I’m excited to announce that Songbird 1.0 will be shipping in approximately a month!
This is a big update for us that delivers a slew of improvements that address many of the most common complaints we’ve been hearing from users regarding performance and stability. While we’ll be the first to admit that we still have a lot of work ahead of us we believe this is a milestone for the project and worthy of a new version string, notably:
- Reduced RAM Usage
- Reduced Startup Times
- Fewer Crashers
- Faster Media Importing
- Drastically Faster Search
- Switching Media Cores to GStreamer Is Completed Across All Platforms
These are just some of the top level reasons why we’re willing to call this version 1.0…and why we are proud to announce a stable music player that both the community and us can extend. We’ll be following up with additional blog posts about the status of the next release and more specifics about the progress we’ve made. We appreciate all your contributions to the project and hope you’ll continue to work with us to make Songbird better!
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Songbird 1.0 für November angekündigt…
Im Songbird Blog wurde die Version 1.0 des Mediaplayers auf Mozilla Basis für den November angekündigt. Momentan ist gerade einmal Version 7.0 aktuell, das ist also ein ziemlicher Versionssprung. Songbird ist mir persönlich deutlisch sy…
[...] up on Daniel’s blog post earlier about our upcoming 1.0 release, we’ve just finished assembling the 1.0 Add-on Update Guides for add-on authors. [...]
[...] Announcement on < Songbird Blog [...]
[...] Anyway, as it’s only a couple weeks old I’m sure it will improve, and it demonstrates just what amazing things can be done with the Songbird platform. Hopefully we’ll see more daring and clever extensions like this when Songbird hits 1.0 next month. [...]
73 Comments
SubscribeYeaah !
Thanks for this concept, this amazing product, and this über-friendly team and working community.
We’re just at the beginning of this amazing adventure, Songbird is so promising … and I’m glad to be part of it
1.0? Really? I think 1.0 should have good podcast-support, library-import/export(!) and equalizer/cross-fader in it. I doubt this could be done in a month…
And what’s with 0.8 and 0.9? That would mean three releases in a month, or do you think you can skip them?
I don’t really understand this announcement. I hope someone can explain it to me…
What about CD Ripping? What about an inbuilt Minimize to Tray??? Will this be in version 1? What about expose original file?
Is the roadmap getting thrown out the window?
PS – I love Songbird. I’m gonna be loyal to it despite its current instability, I can’t wait for it to grow and improve
All the best with version 1.0 
Reduced RAM? I hope so, if true I’ll be saying goodbye to iTunes!!
(I’ve got my DevComm hat on, so my answers will tend to be developer-oriented
)
@Atrieu
Everyone, unfortunately, has a different set of requirements for what features should be “mandatory” for a 1.0 release. Realising that we can’t satisfy everyone, this is a good point for us to declare a 1.0 given the platform’s stability and performance improvements in the past couple of releases. Providing a stable platform to enable add-on authors to build on allows developers other than ourselves to provide the features and plug in holes we may not have the time to develop ourselves. We’ll be skipping 0.8 & 0.9 to go straight to a 1.0 – but, obviously, we won’t be stopping there. There will continue to be development on features such as an equalizer, CD Rip, etc.
@Matthew:
The roadmap is definitely *not* being thrown out the Window, in fact, we’re continuing to follow and track the roadmap pretty accurately. Our current release (Genesis) tracked that roadmap really closely, and our upcoming releases (Hendrix & Isan) aren’t far down the line and address the features you called out specifically.
While I would have loved to see 0.8 and 0.9 before 1.0, it is pretty apparent that you have to get something released, especially after you seemed to have “burned” one year building 0.3 (I’m not trying to say that I disrespect the huge amount of work that’s been done in between 0.25 and 0.3, but an intermediate release would have been good.)
Anyway, Songbird’s already a pretty, useful and stable application, even a somewhat rushed 1.0 could in no case become as big a disappointment as Miro’s 1.0 was. (And 1.2 still is.)
