Coding for Songbird 0.6 has begun. Here’s an overview of what we’re working on:
- We’ve already started working on increasing speed and response times for large libraries. We’ve heard this request loud and clear and we’ve made it a priority to improve things in 0.6.
- The MTP add-on for Windows will be extended to include sync functionality so you can more easily manage media on your portable devices.
- The iPod add-on will be migrated to our new device API. This will fix a bunch of bugs and allow us to maintain all of our device support in a single code base. It will also give us an opportunity to test the extensibility of the 0.5 device API and allow iPod support to benefit from features and UI improvements we roll into MTP support (and vice versa).
- Songbird will be adding the ability to write metadata changes back to your media files. This will include a new UI and will be our first time managing your data. We’re planning on adding Album artwork write back in a future release.
We’ll also be:
- Adding contextual menus and find functionality in the browser component of Songbird based on your requests.
- Cleaning up the View menu (so that switching Feathers, Views, and Display Panes is clearer).
- Continuing work on UI bugs to polish and improve the overall user experience.
While the goal is to land our MTP and iPod add-ons with the 0.6 release it is worth noting that due to the complexities and dependencies in these projects we might end up releasing them shortly after 0.6 launches. Everything else is scheduled to go out with the release. The current plan is to ship 0.6 final in the late May/early June timeframe. Until then, please continue to send us your feedback and file bugs as you find them.
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52 Comments
SubscribeMTP support for linux anysoon ?
@Jigar Shah
While MTP support on Linux is definitely on our ToDo list that work hasn’t been started, or even scheduled, yet. So, unfortunately that means it’s not coming anytime too soon. Don’t hesitate to file a feature request bug if you’d like to see it happen! All the ‘birders take user feedback very seriously.
Hi,
Do you planned to make a 0.5.5 release ?
can’t wait
@kokola
Me too! The team has some big improvements in store. While there will not be a 0.5.5 we will be posting a few blessed nightlies along the way to 0.6 – with one landing, possibly, as early as this week. Keep an eye on the blog for updates.
‘cleaning up the view menu’ sounds great, there are a lot of things there that seem a little messy. Would also like to see similar thing done for the add on manager in options. Mine is a huge list, would like to see something like tabs separating feathers / add ons / disabled add ons / broken add ons
Songbird has fantastic potential, but it is definitely far too slow with handling a decently sized library. I’m very pleased to see this is getting attention!
I’d also love to see support for multiple libraries, for instance on a laptop, one library when an external hard drive is plugged in, and another (much smaller) library for when you’re on the go, reading from the internal.
@cellarmation
Yeah, we’re definitely doing some much needed house cleaning on the menus. The addons project is another item on our ToDo list, we agree that it needs help. Unfortunately, at the moment it’s not a priority that we’re working on but we appreciate you calling it out and validating our concerns. We gotta make time to put in some cycles there, thanks for the feedback!
@Conor
Glad to hear you’re happy that we’re spending cycles on library performance issues, we’ve been making a lot of progress on that front. Also, thanks for the feature suggestions. Multiple libraries are another project we’ve talked about. While we’re not currently working on it it is on our ToDo list. Thanks for your vote, we’ve noted it.
How about using standard keyboard shortcuts? Like CMD + I for editing the file metadata, etc.
Great work guys. That’s about the only suggestion I have!
Hi guys! I’m a user and a great fan of Songbird from Argentina and I was wondering if you will ever add some CD Playback support into Songbird, cause i’d really like to have that feature. Keep on working! Best Wishes!
Lucas
@Tommy
We know we have to revamp the keyboard shortcuts. I’ve made a note of rethinking what key we use for the Metadata Editor. Currently, it’s Cmd + E on the Mac…We’ve gotta decide if that’s still logical. Note: while Cmd + I makes sense for Apple it’s bringing up what they refer to within iTunes, and most of the rest of OS X, as “Get Info”. Whereas for us we’re building a cross-platform application that’s bringing up what we’re likely to be referring to as our Metadata Editor, Cmd + E seems to makes a bit more sense for us. We’re open to this one though, curious what you and others think, please let us know your thoughts! Thanks for the feedback.
@Lucas
First, great question and thanks for your feedback. CD Playback, as well as rip and burn, is one of our most requested set of features. While it’s not on our plate right now it’s absolutely on our ToDo list. The long term goal is to add this functionality but the short answer is that it’s not looking like we’ll be able to get to it in the next several releases.
