Download Songbird 0.6 (release notes)
The march towards our first public beta has begun! We’ve been sifting through comments from the community and using user feedback as one of our guides to help make Songbird better. We hope you enjoy our latest update.
What’s New in 0.6
In this release you’ll notice significant performance improvements and many new features:
Performance Enhancements
Larger Library Support
Songbird can now easily handle libraries with 10,000+ tracks.
Smoother Scrolling
Once the metadata scanner is done, scrolling in a large library is smooth and responsive.
Faster Filtering
Filtering by genre, artist, album, and year is almost instantaneous.
Speedier Search
No long lags or locked up UI when searching your Library.
Improved Memory Management
On Windows and Linux we implemented jemalloc as our memory allocator for XULRunner and have noticed approximately 15-20% memory reduction in common user tasks.
New Features
Metadata Writing
We have a new Metadata Editor that allows you to edit your media and write the changes back to your file(s). You can read a bit more about it here.
Sync Support for MTP Devices
On Windows, MTP Devices now support Sync functionality!
Improved iPod Support
The iPod add-on has been rewritten and a number of bugs have been squashed. We have also started maintaining a new wiki page that details what iPod models we support.
The Edit Menu Works!
Copy, paste, select all, undo, redo, delete and find text to your heart’s content.
Find Text on Webpages
A number of users asked for a way to easily search for text within a webpage, now you can!
Filter/Sort by Bitrate and Sample Rate
Now you can easily sort and filter your library by sound quality.
Simpler View Menu
It’s easier to switch feathers and show/hide display panes than ever before.
SHOUTcast Radio
Easily discover and stream music using the new integrated SHOUTcast Radio directory.
For Developers
We’ve created a simple guide for updating 0.5 Feathers to be 0.6 compatible.
Early Feedback on 0.6 is Positive
“I’m happy to report that for the first time Songbird was actually able to scan and index all 140 GB worth of my music without issue” – Scott Gilbertson – WIRED
“I’ve been testing [Songbird] out at each point release, and have been blown away by the improvements in speed and stability in 0.6rc4. I have a library of almost 30,000 songs and this release of songbird handles it like a charm. The last release was unusable for a library of this size. Well Done and keep it up!” – chasingtheflow – Songbird user
What’s Next for Songbird?
We’ve already started working on the next release! Our goal is to focus on user experience optimizations and performance improvements. Here’s a preview of some of what we’re currently exploring: new look and feel for Songbird (layout and feather changes), new first-run experience, more intuitive drag & drop interactions, smart playlist functionality, watch folders, continued performance improvements, and much more. Stay tuned to the blog to keep up to date on our progress or check out one of our nightly builds and see for yourself! We’re always interested in hearing your feedback so please comment on our blog and file bugs and/or feature requests in bugzilla. Our next stop is a more public beta, hope to see you there!
24 Trackbacks
[...] (ho installato la versione dai repository), ma la “notizia” è che – finalmente! – è uscito anche Songbird 0.6, ovvero il player della Mozilla Foundation. Installarlo è semplicissimo (come per gli altri [...]
[...] información | Blog de Songbird (¡Gracias Alex por el aviso!) Enlace de descarga | Get Songbird trackback ¿Recomendarías [...]
[...] …się pojawił (: « OpenOffice.org 2.4.1… [...]
[...] grazie ai componenti aggiuntivi presenti sul web fatti dalla comunità che vi gravita intorno. In questa pagina del blog degli sviluppatori si trovano le migliorie rispetto alla precedente versione. E’ [...]
[...] (ho installato la versione dai repository), ma la “notizia” è che – finalmente! – è uscito anche Songbird 0.6, ovvero il player della Mozilla Foundation. Installarlo è semplicissimo (come per gli altri [...]
[...] — a built in browser with features for easily finding and downloading music on the Web. The recently released version 0.6, which is a stable and public beta version of their [...]
[...] und Suchmaschinen Neuentdeckungen im Netz erleichtert. Das Entwicklerteam hat nun gestern die Version 0.6 veröffentlicht. Sie wird nach wie vor als Testversion bezeichnet, bringt aber im Vergleich zu den vorherigen [...]
[...] at the release notes, it shows that the team has been placing quite a bit of work to improve its performance and [...]
[...] Per ulteriori informazioni sul software e per scaricarlo, cliccare qui. [...]
Songbird 0.6 Final Released…
Download Songbird 0.6 (release notes)The march towards our first public beta has begun! We’ve been sifting through comments from the community and using user feedback as one of our guides to help make Songbird better. We hope you enjoy our latest…
[...] Önceki gün yayımlanan Songbird 0.6, uzunca bir değişiklik listesine ve yepyeni özelliklere sahip. Bazıları şöyle: Yeni metadata düzenleyicisi, MTP aygıt (Creative, iRiver, Sansa vb) [...]
[...] | Songbird Descarga | Songbird [...]
[...] A continuación podéis ver los cambios en esta versión, que he traducido de su blog. [...]
[...] terbilang sangat istimewa, menurut saya ini kombinasi amarok dengan itunes-nya apple.. he2, dawi websitenya dikatakan bahwa telah banyak perbaikan yang dilakukan, untuk lebih lengkapnya bisa anda baca [...]
[...] any event, this seems to be a good occasion to note that the Mozilla-based open source media player Songbird officially reached version 0.6 this weekend. Songbird founder Rob Lord told this blog a while ago that he thinks his little player will [...]