Hey, now is probably a good time to start telling everyone about Songbird.
Dont forget its a 1.0 release wait untill 2.0 or 3.0 for cd ripping,etc.
hopefully by the 5.0 version it will be bettter than itunes.
wahoo 1.0
Now what happened to the nest may I ask?!
awesome! good work guys.
I had such high hopes for Songbird, but the change in direction in the last few versions has been a huge letdown.
I remember when this project started you all had such high hopes. iTunes was derided as a “spreadsheet”. Yet now the UI in Songbird is virtually identical to iTunes. Depressing.
Sweet! I was wondering when you were going to release 0.8, but making the leap to 1.0 would be great. Thanks!
“fewer crashers”?
The migration to Gstreamer is sure not completed. On Windows it is very buggy. Songbird uses 160 MB memory. Startup is very slow, even without any addons/clean install. Localization is not completed. Why call it 1.0? To get more users? Users don’t give a damn on the release number. This release is not feature complete. I am for a 0.8-release to stabilize the gstreamer core and get some additional features.
You know, every media player development team forgets about classical music. Classical music does have songs and artists but it also has symphonys, concertos, suites and others, which contain multiple tracks. For example, a symphony typically has 4 movements.
Classical music buffs like to listen to a work (or opus) in its entirety. An album may have one, two, or more works on it. Each work will typically have 3 or 4 movements.
Every media player I’ve tried cannot manage to organise this properly. Perhaps songbird could be the first one … ?
Cool.
And DAAP support ?
Awesome can’t wait to see 1.0, earlier on i thought v1.0 would probably come about at the end of the year. Glad to see things are moving forwards quickly.
iphone/touch support?
awesome work!! songbird is great!
Is Songbird able to play skipless?
mfg
Wow!
Give me back the watched folders to make me happy
@ich, Yes gapless playback support is in the current nightlies.
So, how will the final icon look like?
Please avoid that farting bird. It’s so childish.
MusicBrainz Support!
@Steven – Not sure what you mean? The nest is still here
@Oz – We have to balance making a media player that is easily approachable and usable for new users with the cutting edge innovative features we want to add. W
e’ve built out the platform so it can be easily extended to have the features we
want, but our initial interface has been to build a UI that an iTunes, Winamp,or Windows Media Player user can grok quickly and easily. Rest assured though t
hat while the last few releases may not be the change in direction you might hav
e liked, the work on the underlying platform will significantly help us moving f
orward to build more disruptive and cool features.
@be – The new translate site will be going live soon, definitely in time to let
us get some good localisations done by 1.0. What bugs are you seeing with GStre
amer on Windows? Please file them at our Bugzilla so we can get them fixed for 1.0
@sophocles – It would actually be super easy to build a Classical Music add-on t
Pop by our Songbird Developer Google Group if you’re interested.
hat creates these properties. I’d be happy to help you with building one if you
‘re interested.
@dxerty – Not yet… it’s a commonly requested feature though and I know a coupl
e of community developers who are interested in taking a stab at DAAP support.
@pl – Nope. Apple hasn’t seen fit to open up the iPhone or iPod Touch for appli
cations other than iTunes.
@ich – Check out last night’s nightly… Aus put back gapless playback support.
@sili – Watch folders is definitely on our roadmap. While it won’t be in 1.0, it’s coming very very soon.
@Cato – The final application icon design has not been decided yet.
Personally, I am very pleased to see you guys move this out to stable. I applaud you.
Version 1 means that the bar has been raised for the application. We could fret all we want about what we do not have, but a version 1, not only attracts new users, but also pressures the development staff, imo.
With GStreamer implemented, it would seem like we should expect a lot of the missing parts to be added expeditiously, since so many were dependent on this gstreamer ‘thingie’
Of course not everyone will be pleased, but we ought to see the bigger picture, and realize that this is the official statement that Songbird is ready. Ready for distribution, ready for development pressure.
