Songbird 1.1 Beta 1 is Available for Testing

By Georges Auberger Georges Auberger Feb 13, 2009 1:14 pm Permalink
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Tightening Screwdriver

Songbird 1.1 Beta 1 is now available for download!

Here are the most noteworthy and complete features we’d like to call out in this Beta and get your feedback on:

  • On demand Fetching of Album Artwork:
    Songbird can now fetch album artwork from the web at your command. Simply select or right-click a track and choose “Get Album Artwork”. You can also select your preferred source of artwork. By default, Songbird will retrieve album art from Last.fm but you can install other sources such as amazon.com via an add-on.
  • MTP Device Support:
    We fixed many bugs affecting MTP devices on Windows. We’ve also added the ability to synch authorized Windows Media DRM’ed content to your MTP device. To see if your MTP device is supported, or to report your findings, visit the MTP device page.

The Beta 1 release notes contain additional details about this build including a list of known issues.

As always, please file any issues, bugs, or crashes you find in Bugzilla so that we can address them before the final release.

Bloggers & Press: This release is not our final release and is not ready to be reviewed. Since we’re still landing code we suggest postponing any review of the Songbird Player until our final build. If you’re interested in reviewing the final build contact us at: press [at] songbirdnest [dot] com. We’ll be more than happy to give you access to it prior to its release. Thanks for the care and attention you’ve shown Songbird over the past year.
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  1. By Ormus.info Feb 13, 2009 1:21 pm

    Songbird 1.1 Beta 1 ist verfügbar…

    Gerade eben hat das Songbird Team die Beta 1 vom Open-Source Medienplayer auf Mozilla Basis bereit gestellt. Enthalten ist das Herunterladen von Album Covern, verbesserte Unterstützung von vielen MTP Geräten, Watchfolder und noch mehr (siehe Rele…

  2. By Make Love, Not War ! Feb 14, 2009 4:49 am

    Songbird 1.1 Beta 1…

    latest Beta Now available for download!
    Songbird is the coolest all-in-one audio player outhere :

    Media Importing
    Add media to Songbird by importing from your file system or iTunes.

    Media Playback
    Songbird supports MP3, FLAC, and Vorbis on all pl…

  3. [...] erste Betaversion der zukünftigen Version 1.1.1 wurde vom Songbird-Team veröffentlicht. Neu sind vor allen Dingen eine Funktion zum Einbinden von Cover über eine externe Quelle und die [...]

  4. [...] auf der Homepage des Projekts kein DEB-Paket zum Download bereitsteht, hab ich mich entschieden eines hier zum [...]

  5. [...] Entwickler rufen die Nutzer auf, das Programm zu testen und Fehler zu [...]

  6. [...] couple days ago Songbird 1.1 Beta 1 was released, and the Linux download package is just a .tar.gz file. What the hell am I supposed to [...]

  7. [...] Songbird Blog Songbird 1 1 Beta 1 is Available for Testing Posted by root 1 minute ago (http://blog.songbirdnest.com) One thing where did the skreemr powered songbirdnest homepage go it was kinda cool to have a something where amazon would offer a download of the songbird player with tight amazon music what kind of idiotic assnine comment is that songbird 1 2 beta 2 is a Discuss  |  Bury |  News | Songbird Blog Songbird 1 1 Beta 1 is Available for Testing [...]

71 Comments

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  1. Antoine (GeekShadow) Feb 13, 2009 1:20 pm Permalink

    @georges is it an exclusive artwork you got from jkoshi ?

    Congratulations on the Beta 1 !

  2. aus Feb 13, 2009 1:29 pm Permalink

    @Antoine

    Indeed. We got Koshi to whip up some custom art for the 1.1 betas and final release. :)

  3. Lenny Feb 13, 2009 2:38 pm Permalink

    Awesome! There will be no sleeping tonight, got to check out this smoki’n hot Beta – that’s for sure! :-)

  4. Anders Feb 13, 2009 3:21 pm Permalink

    Fantastic! I’ll try it out right away!

  5. EOTS Feb 13, 2009 3:26 pm Permalink

    Neat thanks.
    Off topic: When folder watching comes out and I get a song and click open with songbird, will it play the song if it isn’t In my library?
    Its very annoying having to make directories in My Music for individual songs.