[...] Já saiu o Songbird 0.6. [...]
[...] | Songbird Nest Entradas [...]
[...] A continuación podéis ver los cambios en esta versión, que he traducido de su blog. [...]
[...] Web Players ist seit einigen Tagen verfügbar. Die Liste mit den Verbesserungen findet sich hier. « Fish – Return to [...]
[...] A continuación podéis ver los cambios en esta versión, que he traducido de su blog. [...]
[...] un gestionnaire de musique libre relativement nouveau, rend disponible sa version 0.6. Le gestionnaire est bâti avec la technologie XUL de Mozilla et est donc [...]
[...] 22 Juni 2008 von Hoshi Version 0.6 des auf der Firefox Engine basierenden Web Players ist seit einigen Tagen verfügbar. Die Liste mit den Verbesserungen findet sich hier. [...]
[...] Version 0.6 des auf der Firefox Engine basierenden Web Players ist seit einigen Tagen verfügbar. Die Liste mit den Verbesserungen findet sich hier. [...]
[...] next release, named Eno presented some interresting characteristics. The intake was relatively high thru the release but [...]
140 Comments
Subscribe0.6 on Lucky 13!
lol jkoshi
YAY for 0.6 release !!!
and don’t forget to check our last extension :
http://addons.songbirdnest.com/addon/1221
@koshi
nice graphic!
@GeekShadow
I’m digging BirdQuizz, what a creative media view!
I installed SB, had imported my files, and then went to search my library.
SB froze up on me mid search and was using 140,000k mem usage.
@Daniel, how many tracks do you have in your library?
About 10,000.
Im using Windows XP.
@Daniel, did you try clearing your profile and trying again? If you continue to experience problems please file a bug and include as much detail as possible.
SB not auto-updating from rc4 to final ;-(
Whoa nice work guys (and gals)!
I’ll give it a whirl soon!
@sebastian
Not that it helps after the fact but I added an updated comment on the RC4 page today about this issue. Unfortunately, after we shipped rc4 we noticed that automatic application updates for *only* the Windows rc4 build was broken. You’ll need to download the final 0.6 build from the homepage, sorry! We’ll be pushing out updates for a range of other previous Songbird clients sometime early next week.
I’m trying to figure this out, as I am very interested in Song. But I have a library that I would consider to be BIG, but not LARGE. Your new version is touting to handle 10,000 songs, but that in my opinion would be a “beginners” sized library! When I first started to put my music library into iTunes, I had more than the iTunes program could handle, over 30,000 songs back in 2002.
You have a user mention Song handling 140 GBs of music, but then again, that’s a puny sized Library. I have more than 4 TB or 4000 GB of Apple LossLess files!
And I do not have a large library, I have just a big one.
Should I try loading my library into Song?
Sound Thinker
WOOOO!!!! Cant wait to try it out.
@Sound Thinker
We’d love for you to give Songbird a try and we’d be curious to hear how your library performs. We’re going to continue to improve the experience so feedback is greatly welcome. That said, for this release we certainly haven’t been optimizing for your kind of library – so we’re just not sure what you should expect. Consider yourself our first TB lossless tester on 0.6 (that we know of)! If you do hit any issues, we’d love to hear more feedback in the form of a bug so that our QA and engineering teams can explore it further! Thanks!!
Great stuff! You guys keep giving me good things to say about you in my blog. As promised the UI is much faster and it’s actually usable now. Man, if you guys keep adding features and squashing bugs like you have been this is going to quickly become my favorite media player.
@Hunter
That’s our goal! We’re working hard to earn the spot. Thanks for the kind words, it means a lot to the team. And, if there are things you’d like to see us focus on please let us know!
@Hunter
Thanks for the kind words of encouragement
We’re looking forward to making Songbird your everyday player 
I updated and immediately noticed how much faster SB was running! Although I did lose all the tracks I had downloaded from blogs and whatnot (not my purchased tracks) in the switch, somehow. Either way I remedied that and am LOVING the new version! I just wanted to thank you all for the hard work!
Also Jkoshi I love all of the art! I’ve been meaning to comment on how much more enjoyable this entire project is having such amazingly talented artwork with your unique style. Really. >_0
Oh and finally, anyone on the team is there an easy way to add a google search to the toolbar? That’s the one thing that’s been irking me, as I haven’t been able to find a way.
Thanks!
-FoX
Hey, Great work, Songbird is my fav music player… and with my iPod it’s great!!! I still have one question… can I rip music off of my iPod into my Songbird lib? ’cause with the .4 and .5 versions I couldn’t do so… and it really annoys me… I love everything else… and I CAN give songs to people and put them on their iPods… but I can’t give them my music!!! I have had experience with programming… and I believe it could be that SB is writing metadata that says to read the music off of the ipod… but when the ipod is not connected the metadata links are broken… I think that is your problem, but I don’t know.
@Fox I’m glad you like the new version, the team put in a couple extra intense weeks to make this release especially good, I think it really speaks for itself.
As for the artwork, it’s my pleasure! I’m glad you like it. We’ve got a couple of new t-shirt designs coming soon and we just got a bunch of new stickers, watch for the blog for more on that soon.
As for adding Google search to the toolbar, you should try the Mycroft Project on mozdev.org. They’ve got an extensive list of Google search plug-ins that can be added to the Songbird search box.