Congrats to the team.
Running the latest nightly, which give me a very much more solid feel compared to just a couple of weeks ago. I find your decision to release v1.0 within the next month extremely positive, even though I know you won’t have implanted all features I’d like to see in songbird by the end of next month. But hey, songbird – at least in my opinion – stands for more than just the media player itself. It’s the fellowship as a community and developing add-ons to a splendid piece of entertainment.
Enormously impressed,
Lenny
hopefully someone will make an addon like realplayer that records videos.I would also like a conversion tool to convert formats to supported video formats for my zen media player,hopefully by 8.0
SONGBIRD BEAT ITUNES!!!!!!!
I am also surprised to learn you are planning a release given the current status of the product. Songbird is a very promising product and most importantly a very promising development environment where users can customize it to a large number of levels, and from the post I think POTI team believes it is ready “as a platform”.
But that sounds as a formula for a disastrous product launch. Because Songbird is a product for the masses and as it, the first thing media will do will be compare it to Winamp, iTunes and FooBar, at the very basic level: ripping cds, playlist, autoplaylists, watch folders, tag editing, transcoding, library abilities, podcast management, devices support. Yes Songbird promises all this but at 1.0, you have to deliver, whether you like it or not.
I guess there may be funding pressures to deliver a 1.0, otherwise it is very hard to understand why the rush for the 1.0 moniker.
I myself have refrained from making a review of Songbird at Mozilla Links, not because I don’t like the product, its extensibility and its great music stores integration, but because I just can’t recommend a product so limited as a music player as it currently is.
I really hope you will reconsider and don’t burn the Songbird name in its very first release. For you and other Songbird fans 1.0 could mean stability, but for the media and users, it means “I am ready to challenge your music player. Whichever it is.”
@Percy – You touched on a ton of good points there, thanks for your well put comment. It’s tough trying to bring a media player to market when there are so many mature competitors out there. If we tried to reach full feature parity with the existing players, we’d be playing catchup for even more time. (And from some of the comments above, you can see people have been waiting for us for quite a while already
). We’re trying very hard not to burn the Songbird brand and name which is why we’ve worked so hard on platform performance and stability. We think enough of the next generation media player features are there to warrant a 1.0 release, but we do appreciate all the feedback. We hope that subsequent releases will help fill in the gaps that different users are looking for.
Everyone’s comments will certainly funnel back in as we evaluate what features to put in the roadmap, and which releases they should be prioritised towards.
I don’t see ripping or burning on the roadmap. This is the number one thing holding me back from diving into use of Songbird. Please add to your Feb. Release list!!!!
Consider the fact that Winamp is at version 5.x and iTunes is somewhere in the 8s. I think in the grand scheme of things, Songbird is in a great position at 1.0.
Sure, there might be features missing, but seriously, if you waited for all of that stuff to be put in, it might take another year or more. And by then, there will be another 1000 feature requests that people want in version 1.0. You have to draw the line somewhere, and I think this is a pretty good place. It isn’t perfect, but it’s most certainly good enough to be branded 1.0.
Thanks to the Songbird team for all your hard work!
Please take a look at http://getsatisfaction.com/songbird/topics/win64_build.
If you make it, I really will consider donating some money. Thanks.
I filed the bugs.
Reduced RAM Usage !!!
i hope so, SB need it !
it’s actually too much than itunes…
(stop)
SB: 79 460 K
Itunes: 48 380 K
(play)
SB: 85 – 86 – 87 – 88 999 and it”s going up with times…
Itunes: 50 680 K
maybe it’s vista maybe not
but if user have to choose,
beetween only listening music songbird on their pc,
and/or do something else in the same time,
they will choose multitasking…and so don’t use songbird…
song are really long to load too…
it’s a good thing to work on it…
really exited to see, hear, use, the SB one !
Good job!