  6. MaxFragg Feb 14, 2009 4:57 am Permalink

    okay, now lets wait till albumart and mediaflow work again, and then we can rock agian ;-)

  7. katana346 Feb 14, 2009 9:48 am Permalink

    Songbird has jumped out of the nest and is starting to take to the skies. Watch-folders and Album Art fetcher are part of the soft, warm breeze beneath its open (source) wings, propelling it full speed in a direct course far above the other “birds”.
    Congrats!

  8. sili Feb 14, 2009 11:15 am Permalink

    I’m playing around with the beta right now and came up with a question: Where and how are the album artworks saved?

  9. maurizio Feb 14, 2009 12:35 pm Permalink

    Wow! The gapless playback! Ha ha ha! Wonderfull!
    Thank you!

  10. Bill Yanelli Feb 14, 2009 7:46 pm Permalink

    This looks fantastic, but let’s work towards dramatically increasing the range of MP3 players supported, by adding USB mass storage support:

    http://getsatisfaction.com/songbird/topics/why_no_support_for_usb_mass_storage_mp3_players

  11. deOmega Feb 14, 2009 8:21 pm Permalink

    Honestly, the watchfolder function still makes me tear up. :) Utterly awesome.

  12. Dan Feb 15, 2009 7:55 am Permalink

    Is there anyway to upgrade to the beta without having to uninstall 1.0?

  13. Paul Feb 15, 2009 8:47 am Permalink

    Nearly there, once we get some decent handling of compilation albums I might finally be able to ditch windows.

  14. jleger Feb 15, 2009 11:49 am Permalink

    @ Dan

    Absolutly. You can just install 1.1.1b1-972 on top of 1.0.0-860 (Final) no problem. It will migrate your library, prompt you to upgrade your addons, and off you fly!

    If you have any problems, please let us know. However, this was tested in QA and worked for us great.

    Songbird QA

  15. jleger Feb 15, 2009 11:54 am Permalink

    @ Paul

    We have a request to “Add feature to group tracks under “Compilation”
    (http://bugzilla.songbirdnest.com/show_bug.cgi?id=14469)

    slated for the next release (Isan/1.2.x).

    FYI ;-)

  16. maurizio Feb 15, 2009 3:02 pm Permalink

    The “watchfolder” is good but… ehm… if I have many folders? (non sub-folders!)
    :(

  17. jleger Feb 15, 2009 5:19 pm Permalink

    @maurizio

    What specifically i your issue? A problem with multple watch folders?

  18. Mattias Feb 15, 2009 8:21 pm Permalink

    I have same issue as mauizio, I need multiple watch folders (have some stuff on USB-hard drive, and 2 hard drives in computer)

  19. Andrew Luecke Feb 16, 2009 12:49 am Permalink

    One really dodgy hack you could use to watch multiple drives is by mapping drives to a directory maybe (haven’t tested it though).. Just go to Control panel, computer management, Disk management, right click a drive, change drive letter and paths, add.. Make an empty directory in your watched folders directory using explorer, then mount that drive as that folder..

    Not sure if it works properly though, never tried it.. But this might work.. not sure though because its pretty shifty so watched folders might not like it anyway

  20. Mattias Feb 16, 2009 12:53 am Permalink

    That’s a nice idea Andrew, I’ll try it later on today when I get home. But would it be hard to add native support in Songbird for multiple watch folders?

  21. Andrew Luecke Feb 16, 2009 1:33 am Permalink

    I just tested the above idea in Vista…

    It will update the song database automatically when starting songbird, but doesn’t seem to update them in realtime.

    This means that Songbird can automatically watch 2 separate drives provided that you are willing to restart songbird to update the library. In that case follow the instructions above until multiple watched folders is possible (and yeah, you can mount a drive into multiple drives or folders).

    Yeah its dodgy.. but better then nothing..

    (so works for what I need it to. , but wont update them in realtime

    Whilst Songbird wont update or remove songs in realtime, it seems to update them automatically on start-up still..

    Just an update.. My way partially works

  22. Andrew Luecke Feb 16, 2009 1:58 am Permalink

    @Mattias, I’m not part of the team, so I have no idea..But in terms of what I understand, it makes sense to begin with a single watched folder, and after its established it works, upgrade it to multiple folders..

    I’d imagine multiple folders is on its way though.. Ali or Aus already told me they are working on also adding more feedback still, so there is still a lot planned obviously.. But for most users, it works good enough (for me certainly).

    In fact, once CD ripping is added (in april’s release), I will be able to throw Winamp entirely away finally.

