This post is meant to manage, somewhat, the hype and mystery that have sprung up regarding our 0.1 release next week. Certainly, plenty of people have drawn a large number of conclusions based upon nothing but a handful of screenshots. And while I would never presume that I could change the mind of someone who already knows we suck (this is the internet we’re talking about), I think it’s important to make clear exactly what it is we are releasing.
“0.1″ != “Beta”
To the best of my ability to translate, “0.1″ means “proof of concept.”
This release is not meant to replace your current media player (or your current browser, for that matter). We’ve taken xulrunner and sqlite and vlc and glued them together with some xml, javascript, and C++. And we’re fairly proud of what we’ve achieved in little over 9 man-months of effort.
We’ve got playlists of various sorts, media library filtering, and basic playback. But the rounded corners look square and our “hidden window” still appears on the task bar. We’ve got one whole user preference, set by a checkbox in the file menu.
This release will function perfectly well as a media player, but all the little niceties like crossfading simply aren’t there. So you’d quickly go back to whatever it is you’re currently using that has all the luxuries you’ve come to expect from modern media players.
That’s fine with us. We’re not trying to steal you kind folks as market share. Not yet. We’re trying to share with you our vision and our direction. Because we are of course going to be an open source project (as we keep saying, while people keep angrily demanding it of us), it’s in our best interests to share with the world as early as possible. How does Thursday sound?
We want to blur the line between media player and web browser. To make it as easy to make a player-aware web store or service as it is to make a normal webpage. To level the playing field for everybody who might ever want to compete at any level against the proprietary iTunes juggernaut.
That being said, this release only goes so far in that direction. It merely points the way.
Right now you can treat web pages as playlists and subscribe to any known playlist type as if it were a “podcast.” But we haven’t even written the code to parse RSS so we can’t do “real” podcasting.
The absurdly fantastic thing about Songbird, however, is that I know some bright hacker could find our “IPlaylistReader.idl” file and the js xpcom implementation that parses HTML as a playlist and publish an extension to enable RSS within 24 hours of our release. That’s a phenomenon that deserves our utmost respect and support.
Eventually, we’re going to have our own formal API for integrating “services” into Songbird. These will be something on the order of “super-extensions” and will allow extension programmers to more easily integrate into the media player.
But right now, other than playlists, the happy icons in the left hand tree in the screenshots are hardcoded in a C++ file. It’s “representative of what a user might have installed into their service tree.” It’s not done yet. Because first we have to build a media player that people can extend the normal way, then we can start in on the advanced integration APIs.
And, of course, even our written API’s are rather gaseous (not frozen) at the moment. We make no promises to any of you intrepid skinners or extensions programmers out there other than that we are, again, just trying to give you a good idea of where we’re going.
If you’re at all the hackish type, however, we do want to encourage you to go find all the idl files in our source. There’s plenty there to pour through. If you don’t see the API you’ll need to implement that amazing feature you’ve always had in the back of your head, tell us. It’s my team’s job to empower you, and we’re burning the candle at a hundred ends to eventually do so.
We’re exhausted. And at the same time very excited.
Hopefully, once you have our first release in your hands, you’ll be excited too. Not for what it is, but for what it will become.
mig
28 Comments
SubscribeI think it’s sweet and I can’t wait to see the final product.
But I am still excited to see what you guys have cooked up.
That was well written. I was beginning to think a lot of people were going crazy over a few screenshots. I guess I have also been privately guilty about this. I doubt this post will settle everyone down but at least you tried. Of course, you have definitely built up your audience, now don’t screw up…:)…
All the best
whoa I am waiting too but would really like a linux version too. Linux is missing a decent madia player and you can reach an audience that itunes does not have.
not months away
(I hope)
mig
Im actually excited about this, the media player world needs this.And its nice to see the old school winamp guys working with this as well.
I never dissed your product lol, im really excited about it. It looks amazing! Good Luck with 0.1!
Nicely put. Looking forward to a better future.
G.
Hey,… it looks a lot like iTunes.