Congratulations to the SB team, the 0.6 release is fantastic !
The new home page design is SOOOO nice !
Hi, congratulations on finally releasing Songbird 6.0 =D
I just want to know, is there anyway to update from 0.5 to 0.6? I tried checking for updates, but theres nothing. Im running songbird 0.5 on ubuntu hardy.
Thanks!!
@yen: Upgrades from 0.5 to 0.6 are forthcoming, but you’re right, there isn’t an upgrade provided inside the application right now. Your best bet would be to download a complete 0.6 installer. We’ll get the 0.5 -> 0.6 upgrade out to everyone next week.
Amazing! I’ve just installed 0.6 and it runs like a dream. The speed that it loads and lets me search my music (approx. 6000 songs) puts iTunes to shame. I’m even considering trying allowing Songbird to manage my iPod (though does it support podcasts?).
Thanks everyone for the good work.
@Koshi, will the pirate t-shirt be making an appearance? I’m a proud owner of the ninja birds, but while I like ninjas, I LOVE pirates
This is far best program (one problem was memory usage now it isnt
) but I dont get it how it can be free? damn I know lot of good programs that are free but most free programs lacs nice interface or some functions that payed programs have but songbird have it all. \m/
First, great job with the DB backend ! Runs pretty fast on Fedora Core 9 with 1.9GHz AMD CPU with 43GB music collection.
I have the following feature proposals:
In the Library view there are 3 Genre/Artist/Album panes and the pane with listing of individual tracks. It could be cool if one could drag and drop e.g. an artist from the Artist pane (meaning all tracks produced by the artist) to iPod Library. Currently this does not seem possible.
Library auto-sync: as I add (or remove) more tracks to/from the directory which houses my music collection I’d like Songbird to pick up these changes automatically.
@Nick, The upcoming t-shirts include trains and brains, but no pirates, sorry.
@Vladmir, Thanks for the praise. Drag artist or album to a playlist or device is a great idea, we’ve got bug 1568 filed for the first part. Please add your comments regarding devices. As for Library auto-sync, we call that feature Watch Folders and I hear it’s coming in the next release. If your curious to see if your feature has been requested or if there’s a bug open for something you’ve experienced, try searching bugzilla.
I had an exam yesterday and didn’t have time to check for updates
26th comment? Im gettting slow. Anyway, great to see 0.6 is finally here, its great end to all the exams, next firefox 3 on tuesday!
@cellarmation, Congrats on making it to the summer time!
Great, after trying 0.6 out for a while, I feel I can use it as my default media-player. So long, iTunes! Yay!
@jkoshi The only relevant WatchFolders bug seems to be bug 3318. Actually the big feature for me is metadata editing, I consider the improved search/scrolling speed as a enabler (albeit significant) for using other/more features. The downside of upgrading to 0.6 final is however broken iPod support on Linux (bug 10011).
Just started using Sonbird. However once I’ve imported my library I have to play each song individually before Songbird appropriately names it and uses it’s meta information.
At present I just have a very long list of mp3s with titles. When I play one, it correctly formats the song name and the other details. Is there a way to get around this rather than having to play each of my 7000 songs?
Just downloaded 0.6 this morning. Scan of my 20k + items in my collection was issue free.
Playing with the library, I just love the responsiveness! Shelving WMP and winamp (hopefully for good) which always choked when scanning my collection.
Well done! Keep up the good work people!
Great Great Great!!!! Love it guys. Am trashing wmp (windows) and rhythmbox (ubuntu). Songbird is the way to go. Great response and its extremely resource friendly (though more work can be done in this field). Even the cpu utilization is good. What i would love to see is an equilizer. One more suggestion is the auto playlist. Since you guys have addressed majority of the issues in this release, i think now you can concentrate on adding new features like what i mentioned. Once gain congrats on your work. Songbird is the way to go and my audio player from today.!!!!!
This release is really better on performance than the last one. At this moment it is taking 56.800KB while I’m listening to online radio and album art manager is fetching missing covers…. nice.
Congratulations from the south.
Still, I’m more oriented to audio playing specific stuff, and SB is more about the web… so I guess I’ll always miss some of mediamonkey’s features… Unless until they’re developed
Good luck, and keep em coming!
@tomvw
We’re so excited to have you onboard, it’s only going to get better! Look forward to hearing more feedback, we’ll be working extra-hard to keep you from switching back!!
@Vladimir Kotal
We’re looking into the iPod Linux bug and hope to have it addressed shortly! Thanks for providing feedback for us in bugzilla.
@Jon Pritchard
Sounds like there was an issue during the metadata scan. If you’re up for trying to re-import your collection I think that could possibly fix things. The easiest way to do that would be to first remove everything from your library (by choosing select all and delete – you don’t have to worry about loosing anything as this doesn’t delete the actual media, just Songbird’s link to it.) Before you re-import, I’d suggest you quit the application and restart your machine. Then, you can re-import by launching the application again and doing a “scan for media” which is located in the File menu. If that doesn’t help we definitely want to look into this further. Feel free to share what happens here or via email at support [a t] songbirdnest.com. Sorry this happened and I hope it’s easily fixed! Thanks for letting us know.
@Shamus Omalley
Thanks for the kind words, we’re blushing. We really appreciate your support and you have our word that we’re gonna work hard to keep you onboard! So keep the feedback coming, it really helps make Songbird better.