I understand you guys if you call for Rip/Burn and so one but who uses CDs anyway?? I’ll stop using songbird if you start putting all that stuff in it. I just want to organize my music and listen to it. Songbird is doing that just fine and if it stops using that much RAM I definately consider it to be ready for launch!
Please don’t make this software too bloated. Songbird already got tons of functionality I’ll never use and I’d like Songbird to implement new features as Add-ons so I could remove them. Why include a ripper if I got a ripper which does the job just fine and probably better then songbird ever could? Why would I want to burn my music from songbird if I’ve got a program which does it better then songbird ever could?
I understand that you people consider all that CD-stuff to be part of organizing your music. But personaly I like much more to fire up Audio CD Extractor, let it copy the music albumwise into specified folders and add it into my library later. It keeps my music much more organised and songbird less bloated.
After my general complaints/comments I do have a suggestion for the probably not-so-near future of songbird, so if you want to skip to that go ahead.
@kiepmad
While the desire for a minimalistic media player/organizer is understandable, that’s not what’s going to attract mainstream computer users. The one-application-one-function model that so many more computer-savy people enjoy (“i have a CD ripper, I don’t need another one built in to my music player”) just isn’t shared by your average computer user.
@all
When I look at songbird what I want is basically this
1) An open-source iTunes replacement. It needs to *at least* match the functionality of iTunes in terms of playback, organization, meta-data support, CD ripping/burning, audio encoding, device support, etc. For me, and many other users i’m sure, this is a deal breaker. That doesn’t mean I’ll abandon my hopes for songbird just because it isn’t to that point in Version 1.0, but I’m not going to switch from iTunes just yet.
2) I have high hopes for the Web 2.0 integration Songbird promises. To me it seems songbird wants to take Social Music to the next level and I love it.
3) Extensibility is an amazing feature missing from iTunes, but to be completely honest if the features I outlined in #1 aren’t part of the core program (in 1.0, or in the (relatively) near future) it’s going to hurt Songbird in my eyes. What iTunes and other closed-source, mainstream media players can do Songbird should be able to do out of the box (by out of the box I mean without the use of third-party plugins, not necessarily in version 1.0).
All complaints aside I think this project shows amazing promise, and I hope to be a songbird convert as soon as possible
@songbird dev team
With iTunes 8.0 came iTunes Genius, which IMO is a great (albeit imperfect) idea. From a lay standpoint (not understanding alot about web or software development) I believe that Songbird has an excellent resource in order to match or even beat the Genius feature — last.fm. A built-in social media/music system to create playlist based on the similarity of songs through a service such as last.fm would be some very tasty icing for the Songbird cake.
Just something to think about.
@stevel – Yes, I know the “nest” is still here, as apparent by the address of the blog, but I can’t seem to find the main page, you know, the one that is the default home page, with the built in skreemr search and things? When I google in or go to http://www.songbirdnest.com I get moved to the main page of the site.
Fantastic news. But will it be released for Mac (Intel) at the same time as Windows? I’m also holding out for a native Mac skin too.
Thanks ever so much for a terrific app.
Continue with the Developpement.
Suggestion would be Mp4 video support for Synching to Ipod and other device.
Of course CD ripping could be cool for old cd’s ( if i got any left around ).
For the Minimalist side just make all those features reachable after install with suggestions of extensions.
Im sure many people hate bloated software.
Winamp Itunes and so on are Bloated software now. Remember the old winamp in the old days of windows 98.
@kiepmad – Yup, this is precisely the reason we’ve focused so much on the platform. By building a solid foundation underneath and allowing it to be extended via add-ons we can keep the player as slim or as fully-featured as users wish. If you don’t want iPod support, then you don’t need to have that code loaded and running.
