Songbird, the new competitor to MM?

Sebastian78 · Post by **Sebastian78** » Fri Oct 20, 2006 6:46 am

Songbird is 0.2 now...

ReverendEntity · Post by **ReverendEntity** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 2:56 pm

It's interesting, but it's very CPU intensive. I have a 1.53GHz AMD Athlon and Songbird bogged down to the point I had to Task Manager kill it twice.

Also, what's with the library interface? I didn't like that interface in WinAMP either. MediaMonkey's interface is practically unmatched in that regard: I can instantly access tracks either by the folder they're in or by genre. Sometimes you just want to hear specific genres of songs, sometimes you want to hear the tracks you just acquired.

Blake · Post by **Blake** » Thu Oct 26, 2006 6:33 am

It looks nice but a bit too much like iTunes

Post by **Lowlander** » Thu Oct 26, 2006 9:27 am

iTunes has become somewhat of a defacto standard for digital music due to it's bundling with the iPod (defacto digital music device).

Of course it's funny knowing that the Apple tries it's best to keep the 2 together while not allowing others access in order to give customers more freedom (this is why they started the iTunes store). But I guess will need to turn back to Microsoft and bash them for bundling Freecell with Windows.

Products like SongBird and Amarok are interesing due to MediaMonkey's Windows only compatibility. For people in mixed or non-Windows environments they're good replacements of MediaMonkey. On Windows it depends on your needs which music manager will fit you best.

Steegy · Post by **Steegy** » Thu Oct 26, 2006 12:00 pm

But I guess will need to turn back to Microsoft and bash them for bundling Freecell with Windows.

Can anyone explain why Apple doesn't get sued? They should; they are much worse than Microsoft.

Blake · Post by **Blake** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 7:15 am

Another thing...
Songbird doesnt have enough config settings and also WHERE'S THE ALBUM ART?!!

ReverendEntity · Post by **ReverendEntity** » Tue Nov 07, 2006 4:50 pm

blakeloth1 wrote:Another thing...
Songbird doesnt have enough config settings and also WHERE'S THE ALBUM ART?!!

I'm with you on both counts. Designers of media playback software should always consider how configurable a program is in terms of making it look a certain way or disabling features you don't need. And on the second count...I think there needs to be a movement to make album art display a mandatory option in all types of major media software. That's why I got rid of foobar2000 after messing around with it a while...it was killing the album art in my tags when I made edits to them.

PLANETABLOG · Post by **PLANETABLOG** » Wed Nov 08, 2006 4:58 pm

I tried this programs with 20,000 tracks, and I didn't enjoy the process. They don't have album art, not the way MM has it.

Maybe in the future. I have tried many programs but none like MM, so far..

TxAggieMichael · Post by **TxAggieMichael** » Sun Jan 21, 2007 6:26 pm

Guys, you've got to realize just how early it still is for SongBird. It's got a long way to come, but who knows just how amazing it may be when it's completed.

Being built on Gecko alone gives it many possibilities. I really think SB can overtake MM in the future with it's cross-platform capability and extension management. I'd also be willing to bet that album art and file-browsing are added in by the time it reaches 1.0.

As much as I love MM right now, I feel I may be migrating towards SB when it launches it's first full release. If we're really lucky, maybe the two will battle it out, making two incredible media players.

DaledeSilva · Post by **DaledeSilva** » Mon Jan 22, 2007 2:53 am

I'd also be willing to bet that album art and file-browsing are added in by the time it reaches 1.0.

I've thought this kind of thing sooo many times before about programs... only to be dissapointed... usually.. what I think is still going to recieve large modifications get's slight modifications..

let's not forget when Steve Jobs came out and announced a new iTunes.. he was pleased as punch that it had "minor" cosmetic changes and that's about the only change I remember...

Okay.. let's look at how well designed songbird looks to be, (don't forget that this is my opinion and I'm only commenting on what "I" can see and know);

to see how well it's designed, I'll use iTunes as an example... one of the stupidest flaws in iTunes as that PAUSE and STOP are the same button... if you start a song playing in a playlist.. while you're still in the playlist, you can pause the song using that button.... If, however, you move to a different playlist, pause turns into stop and you no longer have ANY access to pause unless you GO BACK to the playling playlist...

Pause should be one of the most accessible buttons in a player.... if you quickly need to stop the music (your phone rings, etc.) you should not have to nagivate back to the playlist that's playing in order to do so without losing your spot in the song.

navigating back also means you lose your spot in whatever else you were doing.

This is pretty bad design.. especially when they have plenty of space for two seperate buttons.
(note: even the scripting command to pause the player is the same as stop)

anyway.. my point is... while I haven't looked at the scripting side of songbird.... it's visual design not only copies itunes' "pretty" features, but it also copies this stupid flaw... which cause me to doubt how much thought has actually gone into each aspect.

rant over

Dale.

TxAggieMichael · Post by **TxAggieMichael** » Wed Jan 24, 2007 12:46 am

Ehm Ehmmmm...

I actually hated that in iTunes also, before I found MM. But sorry to say, this is NOT the case in SB. If your speaking of the same annoyance that I found in iTunes, in which when you migrate away from the currently playing playlist, the pause button turns into a stop button, SB does not do that. It will pause and let you resume regardless...

DaledeSilva · Post by **DaledeSilva** » Wed Jan 24, 2007 7:49 am

you know.. I actually thought of installing songbird and testing that before I ranted.... but then I thought... "nah.. I'm sure this was the case last time I installed it"

oh well.. guess I have egg on my face.

I take that back about the poor thought in design... it's an improvment... though, I still find it odd that they simply copied the itunes appearance.. I think that in itself says a similar thing.

Dale.

Mthrsuperior · Post by **Mthrsuperior** » Wed Jan 24, 2007 12:57 pm

Songbird is useless for me.

Besides being bloated with thinly disguised advertising and the absence of many features MM has that I find indespensible, it's the worst memory pig I've ever seen.
Hopefully this will be tweaked out but right now it takes over 15 minutes to load (vs. 15 seconds for MM) and uses almost 300 Megs of RAM.

and never mind the CPU cycles......

DaledeSilva · Post by **DaledeSilva** » Wed Jan 24, 2007 9:38 pm

okay.. here's a question..

I'm considering installing songbird as well because I like the way it finds mp3's on any webpage and lets you play them like local files...

my question..
if I direct songbird to my music library.. do I have to worry about it changing any of the files or will it only READ them?

Dale.

DaledeSilva · Post by **DaledeSilva** » Wed Jan 24, 2007 10:29 pm

okay.. I installed songbird to give it a bit of a go...

there's no "now playing" or "on the go" playlist! - just like itunes

Songbird, the new competitor to MM?

hh

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