@Vivek
We appreciate the kind words and great feature ideas! We’re not too many more releases out from having gStreamer as our media core. When that happens, OMG – things are gonna get really exciting. The engineers who work at Songbird are gonna have a field day implementing new audio (and then video) features – such as the ones you requested. It means a lot to us to have your support. The feedback you’re sharing is unbelievably helpful to us, so please keep it coming! And, welcome aboard, we’ll do everything we can to keep you coming back!!!
@Ignacio
We’re excited to hear Songbird is using less resources on your machine. We’re continuing to work on ways to improve performance, so there will definitely be more progress to report in the next release. That’s awesome that you’re listening to live radio and fetching the album art for the tracks via the web, super cool! Also, rest assured, we’ll be improving our audio specific features. As soon as we land gStreamer as our new media core you can expect to hear a lot more about those plans! Please let us know if there are specific features we’re missing so we can make sure it’s on our ToDo list. Feel free to share your request here, via email at support [a t] songbirdnest.com, or even better – file a feature request with us so you can track progress on bugzilla. Thanks for both the kind words and your feedback!
I have to hand it to you guys. I’ve been using Songbird since v.0.2.1, and this newest update is just amazing! Keep up the good work!
@Chris
Thanks for the feedback and for continuing to try out Songbird. I’ll make sure to pass your kind words onto the team, your comments mean a lot to us. We’ll continue to work hard to keep you interested!
can you make software to allow lowering/heightening the volume of tracks as well as editing the start and stop times?
also…
is there a way to update versions without loosing playlists made on the previous version of songbird?
OMG!!!
Reality Check!!!
I made a little mistake and let SongBird load up more than I thought! I was shooting for 916 GB and maybe around 40,000 songs to see what would happen. It got 78, 291 songs and 1.44 TB!
The first time I launched SongBird after a restart, it just stalled, or maybe I should say it gagged. Hard! I was not able to control it, so I Forced Quit and tried again. This time I just let it go and put it in the background.
Maybe about 20 minutes later I noticed the SongBird Player was available. The very first thing I saw was my iTunes Player being mimicked, but terribly scrambled up in the artist and song sections. My artists increased by well over 1000! I guess this is mainly due to the classical music and compilations.
Here is the amazing thing. Each and every time I tried playing a song of mine from the SongBird player, it started playing the song faster than iTunes could! The first time this happened my jaw dropped and my eye popped wide open! I’m impressed!!
But I am short on time right now and have a press release to get out. I’ll have to play more, but this is impressive!
Excellent work! Any chance of you building in support for Google Gears and Mozilla Mesh?
@josh
As soon as we land gStreamer as our media core (our current best thinking is that it’s about 2-3 releases out, <6 months) lots of exciting audio and video features will be getting developed. We’ll definitely be looking into supporting normalization functionality. Editing start/end times is something we don’t often get requests for so no guarantee’s on that one but I’ll definitely add it to our feature request list, it’s a great idea. Finally, regarding your question about updating without loosing playlists made on the previous version – I want to apologize. We announced back in April that we were making some significant database changes in 0.6 that would be making it incompatible with data contained in previous versions of Songbird. The blog post describes how you can attempt to migrate your data but be warned that we haven’t tried it since, so while one of our engineers provided a solution that worked once it has never been tested by our QA team (and it might no longer work). Rest assured, as we have in the past, we intend to support data migration in future version upgrades of Songbird. Unfortunately, due to the shear number of changes in 0.6 it was no small task this release. We tried to announce it as early as possible. Going forward, we’ll do our best to avoid a similar scenario. And, we’ll explore ways to allow users to export data like playlists so that it can be easily re-imported. Sorry for this upgrade inconvenience in 0.6. And, thanks for your comments and interest in Songbird!
@Sound Thinker
Wow, I’m psyched to hear that importing your large music library in Songbird was so successful. We’ve been working hard on library performance improvements and it sounds like it shows! I should have pointed you to Matt’s recent post on our Metadata support. If you’re seeing funky characters it might be due to the fact that we need to still add support for some of the formats that your media is in – the blog post describes what we support. Let me know if you think something different is going on regarding the weirdness you described. I’m curious, what platform are you running Songbird on: Windows/Mac OS X/Linux? Thanks for the early feedback, look forward to hearing more! Thanks for giving things a try and reporting back too.
@Xer0
Those are great ideas. While we have no current plans to support Google Gears it’s an example of a Firefox plugin that should be relatively easy to port to Songbird. Perhaps someone from the community would be interested! As for Mozilla Mesh, it’s definitely something we’re thinking about trying to leverage for a variety of reasons – there’s no immediate plans, however.
Is it planned podcasts support? And correct podcast sync with iPod’s?
Linux lacks a media player with podcasting support at iTunes level (podcast support, management and correct bidirectional sync) in iPods. I tried with Rythmbox, Amarok, Banshee, gtkpod, gPodder and Songbird, and all failed with podcasts.
Sorry about that meant Mozilla Weave! Thanks for the quick reply Daniel!
http://labs.mozilla.com/2008/06/weave-status-update/
https://services.mozilla.com/
Still no support for albumart. That’s one of the main reasons I stick with another player. But I’ll keep waiting…
@Marc
Our current best thinking is that we’ll have integrated Podcast support before the end of the year. We can’t wait for this feature either! And yes, it will definitely work well with devices.