@matt – We’re definitely not ready to replace iTunes wholesale with our 1.0 launch… as you noted, but I know we have some killer differentiating features that iTunes *doesn’t* have, and we expect many users will use Songbird for those features. The beauty of our platform is that add-ons and plugins have full access to the core app, so much of our core functionality (e.g. iPod support, Concerts, SHOUTcast, and media cores like QuickTime & WMP) can be built as add-ons.
@Jason – Yup, we’ve always done simultaneous releases across our supported platforms (Mac, Windows, & Linux). The native Mac window support should be better in this 1.0 release as well.
Is anyone working on support for Google Android devices?
This is great !
First I was disapointed by this annoucement, but I talk with you and now I understand the meaning of this 1.0 release.
Features I really want was Watch Folder and also CD Rip, but I can wait
Songbird 1.0 is going to be a good base (stable, gstreamer core) for all other updates.
I had the chance to test the latest nightly and gapless playback is awesome
Also the new translate website is very nice, and I can’t wait to see it finished.
This week I will try to finish my Gonzoducky feather (rubberducky graphics/color on a gonzo base) This will bring good memories to 0.6.1 users
I think I will update LiveTweeter to fix things and improve Twitter support (we have to work on SongTweet with rob and georges)
Hi,
First of all I’m wondering why my previous comment isn’t displayed. If I tried to send it again, the system said I already posted it.
Next thing I want to comment is problem with GStreamer and Windows. It is currently unusable. It stutters anytime more CPU is used by any application. This problem have all 0.8 nightlies I tried. Also I tried a MKA/AC3 file. It doesn’t without any message. So I tried a more common format: MP4/AAC, but with the same result. There are clearly missing GST plugins and the DirectShow wrapper isn’t working.
@Xero: We’re not actively working on Android device support today, but are interested in supporting it eventually. We’ve heard from a lot of you that you have MTP based devices and will be focusing on tidying up our MTP support over the next few months.
@GeekShadow: That’s exactly right. Our mission has been consistent from the start; build an open, customizable music player. 1.0 doesn’t mean we’re going to have all the features everyone wants. It means we’ve achieved a stable base we can all build on.
@JeCh: Just checked the moderators tool on our blog and this is the first post we’ve received from you. Not sure why you previous comment is not showing up. Can you file your GStreamer + Windows issue as a bug at bugzilla.songbirdnest.com and indicate what version of Windows you are using? Thanks.
@Steven – Yeah, the Birdhouse went offline. You can search for media directly at Skreemr though.
@JeCh
I think this is this bug
http://bugzilla.songbirdnest.com/show_bug.cgi?id=12982
Well, this is disappointing to say the least.
Mostly because, Songbird is not yet at a point where it can completely replace another media player for the majority of people. Why?
Because I can’t rip music from my CDs and use it in Songbird.
That is the one feature that most people use in apps like iTunes, foobar, Creative MediaSource, and hundreds of other applications out there. I go buy a CD, I want to rip it into my personal collection. Now I’m forced to go into some other player to do it.
While Songbird has been hovering just shy of 1.0, I haven’t minded much. I realize it’s not “feature complete”. I don’t even think Songbird needs feature parity with other media players (extension authors can add a lot of stuff that is “needed”). However, I do think Songbird needs to at least be competitive to other players, in that you can use Songbird without opening your other media players for general purpose things. Songbird isn’t there yet.
I too hope you guys will reconsider, but I’m sure you won’t. I’ll still continue to use Songbird, but it won’t be my primary media player until basic general purpose features are added.
I like this quote:
“Why call it 1.0? To get more users? Users don’t give a damn on the release number!”
Why do you give a damn then? Haha….
Congrats guys, Songbird rules, I fully support the decision to release 1.0, even without features. Basically, you are saying “Here, take this out to the world and show your (non-geek) friends =)”. Also the new UI is fine, nothing wrong with copying & improving an UI that everyone is familiar with. Also, Gstreamer MC > VLC.
Watch folders will be sweet, but even iTunes doesn’t do that. I’m really hanging out for “organise music folder”, since I currently open up iTunes every now and then to do that.