  23. Michael Feb 16, 2009 8:33 am Permalink

    And can it play FLAC/CUE files at last? If not, it’s still completely useless to me…

  24. Mattias Mirhagen Feb 16, 2009 10:50 am Permalink

    I think it worked making a link in Linux, thanks for the idea, Andrew.
    And yeah, it’s probably a good idea to test it out with one folder first :-)

  25. Rahul Feb 16, 2009 8:52 pm Permalink

    Just click to your site through colorzilla website. Looks quite interesting, I’ve downloaded and will check out this as well.

  26. Andrew Luecke Feb 16, 2009 9:10 pm Permalink

    Michael, it can play Flac files. And it can play gapless quite well..

    You can use a Cue splitter to split your tracks (thats really what you are meant to do anyway, because hour long MP3 tracks are only really a hack for when players don’t support lossless).

  27. Andrew Luecke Feb 16, 2009 9:13 pm Permalink

    crap.. I mean don’t support gapless

  28. Andrew Luecke Feb 17, 2009 12:47 am Permalink

    Err.. Sorry, I mean:

    You can use a Cue splitter to split your tracks (that’s really what you are meant to do anyway, because hour long MP3 tracks are only really a hack for when players don’t support gapless).

  29. Herbert Kurt Feb 17, 2009 5:07 am Permalink

    hi,

    MacOs 10.5 only !!!
    THIS IS REALLY A JOKE.SORRY.
    what are the reasons for this ??
    goodbye and thank you for the fish.

  30. sebastian Feb 17, 2009 9:53 am Permalink

    the filter pane doesn’t even work….

  31. Bx Feb 17, 2009 3:34 pm Permalink

    I tried the Beta, it worked well. Then I decided to switch back to the release version since most extensions aren’t working yet. To my surprise, my library is no longer working in the release version 1.0 :-(
    Apparently the beta does some changes to the database that is not backward compatible? Is there anyway to fix that?

    Thanks

  32. asd Feb 17, 2009 7:09 pm Permalink

    @Bx – Yeah, same thing happened to me. Unfortunately you’ll have to delete your profile..

  33. klint Feb 18, 2009 2:12 am Permalink

    You can test the beta by forcing compatibility of the extensions (at your own risks of course, but a lot of them are working pretty well for me)

    create the following new config boolean entry in about:config and set it to false:
    extensions.checkCompatibility

  34. yew Feb 18, 2009 6:20 am Permalink

    one thing: where did the skreemr powered songbirdnest homepage go? it was kinda cool to have a cool-looking customised homepage like that.

  35. stone Feb 18, 2009 8:23 am Permalink

    creating an entry in the about:config seems like a bad idea.
    - extensions.checkCompatibility set to false doesnt work
    - right-click and hitting reset, converts it to a string.
    - you cant seem to delete entries from about:config

    /sigh

  36. Desertico Feb 18, 2009 2:31 pm Permalink

    Is is true that doesn’t support GAPLESS??? C’mon!!!

  37. Andrew Luecke Feb 18, 2009 2:58 pm Permalink

    @Bx I think they did it it a while ago to speed stuff up or make it more efficient. The library is forward compatible (ie, it gets upgraded), but Songbird can’t downgrade it.

    Unfortunately that is a disadvantage of upgrading to a beta (less plugins). You can hack around the compatibility checks, but it would be better to stick to the non-beta version for now if you have extensions (or try to get the developer to upgrade them).

    @Herbert. It says 10.4.11 too…

    @sebastian? Maybe jump on IRC to see if someone can help you..

    @Desertico. They seem to have made a lot of changes in 1.1 to support gapless now (at least seems to be that way). I’m not sure though if it supports gapless playback on ipod’s (never checked). I did see a lot of gapless stuff being checked in

  38. Bx Feb 18, 2009 4:13 pm Permalink

    @Andrew. I managed to manually modify some extensions to make them work on the beta since I am stuck with the beta now, otherwise I’d loose all configuration and the Library which took some time to make it hold my songs. Deleting my profile is not an option right now, and it seems it’s the only way to go back to the release version.

    Strangely, I noticed some clear instability which make the beta hangs every once and then when it switches between songs :-( . That gives another reason to switch back to the release. Some warning should’ve been made on that issue, as it’s completely frustrating.

  39. anon Feb 18, 2009 5:20 pm Permalink

    @Bx

    A warning was made: “Songbird 1.1 BETA 1 is Available for TESTING”

    Please search Bugzilla and file any issues that aren’t duplicates.

