People are talking, talking ’bout people
I hear them whisper, you won’t believe it
— Bonnie Raitt

To follow up on Rob’s post from a few days ago, 0.3 has been out crossing the tubes of the Internet. As people noted, 0.3 is quite a huge step up from 0.2.5. Check this Bugzilla report out.

1218 bugs fixed in 0.3

And those are just bugs… nevermind the cool features like the Webpage API and Add-on API.

Certainly some of the feedback is the expected “<Yawn> another iTunes™ clone” – but those people are missing the point. Disruptive features like the Webpage API mean anyone can tap into Songbird’s APIs, and mash them up with all the other open Web 2.0 APIs (Last.fm, Flickr, YouTube, OpenSocial, etc.) to create an entirely more interactive and asynchronous Media Web experience. It’s awesome to see people start to get it:

• Brian @ Agile Ajax totally gets it.
• Mark @ Techcrunch gets it, and got Rob on for an interview.
• Kyle gets it
• Falko not only gets it, he’s written up a guide helping other Ubuntu users to (literally) get it
• 890+ people on Digg collectively get it.

Anyway, I won’t bore you with more press; but suffice it to say, Songbird is entirely more than just an iTunes™ clone. And if you’re looking for places to have implemented the Webpage API already – open up Songbird and check out The Hype Machine which have implemented our Webpage API to easily pull in music content, artist info, and blog entries… or go check out Insound, my favourite indie music store that used our Webpage API to implement a completely seamless music purchasing experience allowing for media to be purchased and delivered straight into your library.

So yeah, people are talking. And more and more people will talk as websites and add-ons are developed to make use of Songbird’s unique APIs.