Good work
Hooray!
Hey everyone.
i was bored and had some time on my hands (that i should have used to study for exams;)) and made some simple songbird icons. here’s the link to the file hosting program i hosted them on.
http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=9d1d05a0527ebadfab1eab3e9fa335ca0efba0434c3e970e
Been using Songbird since it emerged a few years back and really think its going to be batting with the big boys soon enough ( WMP, iTunes etc etc ).
Will there be better video support later on though? WMP and iTunes let you import and play videos inside the player, which takes it away from Music management, and more of an all in one media management application.
If songbird could achieve this one day, with things like options for aspect-ratio etc etc, i think this would be amazing. Kind of like a WMP11 or iTunes, except without any restrictions.
@be
Yes, that’s the bug. I hope it gets fixed soon.
@ethan
I found out that I can’t post from my work. Probably an issue with proxy server. Anyway here is my comment I meant to post:
I’m currently using foobar2000 as this is the only player which has all the features I need. But I’m also trying Songbird, I quite closely watch it’s development and I even started to develop an addon for it. I have big faith in Songbird, foobar2000 development is disintegrated and closed, it’s getting nowhere. But it’s still the far best player out there.
Personally I don’t care about version numbers. The important thing are features. Foobar2000 is still in 0.9 version and is undoubtedly the best player out there. But people at blogs, PC magazines and technical websites will start comparing Songbird 1.0 to other players. And if the 0.8 version will be released as 1.0, it can’t get any good rating. There will be some basic functions missing. For example an equalizer is a must have. Replaygain is a very important feature too. Some visualizations such as spectrum analyzer should be included in 1.0 as well. So Songbird will be rated very low compared to iTunes/Winamp/foobar2000.
Another thing is music management. I listen to music this way: I create a playlist a then play it (usually randomly, but not always). So I’ll repeat my suggestion I already posted on GetSatisfaction. It should be possible to select a playlist and by doubleclicking any file in media library add it to the currently selected playlist. It should be also possible to doubleclick a whole album or even an artist or genre. Currently it is very difficult to create a custom playlist in Songbird. It should be a combination of what foobar2000 (many active playlists at once) and Winamp (option to add song to playlist by doubleclick) offer.
Another problem is support for media formats. AFAIK on Windows Songbird depends on GStreamer DirectShow wrapper. This is very likely to cause many problems because most people have their DirectShow system broken by codecpacks. The current format support is very poor a many formats don’t play although I have the appropriate DirectShow filters installed.
I would really suggest to wait with the 1.0 release until at least the basic features are implemented. These are following:
1) EQ
2) Good playlist management/creation
3) Replaygain
4) Rock solid playback
5) Folder watching
I wouldn’t release Songbird 1.0 without these.
Also many people here are calling for ripping and burning. I don’t need these features, but there should be addons for those who want them. But I don’t think this is necessary for 1.0 release.
@JeCH,
You’ve pretty much described exactly why they are going with 1.0 on the next release: There is no possible way they can add every features that every person needs in two releases, and every person is going to think they need different features before it goes to 1.0. In this aspect I totally understand where they are coming from.
I mostly think Songbird needs features that will keep you from having a need to use other media players. You aren’t likely to go back and use iTunes because it has folder monitoring and Songbird doesn’t. But you are likely to go back and use iTunes because it has CD Ripping and Songbird doesn’t. These are the kinds of features Songbird needs sooner rather than later.
@Brizz & @JeCH – Yeah, Brizz hit it right on. There are just too many features that different users consider “mandatory” for a 1.0. At the present, the best we can do is solidify the existing features and platform to ensure that developers can build on it to help augment the core functionality. Brizz brought up an interesting point though… should Songbird be striving to displace other media players? I’m not sure. I myself use 3 different media players because they have different strengths; as long as they co-operate and co-exist happily, I think that’s quite alright to be honest.