  40. Klint Feb 19, 2009 2:02 am Permalink

    @Bx
    I have installed most recent nightly, have used a clean and fresh profile, reimported all my library (ok, I don’t have any ratings not play lists, so it is easier… will use them when it is released), installed *all* my extensions using the extensions.checkCompatibility feature, and I have no hangs or severe issue anymore.
    Not sure that a direct update of a 1.0 works properly… I hope this is being tested by others at the moment. :)

  41. Bx Feb 19, 2009 2:17 am Permalink

    @Anon
    Anyone understands what a beta means, but some statements should have been made regarding the backward compatibility issues. Mozilla for instance, always stated (during alpha and beta versions) that places are not backward compatible, even though that wont break your previous bookmarks whenever you decide to switch back to older versions.

    The bug that keeps hanging the player has already been filed (Bug:15330).
    I am not sure whether the backward compatibility issues are considered as bugs.

  42. Klint Feb 19, 2009 6:58 am Permalink

    @Bx
    You should have read the whole page more carefully before downloading and installing the beta, as it is clearly warned that… :)

    Upgrading

    If you are concerned about losing your old profile while testing a nightly (a distinct possibility), you can run Songbird -p to launch Songbird into Mozilla’s profile manager dialog. More information about backing up or managing your profile may be found here: http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Profiles — remember to use Songbird as the executable name and not Firefox!

  43. RobK Feb 19, 2009 9:52 pm Permalink

    I installed in Vista and the beta didn’t delete the old desktop icon when installed…I doubt this is the right place but I figured I’d help somehow since I love Songbird.

  44. KHui Feb 19, 2009 11:45 pm Permalink

    HI,Songbrid is good software. but chinese font small,can’t reader.

    Songbrid Chinese font set 12px OK.! please change. ！
    你好，songbrid是个好软件，但选择中文界面时中文字体太小，麻烦设置成12PX比较合适，谢谢。

  45. Victor J Kinzer Feb 20, 2009 5:15 am Permalink

    It is wonderful to see songbird progressing as quickly as it is, but I was wondering about online music stores and integration. Are there any plans to do a cross PR move with an online music store like Amazon.com? Something where Amazon would offer a download of the songbird player with tight Amazon music store integration, or link to songbird that would include the Amazon music store integration by default. Or any other music store.

    I picture something like what firefox has with google. Where any music store that has an appropriate plugin written could be your default music store, but maybe on in particular has a deal with songbird. It seems like a good revenue opportunity, and it seems like an act like this needs to happen to replace the iTunes player/iTunes music store 1 2 punch. Everything I have ever seen tells me that tightly integrated combo is what makes iTunes so appealing, because it sure isn’t the player on it’s own. The player is an abomination.

    This was just a thought. When I first saw music store plugins for songbird, I kind of expected a deal like this to be put together for the 1.0 launch.

  46. forest Feb 20, 2009 7:23 am Permalink

    I agree with Victor. Songbird really should partner up with a music store to provide that added 1 2 punch. However, I think Songbird first needs in place all the basic features of a music player that people would expect. A lot of people will try it, draw a one time immediate impression of the player, and if they don’t like it, never use it again. It needs to be seen as an immediate, ready-to-go replacement for iTunes. I’d also really love it if the default wasn’t just a single online music store but included several of the smaller stores as well (with them advertising through their websites too.) For example, bleep.com, amiestreet, beatport, boomkat, digital.othermusic, calabash (now mondomegamix or something), soulseduction, etc. Part of what made Firefox a success is that lots of small websites took to encouraging it. Songbird needs the same kind of community support from online music stores.

  47. Steven Feb 20, 2009 10:37 pm Permalink

    @Forest, Victor
    As far as I know they are unscheduled but are known (check unscheduled feature requests, http://wiki.songbirdnest.com/Roadmap/Feature_Requests )

    As it says, to do amazon would require code to decrypt AMZ format if anyone knows it.

    I agree with you, I currently use amazon myself!

  48. gvd Feb 21, 2009 10:44 am Permalink

    Will songbird have an equalizer and sound enhancement in the future ?

