeed where MM fails

ZvezdanD · Post by **ZvezdanD** » Mon Jun 01, 2009 3:31 am

hintergrundrauschen wrote:
Better development community for add on's and themes
It would be nice if the integrated update button would work at least for major add ons like MonkeyRok & MagicNodes.

Magic Nodes and other my scripts support Find updates/Install update buttons. However, I agree that MM needs a much better support for add-on's.

hintergrundrauschen · Post by **hintergrundrauschen** » Mon Jun 01, 2009 8:27 am

ZvezdanD wrote:Magic Nodes and other my scripts support Find updates/Install update buttons.

Wow, you are right, it works for a few add ons - at least I get a note about an existing update. I checked that once in a while but it never seemed to work.

ZvezdanD · Post by **ZvezdanD** » Mon Jun 01, 2009 8:56 am

hintergrundrauschen wrote:I checked that once in a while but it never seemed to work.

I don't know about other scripts, but ones made by myself work correctly beginning with Oct 28, 2008 when MM developers finally decided to post necessary information about it: http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... 33#p173133. If you are interested, they are enabled the Options button just recently, few days ago

trixmoto · Post by **trixmoto** » Mon Jun 01, 2009 12:01 pm

My update service is working, but I'm only updating my installation packages to point to it as I go along, so scripts released in the past few months will work.

Agouti · Post by **Agouti** » Tue Jun 02, 2009 9:38 am

I've owned MM a long time now, and I'm yet to see anything that rivals it. Thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat said, it does definitely feel like MM has stalled development wise. It's like they expect that any new functionality you might want should just be handled with a user submitted script, but that's not always practical. For instance, the (built in) auto-tag from web (amazon) has been poorly implemented for what feels like years. It still does horrid search algorithms and it's rare it finds the right album, you can't stop it searching and it has a bad habit of wiping what you type in the search box. Sometimes it seems determined to mix the songs up, even when the track #'s are all right.

Anyway, that's not for this thread but the idea of a well developed open source media player excites me - and songbird looks full of growth and vigor, I'll be keeping my eye on it but it'll take some pretty nifty stuff (like a clever autodj) to make me change. Hell, with more free time coming up I might even get my hands dirty and contribute.

Just installed SongBird, won't be switching anytime soon. I miss the filter tree and I can't see how to make autoplaylists. I *like* the fact that MM has buttons everywhere and tries to do everything!

That said, if MM4 had add-ons instead of just scripts, would be nice.

trixmoto · Post by **trixmoto** » Wed Jun 03, 2009 3:25 am

MM3.0 had a lot of new features! MM3.1 has been all about fixing bugs, making the software more stable and improving some of the scripting framework. Yes there are a number of things that the developers would rather leave to the scripters, but these tend to be more specific things that are not core to the functionality of the program. I would never use a media manager without scripting now, that is an essential for me!

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Fri Jun 19, 2009 4:01 pm

rovingcowboy wrote:uh? you mean there is trouble for people using mediamonkey? gee! never thought it was that hard?

first thing i do with all the new programs is look for the options cause they have to have some.
if they don't want any in there then the mostly put an link to their web site on the options tab's

but doing right clicking and looking for the options is just normal thing for me, i don't consider myself a power user
but if looking for options is what that is called then i guess i am.

Now that is what I call a positive contribution to the thread.

hannah · Post by **hannah** » Tue Jun 30, 2009 12:20 am

Hi,
I'm not a big poster here, but I just wanted to put in my input to this discussion.

coming from someone who is not extremely tech savvy and not into the scripting or skinning aspect at all of mm I think the biggest problem for media monkey is the way in which scripts/skins are added.

it took me forever before I even realized that new features could be added to mm and while I can pretty much navigate it now (I have been using for about a year now) there are still some scripts that don't install automatically and I always have to remember how to add them.

the fact that you have to search forums to find a particular script is ridiculous. it is hard to figure out if a certain script even exists sometimes for what you're trying to do. it's hard to know when a certain script has been updated unless your kind of obsessed with your music. the majority of users aren't going to be checking the forums every week for new script and skin updates. It would be nice if scripts automatically updated when there was a new version whenever mm started like in firefox.

besides a slick ui the one thing that songbird REALLY has going for it is that installing and finding apps is a breeze. it's easy to see exactly what the app does, what it looks like, what the rating is by users and how many downloads it has. once the app is downloaded its easy to customize.

mm really needs to consider creating some kind of standard app catalog similar to this. that being said, I'm not a developer myself, I don't know everything that goes into scripting and skinning, but I do know that if can be easier than what it is currently at and if that were to happen we would A. open up the platform to more users (which means more scripts/skins) B. it would most likely results in more intuitive and integrated scripts