Right, but the features I mentioned are requested by a lot of people. There are of course many other things, but only a few users care about them.
Btw. I would probably never use a media player to rip or burn CDs. There are ripping applications a and burning applications. For me there is no need to have this functionality in a player and most advanced users have the same opinion as me. And advanced users are very important, because they are the ones who advice the other people what application they should use. If advanced users will be disappointed with Songbird, they won’t recommend it. Advanced users don’t need burning or ripping, but they need folder monitoring, replaygain, equalizer, wide formats support etc.
Songbird has the potential to become soon the best audio player out there. The base – GUI and library management works perfectly. But the small things which make a player great are still missing. I’m not a very good developer, but I think most of them shouldn’t be so difficult to implement.
For example you don’t have to create an equalizer. Just use the GStreamer filter and create a GUI to control it. It should be similar with replaygain. Or are there any problems I don’t see?
@JeCh
I think what you’re missing here is the scope of a feature like replaygain (ie. Normalization). A feature like that would actually require us to do the following in addition to reading and applying existing replaygain data right before playback.
(these are in no particular order)
- Scan each imported file for replaygain information
- Create queue system for processing media to determine replaygain information.
- Create system for applying replaygain onto file / saving replaygain info into file that is compatible with other major media players out there
- Processing of replaygain data should use minimal resources to calculate data and attempt to calculate on the fly if the files info has not been calculated yet.
- Implement EQ to automatically load replaygain data available and apply it.
Not to mention all the prefs one would want to expose for those elements.
So, no, it’s not that straightforward
But I think you appreciate the effort we put into everything we do, including features that ’shouldn’t be so difficult to implement’ 
@aus
Yes, what you describe is indeed quite difficult. But at version 1.0 I would be satisfied with just applying replaygain. The RG information is stored in tags so basically all you have to do is this:
1) Read the RG tags and store them in database
2) Insert ReplayGain filter in graph (Songbird actually ships with it already)
3) Tell the ReplayGain filter the RG value to use
Implementing ReplayGain with a realtime scanner would be fantastic, but very complicated. This feature would make Songbird outstanding, because no other player can do it AFAIK. But lets leave this for 2.0 release. In 1.0 it will be enough to apply the already existing RG data to be on par with other players (the list of them is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replaygain).
Yes, I appreciate the hard work you’re doing. I’m a developer too (unfortunately I’m not familiar with C, I only use PHP and Python). I even started developing a player in PyGTK myself, because I was disappointed with all players out there. But then Songbird 0.7 was released and I found out that this could be the player I’m looking for and that creating a player is too much work for just one person.
I am excited to hear this, but can I just add my voice to the people suggesting that there are a few issues you don’t mention resolving in your post that really should be fixed before you label a release 1.0.
Foremost in my priorities is this bug:
http://bugzilla.songbirdnest.com/show_bug.cgi?id=12627
I don’t need you to revamp the podcasts system entirely for me to be happy, but I do want you to fix this issue, which is currently stopping me from switching properly to Songbird.
@JeCh
Actually, Normalization is already set to land in our first release of the new year. With all the bells and whistles
You won’t have to wait too long, I promise.
You guys IMO are absolutely doing the right thing by making sure that the 1.0 release is all about stability and optimization. Great work so far guys ! I might be in the minority but, I personally don’t like swiss army knife programs like iTunes. iTunes in and of its self (IMO) is not such a great media player/organizer because I’m very much against the way it handles library files, importing and fetching files from an external HD. It’s way too complicated for its own good.
Amarok has been my player of choice (Rhythmbox is good too though) on my Linux box, and was waiting for its release on OS X, but Songbird has come a long way from several months back, and I think that it’s even ready to replace iTunes on my Macbook Pro. I’ve always found that using separate ripping/burning software works better and yields more options for the end user, especially where iTunes is concerned, so having this in SB immediately, shouldn’t be that big a deal IMO.