@antipode
There’s some good news to report, we’ll be supporting album art in the next release. In fact, we’ve already started working on it!
@antipode, there are some excellent add-ons for album art to try until we get album art rolled into the release: http://addons.songbirdnest.com/addon/102, http://addons.songbirdnest.com/addon/238.
Thanks for the response I’ll give it another try. I’ve been wanting to try out Sonbird for awhile now. Back in 0.2.5 it simply wouldn’t install on my Windows XP computer.
The only functionality that I miss at first sight is the taskbar applet that Windows Media Player 11 has, that allows you to control the song from the taskbar. Is there perhaps an extension that duplicates this functionality?
Thanks again for the response.
I don’t have, nor want an Ipod. Have no use for something sticking in my ears all day.
Will I ever be able to download music and burn to a cd from Songbird?
Pay or not. Don’t care.
My library is only about 8G’s. I have never shared on the net with anyone.(used old Napster years ago)
Seems like all the people making comments are still in their nickers.Oops! Does that date me?
Thanks for listening,
Samuel Nunn.
SB0.6 makes me busy updating my extensions.
I can’t seem to find some kind of “currently playing” list – A list containing all the items in the play queue.
I like to be able to see what I’ve got in the queue so that I can edit it.
The “Jump to” window close button doesn’t really work for me. If I click it, nothing happens. If I then right-click the item in my task bar, it disappears. (Without me clicking close in that.)
The text in the search box doesn’t update while songbird is actually searching. It can keep up with the first 3-4 letters in terms of updating the text in the searchbox, but after that it just doens’t updated untill the search is complete. (It isn’t noticable unless the search result containt at least a dozen songs.)
Other then that, I’d just like to say that I like Songbird. It has a simple, clean interface, preformance is good and it managed to import my library much faster then winamp does. (Though I’m not sure how much that means.)
there is a “Now Playing list” extension, and it’s under a very similar name.
i have it on 0.5, and i’m not sure if it’s compatible with 0.6.
i dont know why, but the auto-updater has never worked for me, ever since .2.5
@Jory, Thanks for the kinds words.
As for a “currently playing list” try the Now Playing List Add-on.
As for the Jump-To close button, that sounds like a bug. Please file a bug if this is a persistent and reproducible problem, same for the search box. How many items do you have in your library? The search box performance is related to the number of tracks in your library, I know libraries 40K and larger have shown to slightly sluggish.
@Sean, Upgrades from 0.5 to 0.6 are forthcoming, but you’re right, there isn’t an upgrade provided inside the application right now. Your best bet would be to download a complete 0.6 installer. We’ll get the 0.5 -> 0.6 upgrade out to everyone next week.
I really love Songbird, but it’d sure be great if there were a link next to the download button that said “For other operating systems, click here.”
@Brody, we’ve got a bug filed for that.
Does this version support random album playback?
Hmmm I tried to import one of my music folders and it seems to stall on a directory I have. Unfortunately, I have no net at home, so I can’t do much useful debugging for now. I’ll try again to narrow down what file is causing problems.
@yen
there’s a shuffle mode you can use to play random tracks. you can locate the feature under the ‘controls’ menu.
@brody
no problem, we’ll be happy to add that feature to the homepage again soon. and i’ve fixed the bug jkoshi referenced.
@koppah
we look forward to hearing more, please consider filing a bug with us so we can track this down, thanks!
@raffel: Thanks, I knew that already, what i’m looking for is to shuffle albums, instead of just tracks
Congrats on releasing 0.6 final! Easily the best music app on all supported platforms. I would vote Songbird for Minister of Sound
@yen
That’s a great idea, we don’t currently support that functionality but I’ll certainly add it to our feature requests list.
@Chris Przybycien
hehehe, thanks for the support and kind words!
Songbird is definitely the most impressive music focused mediaplayer i have ever used. i started out with winamp as my favorite, then jetaudio, tried amarok (pretty awesome), but songbirds builtin browser and cross platform takes the prize, and being pretty usable and stable at only .5/.6, not even 1.0 yet.
Congratulations on v0.6. I love it. I’m working with a Linux/Windows dual boot pc and I was always looking for a solution to have the same media player on both os.
The main reason, why songbird isn’t yet my default audio player, is, that I have a few hundred playlists to import and I don’t know how I could import them from the folder all at once. (Importing them one by one would be a little annoying.)
Is there any Addon or something? (I haven’t found any solution.)
The other reason – just a little detail – is, that I’m used to sort the songs in my library by “filename”. I haven’t found this tag in songbird.
But nonetheless, I’ve tried songbird the last time as it was v0.3.
The progress is amazing! So I’m sure it won’t be long and SB will be my new favourite on both plattforms.
Thank you for the great work!
Markus
@markus: the iTunes Library Importer add-on will import your playlists. Give it a whirl! Songbird will detect and ignore duplicates of songs you’ve already imported in the process. We do not, as of yet, have a filename field, but there is a Location field that you can use for sorting.
Thanks for the fast answer.
I’m gonna try it!
Now it supports gContextMenu. That’s great
Great Works folks:)
the release performs well for me.. a first on windows! i have been using the software since .3 and have tried every new release hoping to fall in love. big question: is there any way for me to change the soundcard? i use my motherboard’s one with $2 goodwill speakers for windows audio and lofi internet streams and i use a firewire interface hooked up to nice studio monitors for music and movie playback (mediamonkey, vlc, etc). am i missing something in the preferences or an extension? it seems like the preferences window is filled with lots of lush options about encryption and other junk that make me feel like i’m customizing firefox instead of a media player.