I don't think I could ever switch to another player simply because I've gotten so used to the customization and tagging that mm offers, it can't be beat, but it is such a pain trying to get it to do what I want sometimes. this is the one reason I don't even try to recommend it to friends unless I KNOW that they are an audiophile or extremely computer literate AND care enough about their music collection to actually do all the work to get mm working the way it should out of the box

Rayi23 · Post by **Rayi23** » Thu Jul 02, 2009 7:36 pm

So far I like Songbird; it does have a very clean appearance; although it's lack of a built in "Now Playing" is disturbing because, I for the life of me, don't understand why iTunes does not have one. It should be fundamental to it's design. Any type of update can create havoc with these add-ons which I've seen already. I also don't like that Album view is not built in either and relies on addons. I have been using MediaMonkey since MusicMatch 7.5 became outdated but I still can't get use to the name. It's such a juvenile name. I would give it up just for a different name but so far you just can't beat MediaMoneky with what's out there. I actually hate to admit how much i dislike the name.

nohitter151 · Post by **nohitter151** » Thu Jul 02, 2009 8:02 pm

Rayi23 wrote:It's such a juvenile name. I would give it up just for a different name but so far you just can't beat MediaMoneky with what's out there. I actually hate to admit how much i dislike the name.

http://www.enotes.com/shakespeare-quote ... -call-rose

nynaevelan · Post by **nynaevelan** » Thu Jul 02, 2009 8:28 pm

nohitter151 wrote: http://www.enotes.com/shakespeare-quote ... -call-rose

I've tried Songbird and I have to say the only thing I like better than what MM offers is the ease of installing add-ins but even that bothers me because not only do you lose some when you update Songbird but it does not give the user the option to download the add-ins, which I do not like because there are some that I prefer to have older versions installed and I have an obsession to backup everything.

Kevingarywilkes · Post by **Kevingarywilkes** » Tue Jul 07, 2009 2:57 pm

[*] Songbird actually looks like it was made after 2003 (This is why everything Apple sells like crazy)
[*] It's clean look with small borders/sliders and buttons that let the music collection take up more screen space

Have you seen this skin:
http://www.mediamonkey.com/wiki/index.p ... dM's_Skins

Right now, it can't get better than this.

Sebastian78 · Post by **Sebastian78** » Tue Jul 07, 2009 3:24 pm

Without competition, we would all stagnate and become poor copies of our previous selves.... In that respect, Songbid is making MM better and MM makes Songbird better. Hurray!

Kevingarywilkes wrote:[*] Songbird actually looks like it was made after 2003 (This is why everything Apple sells like crazy)
[*] It's clean look with small borders/sliders and buttons that let the music collection take up more screen space

Have you seen this skin:
http://www.mediamonkey.com/wiki/index.p ... dM's_Skins

Right now, it can't get better than this.

Haven't seen this before, making a point of the difficulty of finding skins and scripts, just like previous posters have noted. Now let's not get into installing them

I'll check this one out, it looks VERY promising.

kevingarywilkes · Post by **kevingarywilkes** » Tue Jul 07, 2009 4:00 pm

It is a perfect port of the (stylish) Songbird skin, and I am currently using it, but Media Monkey will only gain credibility and popularity by developing software that is technically and cosmetically superior - on its own terms. It is my experience with the average user that simplicity and elegance often trump what is *under the hood* (see everything Apple). If Media Monkey were to implement a UI as sleek as iTunes (and add iPod Touch 3.0 firmware support), it would certainly gain favor amongst many users. Media Monkey is practically perfect *under the hood* and offers every feature a music fan could ask for; now we just need an aesthetically pleasing interface to match!

Sebastian78 · Post by **Sebastian78** » Thu Jul 09, 2009 3:46 am

kevingarywilkes wrote:It is a perfect port of the (stylish) Songbird skin, and I am currently using it, but Media Monkey will only gain credibility and popularity by developing software that is technically and cosmetically superior - on its own terms. It is my experience with the average user that simplicity and elegance often trump what is *under the hood* (see everything Apple). If Media Monkey were to implement a UI as sleek as iTunes (and add iPod Touch 3.0 firmware support), it would certainly gain favor amongst many users. Media Monkey is practically perfect *under the hood* and offers every feature a music fan could ask for; now we just need an aesthetically pleasing interface to match!

How many ways can you really play an mp3? It's difficult to come up with new "innovating" ways, both for the iTunes/MM/WMP/etc. (even iPod, it's basically the same now as the first gen). When everything works and there are no bugs, it's how it appears to work/play that differentiate the different players.

MM is the best, it rocks, it has TONS of functionallity, it can fly, it can order pizza. Now it just needs a Total Makeover in the style department. It needs to be different than iTunes/WMP/Songbird and herein lies the difficulty. How to be innovative?

How things look and feel has just as much to say about a product (perhaps more?) then HOW it actually works.

Why Songbird will succeed where MM fails

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