Please just keep up the work with making SB more stable, less resource hungry and a smaller footprint. Right now, I think that SB does a great job at querying my music folder and importing its content, so please don’t change the way this works in favor of a more iTunes esque library method.. It’s all I ask !
One question though: Does SB have an option to watch folders for added/deleted content and then update the database/playlist as needed ?
Doug
@Doug – Watch Folders are coming up in the release after 1.0, currently codenamed Hendrix. You can see it in the roadmap, here.
Whoa, that’s big news. A preemptive congrats!
SIMPLY AWESOME!!
I love Songbird and am glad to see 1.0 coming out, though a bit rushed it seems. The Songbird community should do a campaign the week before the release of 1.0 like some kind of massive Spread Songbird program. I love this program and think it will be up to iTunes by 4.0.
Congrats to Songbird team – the current build is more than deserving of 1.0. I just ran latest nightly and 120GB of music imported in ~10 minutes (used to be ~30 mins). Low memory / fast response in Ubuntu (haven’t tried XP yet).
P.S. People – get some perspective. Just because *your* most important feature is not present yet, does not preclude 1.0 status. If you’re not happy – ask for a refund on the purchase price.
I am afraid by this decision. as it has been said earlier, I’m afraid that you will only burn up your brand name…
With a 1.0 realase you need to be able to make people switch from what they have and wile songbird has some good points to offer, it still lacks basic fonctions wich will keep people including me to make the switch.
…and I have to say, I rarely try a software more than once, whatever it’s version number is…
For songbird I have been watching it since 0.2 so i’ll keep traking changes but even thought i said i’d switch to SB on a daily use with 1.0 i think I’ll end up waiting for 2.0…
again: what’s wrong with calling your next version 0.8?
Arriving at a 1.0 release without feature parity with other media players does not mean that the Songbird name has been burned. Really, a 1.0 release indicates that the platform is now stable and is good for daily use. Firefox 1.0 was pretty useless, and no one used it, but by Firefox 2.0, it had become a huge hit among the power users and more advanced users on the Internet. I see Songbird in a similar light in that it doesn’t quite need feature parity quite yet. It might not be ready to replace your media player just yet, but it certainly is good enough to use without having to be afraid of it crashing on you, as the early releases used to.
I’m not a much of a coder myself; I only know some basic C++, Java, and Python from my AP Computer Science classes back in high school, but I’m sure that with an open platform and API, it shouldn’t be too hard to develop extensions that complete Songbird for you. The greatest thing about software that uses the Mozilla platform is that it becomes extensible so that you can customize it however you like. I wouldn’t think of using Firefox without Adblock Plus and DownThemAll, but that doesn’t mean that other people think the same thing. If you don’t like how Firefox is, then you can customize it with extensions; similarly, if you don’t like Songbird as it is, then use extensions. I’d love to see folder monitoring, an equalizer, and CD ripping built in, but if it isn’t, I’m willing to accept the features as extensions. If I had the time and the expertise, I’d happily develop the extensions myself, but since I have neither, it seems like I’ll just have to wait for someone to add these features.
Not sure about listing “Fewer Crashers” as a feature, that should simply be implied, in a way it sends the wrong message. To me it says “yeah we might look into why it crashes and fix only a few of the problems”.
OF course I know thats not what you mean!
I think reducing start up time is one of the most important aspects too. Not that it is too bad now.
wow, the speed improvement of the library is stunning! Keep up the good work
As others have commented, look at Firefox’s history to get an idea of what works. The number one reason Firefox is as popular as it is, is because they kept the footprint of the core app. to a minimum, made it fast, and made it extremely easy to extend.
As I see Songbird is going in the right direction, focusing on performance and stability. This makes a more attractive platform to extend, allowing everybody to decide for themselves what features are worth sacrificing a little performance for.
Привет, я думала что это совсем не так происходит:)
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