@raffel:
I don’t the internet at my new house yet, because I’ve just moved! That said, I had a look at the folder and it got stuck while trying to import FLACs. I don’t have enough info to be able to file a bug yet, but I’ll try it as soon as I get the net connected.
@zshilts
Thanks, it was definitely a team effort – I’ll make sure to pass along your sentiments to the team!
@eric
When we make the switch to gStreamer we expect to build more audio preferences into the app. Unfortunately, in the meantime there’s currently no way to get at more audio prefs than what you see as options. For the time being, if you want to switch audio cards you’ll need to manage it at the OS level. Your request is a great one and currently on our feature request list, I’ll definitely be adding another vote for it!
@wildan
Thanks for the kind words!
@koppah
Thanks for the headsup, we look forward to exploring this further. In the meantime, sorry for the hiccups, you have our word that we’ll see what we can do to sort this out as soon as we have more info.
Awesome work! This App is tops!
I’ve been following Songbird since before 0.1 was released. I was very active in the forums, I even tried to read EVERY new post in all the forums. As time went one, many pieces got rewritten, and to a non-developer such as myself, it seemed almost like nothing new was really happening. I lost touch with the project. I even went for a couple moths without even visiting the site. I never really gave 0.4 or 0.5 releases a real try. Then somebody contacted me and asked me a few questions about it. I decided to take a look at the site and see what progress had been made since my last visit. 0.6 rc’s were coming out, but i decided to wait for final as i remembered how fickle the old nightlies were. I am very impressed. With additional addon’s such as glossy feathers to give a more native look in Vista, and the Now Playing List add-on, Songbird is now almost ready to replace WMP as my main player. What will really make me switch is CD-ripping and transcoding capabilities, which will come after gStreamer is implemented (apparently in about 2-3 releases for gStreamer so I figure a couple releases after). I’m beginning to get back into the project. Great work POTI, and of course all the developers who contributed to both the app and the add-ons library. Thanks.
Wow. So much better release. Well done guys, your app is much stabler smoother.
you Kick ass.
New Songbird and new Firefox on the same day.
Is it Christmas already?
MusicBrainz Tagging Support and tracking of deleted/retagged music files for 0.7 please!
I just tried to import a CD, apparently songbird lacks that feature. I also get problems playing ogg files and the songbird has a dependency on a gstreamer plugin I have apparently not installed. I am also missing support of torrents.
Songbird is getting better. I’m blind and it’s totally usable with a screenreader. A few changes might need to be changed such as the library views not being considered a webpage… If that makes sence. I’m using a screen reader called jaws for windows,
http://www.hj.com
would like to add. one feature of itunes i enjoy is its ability to keep my music tidy. will this be done in songbird when adding a new folder or ripping a cd?
@Matthew
Thanks!!
@MonkeyFit
It always means a lot to us when we hear feedback from users. Also, thanks for noticing the progress we’re making, I’ll certainly share this with the team. Thanks for continuing to follow the project and provide some additional feature request ideas!
@kafka
Appreciate the kind words.
@endblink
If it was x-mas that would certainly explain the cold I have at the start of summer… We’re so excited about FF3 launching today (and incredibly proud of the Mozilla team!)
@changturkey
Oh man, do we want the MusicBrainz feature! It’s not currently on our ToDo list for the next release but I hear ‘ya. Once gStreamer lands we’ll be getting access to a fingerprinting mechanism. (That makes hooking it possible.)
@Andy
Can you email us at support [a t] songbirdnest.com? We’d love to help you sort out your installation. Also, since we don’t support BitTorrent I’ll add your comment as a vote for it on our feature request list. Look forward to working with you to get you all setup on Songbird.
@serrebi
First, sorry to hear that Songbird isn’t useable with jaws. Thanks for letting us know. We definitely want to explore support for screenreaders. I filed a bug in our bugzilla so feel free to subscribe to it in order to track its progress.
@Chris Lavender
We definitely intend on supporting organizing a users media library, it’s currently on our ToDo list but the implementation date hasn’t been scoped.
I am using the 0.5 version on Ubuntu Hardy and the update feature still tells me I am running the latest version. Is there a way to update without a reinstall?
Thanks,
radamo
Thanks for the response raffel, are there any plans for automatic removal of deleted music files from the music library? I hate having to select all my music files to remove them from the library, then re-add them again, just so Songbird can figure out whats there and isn’t.
I’m running Songbird .6 on Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) and everything is working great I really love this program) — until I tried to sync my ipod nano (1st gen). It recognized it fine, could play the music, etc, etc. When I sync’d it erased what was already on it (what I had loaded previously from iTunes, it’s OK), just as it was supposed to — but it never put anything back on. The music from Songbird didn’t transfer to the ipod. Did I miss something?
@jetmac
Did you sync to the whole library or to a selected playlist?
Awesome work guys, you are going to be software superstars in no time.. this product is an amazing tool as a DJ.. Keep up the amazing work!!!
Peace from Vancity BC~
Frost
Erik,
I sync’d to the whole library (I think, I presumed that was the default).