As well as the CD functions, it’d also be nice to have Songbird re-encode music for device syncing. At the moment I use Songbird to sync and use CDeX to process all of the m4a files it’s copied over into ogg, it works rather well but eliminating the extra step would make things a little easier lol
Other than that, Awesome work, I love it so far =)
hi
I downloaded today Songbird
it’s great, and I have two requests. Forutnatelly one of them is planned for 0.6 version. about my other one :
Would it be possible to add a “send to” menu (for exemple to mp63 players)?
Dodo
@Mince
We definitely intend to support transcoding, it’s one of our most requested features. While it’s likely to be a few more releases before we get to tackle it we definitely intend to support it! Thanks for your vote for this feature, we’ve noted it. And, the team appreciates your kind words.
@Dodo
If I understand your request correctly there’s some good news to share, our plan is to add a “Send to Device” contextual menu in 0.6 (similar to the contextual menus we have for “Send to Playlist”/etc). We appreciate your feedback, it means a lot to us when we hear from our users!
hello
I would have some news about the iphone support ? is it on the good way or it will be really difficult ?
yes, that’s exactly that (my bad, i typoed “mp3″)
http://tinyurl.com/5o6ayz please continue!
also, if you click on any empty area of the player, click and move without releasing the click, the window will restore. was this reported (i’m under windows xp)
songbird’s so cool
is there a page to report bugs and/or submit suggestions? to do that in a blog comment is not the best way…
another suggestion : 1. scroll down your library 2.open a new tab 3. return to the library, the list is at the top, position is lost. that’s quite annoying for me :/
Downloaded Songbird and think it’s excellent, the only improvements I can think of for it is possibly having a size of the library/playlist somewhere, for example down the bottom near where it says number of items in the playlist. That way I could see how big each one is for putting on ipods etc.
I’m glad meta data will finally be written back to the files, currently when I use other media players (I know, sorry) or move files between computers I loose all the ratings, source url’s etc. Makes life more painful than need be, so will be a welcome update.
Just a shame you’re changing the format of the library too, so for this update at least, I’ll loose it all again!
I’ve been using it for 3 days now and all i can say is I LOVE IT !!! anyways, just want it to say thank you for this really cool app and good luck with the project!!!
i would also like to see mtp support for linux
uhmmm
is there support to sync with the zune?
ditto to what “anonymous” said; I would also like to see MTP device support for linux.
@kokola
To support the iPhone properly, ie not require a jailbroken phone running an ssh server, it’s quite a bit of work. We’re hoping the folks working hard on libgpod will tackle it and many of us will benefit.
@Dodo
You can share your bugs and/or suggestions here: http://bugzilla.songbirdnest.com/enter_bug.cgi?product=Songbird Thanks for your feedback!
@Makkak Dam00n
Great suggestion, we’ve taken note. I’ll look into whether we can add that in the not too distant future. Thanks for calling it out!
@Iain
Glad to hear you’re excited about our metadata support, we’re all looking very forward to the feature. And, our deepest apologies that we’re not doing a migration step this release, we appreciate your understanding!
@Pikul
Awesome! I’ll definitely pass this onto the team, don’t hesitate to let us know if you have feedback/suggestions.
@anonymous and @forest
Thanks for your vote for MTP support on Linux. As I’ve mentioned, it’s not currently something we’re working on. That said user feedback helps us prioritize. Both of your requests have been noted and we’ll definitely take your feedback into consideration as we re-evaluate the plan for when we start working on it.
@edmund
Unfortunately, you can thank our friends in Redmond for coming up with the MTP standard and then deviating from it to create the proprietary MTPZ spec for Zunes. :sigh: Last I checked we didn’t support the Zune, if this has changed I’ll followup tomorrow when I see the team.
thanks raffel,
and if i may had a jailbroken phone running an ssh server, could you give me a url to explain me the process ?
@kokola
I’ll speak with the folks who I know have accomplished this and see if I can get them to document it on our wiki. You might have to hang tight for a little while as they are quite busy.
Hey there I’d love to see some way of being able to sync or transfer playcounts from iTunes and such programs like that? Any chance of that in the near future? Great program, I love it
Hi,
Can you host the Solaris support on the download page please.
See:
http://opensolaris.org/os/project/nightingale/
Regards,
Edward.
@Jamboree
Great idea, thanks for the suggestion. This is something we’ve talked about and have some ideas for how we could implement down the road. While we’re not working on it right now, we’ve noted your request for the functionality and will review our plan!
@EdwardOCallaghan
Very cool news! Can you ping us at songbird [ a t ] songbirdnest [ d o t ] com so we can coordinate this with you further?
Once again, it would really be fantastic to add to the Mac version a USB Mass Storage plugin, just like SyncTunes, to make it possible to sync our MP3 players or smartphones with Songbird.