Can’t you just create something original?
hmmm…interesting comment. considering iTunes isn’t really that original itself.
Awesome News! I’ll keep checking back!
Well, this has an integrated Browser, based on the Gecko-Eingine. First, find another Media-Player which has, for me this is original. Second: Find a better layout for a Media-Player like this.
I love the concept and i want to share the vision. Lets go for a Beta 0.1.
Maybe, but iTunes isn’t a photocopy of nothing.
I could care less if it looks likes itunes. That is a proven interface. Firefox looks like IE, looks like opera, looks like avant browser.
If it doesn’t take 30 megs of ram to run, or have 5 processes that run even after it closes, I call it a victory.
I can’t wait for this.
i’m a young “hacker” type reaaly just experimenting with my own code atm. I have some interesting ideas for songbird as a player.. would learning how to code FF extensions be the best way to prepare?
How about an original comment? I mean, we’re all impressed with your observation but it’s like post #50 on the ‘topic’
A now playing icon in the sidebar that automatically places the currently playing album or selected songs. This would allow the user to keep browsing while listening to an album uninterrupted, a huge annoyance of iTunes that I have.
My apologies. It is supposed to read: How about a now playing icon…
Hit XULPlanet for tutorials and references about XUL, XBL, XPCOM, and such
er, IE looks like Netscape, and Firefox is from Netscape (Mozilla). IE was never original.
I’m confused by the request.
If you start playing in a playlist and then start browsing, the media player will just play that playlist all the way through.
What is the problem you’re asking us to solve?
Nice try, but you’ve missed the point. iTunes isn’t the juggernaut: the iPod is the juggernaut.
Unless you’re able to load the iPod, and not just with songs you rip yourself, it’s game over before you even start.
There have been other MP3 apps, and they were OK for what they did. Yours might be better than WinAMP grafted onto a browser, but so what? I don’t care if it plays nice with Windows Media or a Zen. I also don’t care if it supports Ogg vorbis, because all of these things are also-rans.
Make it work with the iPod (including video now), and get rid of the URL field, and you might be onto something, but I doubt it.
You might be able to sucker a VC out of some funding, but the chances of this ever being a viable business are just about nil.
-jcr
it would be nice if you’d compensate the the lacks of the itunes interface. i didn’t really understand why apple had to move the volume bar next to the controls, if you ask me it’s a waste of space. i’d rather prefer a wider “display” and keep the volume bar below the play controls. alright, you might say that people can do their own guis/skins, but consider my opinion for your default skin maybe.
It would be cool if you could send instant messages to the people whose libraries you can browse. Internet cafes would be forever changed.
Look here: http://pag.csail.mit.edu/~adonovan/hacks/ipod.html
It’s possible. Even if this is released without iPod support, I give about a month after a formal release before iPods are supported. As well as nomads and most othe mp3 players.
Actually, it is the wholly proprietary combination of iPod, iTunes, and iTMS that is the beast needing slaying.
We’ll do our best to support as much of that as we can, but they’re closing their doors rapidly. All new tracks as of some months ago that download from iTMS will _only_ play through iTunes (where they would previously play through Quicktime and hence through the QT NPAPI Plugin, such that we would be able to play them in Songbird).
In the end, we hope to be the focal point of “everybody else except apple,” and if we can achieve that, I think the Open will naturally win over the Proprietary.
And anyone who makes judgements in ignorance about our business model is obviously greatly lacking in imagination.
do you get out much? I have over 10,000 songs and add content every day. Most of my frinds have thousands of songs. None of us use Itunes. Most of the people that use Itunes are newbes or Apple die hards. I bet less than 5% of the music on hard drive is in Itunes. I like skipping these monsters.
One of the problems I noticed in contract-programming (I’ll debate whether any real consulting was going on) was the difficulty differentiating between us and our competitors. We all had programmers. They all knew the same languages. Everyone had experience, was using some agile methodology, blah blah blah.
Why do customers want to work with us? What are their options, and why would they pick us over them? If you know what that is then figuring out when you’re done is easier than divining your customer’s opinion of completness.
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dvd download