@radamo
Due to some hiccups that occurred we have yet to post an automatic 0.6 update for Linux 32-bit (we’re working on it). In the meantime you can manually update by simply downloading the update from the homepage.
@changturkey
This is currently on our ToDo list but we haven’t planned when work will begin on implementing it. I’ve noted your request as another vote for this feature, I want it too! Thanks for the feedback.
@Dj Frost
Thanks for the kind words! I’ll make sure to pass this along to the team.
Hey, while I’m thinking about it — can Songbird .6 be loaded onto an eee?
Erik,
Erik,
Played with it some more and got it all figured out — everything is working and sync’ing as it should. This program is amazing!
great update!
i’m using songbird since 0.3 and it’s a prefect itunes alternative for me!
please REMOVE THE BROWSER
it’s useless, and in fact, when i need some music (and many others), we use rapidshare instead of those shitty musicblogs
@easyLEE: The browser mashup is here to stay (and thrive) and I am pretty sure the overwhelming majority of Songbird users love it.
There might be some Feathers variant which could help you, though.
Nice job, but what happened to my large collection of bookmarks when I upgraded to 6???? It took me ages to accumulate those pages, all with great free music, mixes, etc…GONE!!!!!
Someone help!!
Is zune compatibility something that we will be seeing in the near future?
I just installed 0.6. It asked if it should uninstall the previous version. I said yes, hoping it would retain all my previous bookmarks. It did not. I think these are now lost.
Re:
EasyLee:
“great update!
i’m using songbird since 0.3 and it’s a prefect itunes alternative for me!
please REMOVE THE BROWSER
it’s useless, and in fact, when i need some music (and many others), we use rapidshare instead of those shitty musicblogs”
************
The browser is great! The music blogs are great. Please KEEP the browser.
@easyLEE
Are you serious? RapidShare?? Wow you really just gave some insight into your level of knowledge and experience. Perhaps an alpha release is too much for you to handle.
RapidShare is brutal. Try learning about this thing called FTP.
@Songbird
Amazing work with the browser integration. Yes the bookmarks where lost in the upgrade I’m afraid for me too…
Peace,
Frost
Dunno why that turned into a link [:
@easyLEE
Thanks for your feedback, but we’re keeping the browser! Look for a post in a few weeks that will describe where we are heading from a UI standpoint. Great change is afoot!
@jetmac
I don’t see why not!
@Vladimir Kotal
here here
@Grant
Sorry about that, thanks for the feedback! Here are steps to upgrade your previous bookmarks to 0.6!
@Charlie
There are no upcoming plans to support the Zune but we’ll be looking into it further to see what it will take.
@DS
No worries, we’re definitely keeping the browser! We’re making a lot of progress on major UI updates in the next release. In a few weeks, Komi will be posting about where the UI is heading (and will be speaking to how it impacts/integrates the browser aspects of the application). Also, here are steps to upgrade your previous bookmarks to 0.6!
Superb! Any chances for seeing a Gnome-Do (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/GnomeDo/)plugin for controlling Songbird?
sweet Daft Punk reference
. just installed Songbird, looks damned good! Congrats
I’ve reported a bug within 5 minutes of using it.
Trying to mount on the creative zen, I found a problem. You can’t play any music on it, you can’t edit any music on it, and coverflow doesn’t work on it. while talking on IRC I’ve confirmed the bug with at least one other person. Fix it!
Yeee…..
HaRdeR, BeTTeR, FaZteR, ZtRoNGeR!!!!
oh what a surprise, not content with stealing iTunes interface you rip off coverflow too… utterly shameless
@Simon
Media Flow is a third party add-on, we didn’t write it. And, for our next release, you’ll be pleased to see that we’re working on a major UI overhaul that will definitely set us apart from others.
I’m a Firefox user and this looks interesting. I just downloaded Songbird.
A suggested new feature!!
A digital audio capture and save for streaming audio. I desperately want this!
I have been using Amarok for it’s Random Album mode and have to agree with Yen – a Random/Shuffle Album feature would be a great feature.
Thank you so much! It looks beautiful!
i updated to your 0.6 release today.
i have been using previous versions of songbird for some time for flac files and other stuff that wmp can’t play. for the first time I can’t point vista to songbird using explorer’s “open with” function. this has always worked before: i browse for songbird and set it as the default program for flac and other exotic file types.
any suggestions?
great product
hi, great work on this version!
do you think you’ll be able to make songbird support ape/cue files? so i wouldn’t have to use anything other than songbird to listen to music…
thanks
Looks great! Haven’t played with Songbird in awhile but loving the newest version.
Wish I had known I was going to lose all my bookmarks, though.
Is there anyway to get them back or are they hiding anywhere?
I found Songbird this past Saturday and I installed it. It does not install to my “regular” programs – the “Sound & Video” applications (I am using Ubuntu Linux v.8.04 ‘Hardy Heron’ on an Acer Extensa 5620-6419 computer – Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T5550 [1.83 GHz, 667 MHz FSB, 2 MB L2 Cache] with 3 GB DDR2 memory) so I placed the entire program into my “Music” folder and I access it from that location. I hope that in future releases you will be able to make it possible to integrate it directly into Ubuntu Linux under the “Sound & Video” application (perhaps via the Synaptic Package Manager).
I have also found that not all – actually relatively few – SHOUTcast internet “radio” stations work on my Ubuntu machine – I hope that this can be corrected in the future. Fortunately, there are enough stations to my liking to which I AM able to listen.