Thanks for the great work !
Is there any move on the Tag writing to file in 0.6 planned?
@Cedric
Thanks for the suggestion, that would be a useful plugin. I’ll talk with the team and explore whether it’s possible to bump this up in our queue.
@Roger
I appreciate you taking the time to make this request and have noted your vote for writing Tags to file. It’s not currently slated to happen during this release but I’ll discuss your request with the team and explore opportunities to implement this further!
@EdwardOCallaghan: Yup, we’re working with Alfred to host the OpenSolaris binaries on songbirdnest.com. Stay tuned – should be this week hopefully..
Hi, Would it be possible, either here or in the forums, to see a list of the meta data you hope to be persisting to file in 0.6? Would allow some user feedback early on…
Hi. Please improve the iPod support. 0.5 don’t recognizes my Shuffle.
And, as Songbird has web browsing, please add the Search feature.
And the podcast i subscribed, it don’t downloads! %-P
Congratulations, you are doing a very nice work.
MacBook Pro – MacOS 10.4.11 – Madrid, Spain
@Guillermo: Yup, part of 0.6 is updating the iPod add-on to the new Device API that arrived in 0.5. Either when 0.6 launches (or very shortly thereafter) you should see iPod support back and running in all its glory.
@Iain
Sometime in the next few weeks we’ll be posting a pre-release, blessed nightly containing the metadata feature. When we release it for developers to start banging on things will be a bit more locked down than they are today and initial testing on our end will have begun. We’ll definitely announce what formats are supported when we release the nightly. We’re looking very forward to user feedback on this feature and appreciate your patience with us for a short while longer as we continue to plan and implement everything!
@Guillermo
Also, we’ve added Find in the webpage functionality in the latest nightlies!
What a great program. One thing that would be nice eventually (that even the latest itunes has a very difficult time with) is dealing with multiple soundcards. For those of us who have a laptop with a more dedicated soundcard at home, but who use the built-in card while away from home, a program that would detect attached cards and be able to switch would be great and would ensure I at least would leave other options behind for good. I don’t know how easy this is or how many of us would benefit, but I at least would look forward to it.
This looks like it’s shaping up to be an excellent media player – hopefully it will become the end-all solution. Right now, I’m using iTunes to organize my library when I add new files, zune to sync it with my zune, and winamp for everyday playback. Needless to say, this is a giant pain. If there is no zune support planned, it would be really nice if songbird could organize your media files (a la iTunes). Also, true last.fm integration would be a good addition. The add-on doesn’t work well for me.
@Mike Loq
Thanks for the feature suggestion. While multiple soundcard support is not something we’re currently planning to work on I will bring it up with the team and explore it a bit further!
@Matt
When you say organize your media files a la iTunes I presume you mean media management (such as consolidating your library to one location, copying files, etc)? If so, this is something we definitely intend to support. There’s no good sense of when this will land, as no work has started on it, but we agree it’s a very desirable feature. I’ve noted your vote!
Regarding the last.fm add-on I’d love to hear more about the issues you’re having with it. Would you be willing to email me with more details over at: support [ a t ] songbirdnest.com? Thanks!
I feel that this has to be brought up since it was asked for Mac… USB Mass Storage is something we linux users have been begging for for quite some time. And now there’s MTP support for Windows before a rudimentary Mass Storage Device for Mac or Linux.
I love songbird and it’d be really great if I didn’t have to use a separate piece of software just to transfer songs to my mp3 player. Anything, even an ETA or something would be great; it almost feels like our requests aren’t even being acknowledged that they are being received.
I think albumapplet ist a must have for 0.6! It’s my main reason for songbird, and since 0.5 it doesn’t work anymore…
@Alex
First, I’m sorry to hear that you don’t feel like we’re communicating clearly enough. I’ll personally do my best to help Songbird take additional steps to be more transparent. One step towards this direction will be to publicly post our roadmap so that everyone can see what our current best thinking is around scheduled upcoming work. I expect to have this online sometime in the next 3 weeks, if not sooner, so that the community has time to provide us with feedback on upcoming releases (and greater insight into where we are heading.) We’re constantly looking into ways to ensure our users have a direct line into our process and can help us make Songbird better!
With regards to an ETA to your feature request, at this point USB Mass Storage support on Linux is not something we’re currently committed to implementing in the next few releases. That said, it’s a great idea and it’s something we intend to do sometime down the road. This feature is on a list of community requests which we consistently review and try to find ways to prioritize onto our roadmap of scheduled upcoming work. In other words, our roadmap isn’t 100% locked down and we move things around. External feedback is a big part of what helps us make decisions for the project (in particular what to work on and where to focus.)
When publishing our roadmap, I’ll make sure feature requests that aren’t currently scheduled to be worked on are captured publicly so that folks like yourself can comment on them. The reality is anyone who emails us, comments on blog posts, chats in our forums, etc has the ear of the team. Since I’m the Product Manager at Songbird you’re literally talking to the person who helps set the final priorities of what we’re working on. We’re really listening and doing our best to respond. And, honestly we love what we work on, care about what our users ask for and want users of SB to love it too!
It’s worth noting we’re a small team with limited resources trying our hardest to deliver the features we think users want. We’re consistently trying to balance prioritizing implementing new functionality with other work such as bugs that are discovered, constant improvements/updates to the platform, etc. Unfortunately, it is not possible to satisfy every feature requests in the order they are received. We’ll continue to improve on how we message what we’re working on and make sure users like you have a sense of where things stand. If this doesn’t address your concerns please feel free to contact me at support [ a t ] songbirdnest.com. And, most of all, thanks for taking the time to air your opinions, we benefit tremendously from hearing them!
@Nils
We’d love to see it working again too! As this is a request for a 3rd party add-on I’d strongly encourage you to contact the original author directly. We’re also reaching out to him to explore how we might be able to help.
@Alex
Thanks for the comment. We hear you re UMS on Linux. Here’s the bug to track: http://bugzilla.songbirdnest.com/show_bug.cgi?id=4039
FYI, look for changes coming to the ‘nest so that you can track our priorities and progress, get real support from the whole team and identify opportunities for you contribute to Songbird. I’ll let Daniel detail in a blog post.
Rob
I’m using 0.6pre and its really fast and much more stable! For some reason I overlooked the fact that iPod support is for the time being missing…
Please hurry my favorite people! 
Anyone in Fort Worth want to grab a beer sometime?
I’m using 0.6pre and its really fast and much more stable! For some reason I overlooked the fact that iPod support is for the time being missing…
Please hurry my favorite people! 
Anyone in Fort Worth want to grab a beer sometime?
I wish there would be horizontal expansion in the library so I could have nicer columns…And a smart-playlist-like playlist type would be greatly appreciated!
Songbird is already a great player, and it’s exciting to see all of the things that are in the works — whether they’re being implemented at the moment or planned for some future release. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is already in the plans, but I’d really like to see mp3gain-type normalization built into Songbird.
Gr8 job guys. I installed this piece of beauty and simply loved it. Am using ubuntu hardy heron. But I am facing a major problem. The cpu usage is way too high when compared to other players. Also its very sluggish with my mammoth library. You have mentioned about 0.6 release, please take care of the CPU utilization also.
cheers
Absolutely great job!!
I tried Songbird .5 a couple days ago, and am reading up as much as I can on the program and its features and bugs. I know I’m probably repeating what others have mentioned, but one bug I noticed is that when I import my iTunes library, some of the tracks are truncated. Problem is sometimes fixed when I delete and reload the library, but it’s an intermittent problem.
Otherwise….I actually like the fact that it’s similar to iTunes. I don’t necessarily endorse Apple products, but I give credit where it’s due, and I’ve found iTunes to be rock solid in what they do, particularly in the area of ID3 tags/album art. iTunes DOESN’T redo the album art/ID3 tags without your permission. In contrast, WMP11 botched up my entire library and it took me hours to fix (and it continually renames tags and art even after I told it NOT to). I don’t even open WMP11 now because I know it’ll rewrite tags randomly.
A Songbird request:
Please support the option to display album art which is embedded in the mp3 files instead of searching for it on the internet. Some of us want tracks to be associated with its original instead of subsequent release date(s), and have gone to the trouble of manually locating and embedding that information and do not want any automatic rewriting. Most album art search engines will select the most current art/ID3 data without any regards to preferences.
Songbird is an excellent player, and for a .5 release that makes it all the more impressive. Do you plan to add file conversion capabilities and an equalizer in future versions?
i’ve been using songbird on linux since 0.3 and it’s come a long way…mtp support for linux would be a great next step!!!
Looking like this is going to be a fantastic release guys. Can I also put in a vote for multi library support, as I have multiple “sources” for my music, ie;
Laptop, Work Network, Home Network.
I know this is a major pain point for so many people and is something that no other tool has an answer for – so it would be a great first for Songbird
“I’d also love to see support for multiple libraries, for instance on a laptop, one library when an external hard drive is plugged in, and another (much smaller) library for when you’re on the go, reading from the internal.”
+1! this would really be great.