Thank you for making this program available. Even in its experimental form, I like it very much.
I stumbled upon Songbird yesterday and I’m totally in love with it!!! I’m not kidding, I’ve spend all my free time doing some stuff inside Songbird or somehow connected to it. If that isn’t addiction i don’t know what is… Keep up the GREAT work!!!
PS: keep this art going, it adds magic to the Songbird UNIVERSE
Hey the new update is great. I noticed several differences and was delighted to see
that the browser is faster and has an easier user interface. I hope to see more come from songbird.
Thanks, Adam
Anyone know where I can post ideas for plugins?
I’d love to see a plugin that displays, in a separate pane, Last.FM recommendations for similar artists/songs as the song playing. Much like Banshee used to do.
how do i get the ipod support??
i have my ipod plugged in but i can’t see that toolbar thing thye say that is new on the top of this page. I don’t understand I have the Ipod device support installed but i can’t see it.
muito bom
I must say, I really love your player! I just downloaded it today, and I must say I’m very impressed, especially for a program that is not even at an 1.0 release! I find that Songbird makes a great iTunes replacement. However, I would like to request some features that I know iTunes has and that people might not like Songbird for lacking. A party shuffle feature coming standard would be great, I love using it. I like your metadata editor, but I think you should change the label to something like “Get Info” or “Change Info (Metadata Editor)”. I know what metadata is, but I’m not sure the not so tech-savvy would. Also, could you start with a not so dark feather coming standard. I like dark sometimes too, but it can be hard on the eyes, and new users might not necessarily know what a feather is and think they are unable to change the color scheme. Aesthetics might seem superficial; but so are a lot of people and their tastes. Also, a store menu tab would be nice. Songbird doesn’t need a store per se, but it would be nice for a new user to have links right at their face like “Amazon mp3, rhapsody mp3, emusic, magnatune, jamendo, napster, skreemr search”. I know you links to this in the bookmarks tab, but it is kind of obscure. Maybe a tab that says “Bookmarks (+Music Stores)”. I don’t know, but the places to download music should be more clear. Maybe later a user might realize that they could just as easily download music from those places in the web browser, but most music players don’t have this functionality, so a better transition might be useful. It would be a good idea to explain on the website the uses of having a web browser built into a music player. I can attest to not having this being a bad idea, because before I tried it out, I thought Songbird was primarily a Firefox knockoff that also can open music files. I like Songbird and everything, but I feel like it needs some more defining, which is it primarily? a web browser? a music player? why both? I’m fine the way the program is, but I suspect that if it isn’t made more “child”proof that it will remain obscure. I hope Songbird has a great 1.0 release and thank you for listening to my rantings (if you did)!
No MTP support for Linux yet??? It is that difficult?? the software is already out there and works with Amarok… sigh
I love songbird, it is a really cool music player. I Hope one day it will become the standard music player for Ubuntu.
Great! I absolutly love Songbird!! Its better than VLC by a long shot!!
Ya, I never understood who people used VLC.
I first head of songbird from a friend when i was after a good music download program. So i tried it and i was satisfied after so many other programs had failed to deliver just what songbird did, although there was still some things missing which would have made it even better, i think the new songbird will conquer !
I like songbird but have not worked out yet how to use this website to record onto cd’s yet, but i will with time, but i like the look and feel of songbird, if it does what i ask it to.
Hey, fantastic work so far on the player. But can anyone create a CUE file extension or would you consider adding this as a feature? Once this is added I can use songbird as my main media player software but until then I keep switching. Still though, as I said before, fantastic work and keep it up!
SONGBIRD IS GREAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
D
Why does video fire up in a separate window? Is there any advantage to this at all?
It’s also confusing when playing a video while in the minimal player mode, because then you end up with two sets of playback controls (the controls on the minimal main window and the same controls repeated on the video window too).
And where are the “visualisers” when playing back songs?
I think that what would make the most sense is to simply add another tab (similar to the “now playing” tab on WMP) to the Songbird interface, where visual content appears in the same area occupied by the library and web browser.
Videos can appear there and, if playing songs, then “visualiser” content (or album art or whatever) can go there too.
This configuration is what people will be used to from other media players and it’s the easiest to use (overlapping windows introduce all the cuffuffle of having to switch windows, resize and move the video window, the new window gets in the way of accessing the library to switch to another video, etc. – it’s more awkward to control, with basically no real advantage to users at all).
Also, really, one must consider that the primary interface should be the content. That’s what people are primarily firing up Songbird for – to view and listen to their media content. It should, therefore, be presented first and foremost.
This is not a comment but a question. I loss my sound on my Toshiba Satellite, does Songbird have a sound program that I can download?
i love songbird yeah!!!!!!
Very usefull post, i think i will use it.
Thanks.
Hi. Does anybody know where I can download this video clip http://www.xxx-wall.com/?p=6 full? I will be grateful much if anyone helps!
Great! I absolutly love Songbird!! Its better than VLC by a long shot!!
Hey good stuff…keep up the good work!
blog.songbirdnest.com – da best. Keep it going!
Have a nice day
Zoran
Hi, Ugh, I liked! So clear and positively.
Thank you
GlenStef
Hi there,
blog.songbirdnest.com – da best. Keep it going!
Saurooon
I love music
,..] blog.songbirdnest.com is another interesting source on this topic,..]