  49. sort Feb 21, 2009 1:22 pm Permalink

    As I Lay Dying is an English band, but apparently the Portuguese particle “as” is causing it to sort in the “i”’s instead of the “a”’s

  50. Teo Feb 21, 2009 5:09 pm Permalink

    Music player without EQ is pretty useless to me.
    sorry

  51. Leo Feb 22, 2009 9:48 am Permalink

    You should only be concerned about EQing if your mixing/mastering skills/taste are better than those of your records’ engineers/producers. I seriously doubt that is the case. But hey, if more people thought this way, who would buy all the super-horrible-philistine-bass stereos?

  52. Brian Feb 22, 2009 7:10 pm Permalink

    I agree that songbird needs to get it’s user experience right before worrying about store partnerships. I have tried to get my wife to use songbird for downloading podcasts and transferring them to her ipod. She doesn’t have any patience for the fact that all available podcasts are downloaded every time even if they were already downloaded once, that songbird doesn’t always automatically download podcasts when it’s opened, and that it doesn’t sync with the ipod every time. If it wasn’t for my evangelism, she wouldn’t use it at all, and is not recommending it to her friends. So while there are plenty of people who appreciate a work in progress and this work particularly, there are a huge number of people who just want it to work.

    Also, since this is a volunteer thing, think about it from the point of view of a company, I’d be like “that’s great folks, you have a fantastic idea, the minute you have a working player with X million users, I’ll be happy to pour my valuable time and money into a partnership, but just in case you all get tired of it next week and drop it, I’ll wait ’till then”.

    What would really see this project take off is a cashed up company like Google or Sun see how to use this player to make a pile of money with a new concept online media store and portable player, and put a team of paid programmers on it, ala Thunderbird, Firefox, Andriod and Open Office. But I guess there aren’t so many cashed up companies these days :) (AND, if that happened, there would be some who wouldn’t like it, I’m sure!)

    Also, I don’t see how to make tons of money with this myself, selling media is one thing, the player and format another. But I am not rich, either! Anyway, I think once the basic core of a music player/manager is out and stable, there will be more possibilities, but at this point we need to see something that can reliably download files, find them on a disk, delete them from the disk if we want, and load them to a player before we can expect much excitement and support from the whole of the world wide web.

  53. Christer Danmo Feb 23, 2009 2:04 am Permalink

    I`m shocked…. Downloaded 1.1 Beta today and everything is working like a charm. Even the hang when I start Songbird is gone. Addons works…… I`m speechless.

  54. Earth Feb 23, 2009 10:50 am Permalink

    Can’t wait to have it installed :D

    PS: Equalizer is for the next release, which is the end of April 2009 (check the roadmap)

  55. Georges Auberger Feb 23, 2009 1:59 pm Permalink

    @Christer
    The team has been working hard at increasing the quality, stability and performance of our releases. Glad that it shows.

  56. Steven Feb 23, 2009 9:09 pm Permalink

    What, no more Skreemr support built in anymore? Or were you getting piracy complaints? Just wondering.

  57. ich Feb 24, 2009 12:40 am Permalink

    Hello,
    I sometimes use Ubuntu/Linux and in my opinion it is extremly important to provide Songbird more effectifly in Ubuntu. So, for example, there must be a entry in the add/remove item in the applications menu! Consequently, it would be much more easyer to install Songbird, especially for laymen.

    Songbird conquers the world!!!

  58. jb Feb 24, 2009 3:08 am Permalink

    Is it possible to install 1.1 SIDE BY SIDE w/ 1.0, so I can revert back if 1.1 doesn’t work for me in the current form

  59. Christer Danmo Feb 24, 2009 6:12 am Permalink

    @jb
    As far as I`ve heared you can`t, because Songbird 1.1 Beta 1 change the library a bit, to make it faster, more effeiency etc.

    To be honest I don`t see the reason why you want to go back to 1.0.

  60. Gfaja Feb 24, 2009 12:55 pm Permalink

    I’m getting a lot of problems writing meta-data, so the file’s id3 doesn’t match what’s in the library. Also, when I use the inline meta data editor for, say, album it often just reverts it.

    with the mediaflow addon I can have two items that show differently in the list view, but both share an icon.

  61. Steven Feb 24, 2009 3:33 pm Permalink

    Not again! The numbers in the genre column have come back!

  62. Dark Passenger Feb 25, 2009 2:22 pm Permalink

    Still can’t save ratings to the file?
    Even with the option checked?
    Why should any Songbird user rate songs?

  63. Andrew Feb 25, 2009 9:10 pm Permalink

    We had this massive argument in Ubuntu brainstorm about this. There is a very good reason not to store Ratings in file:

    1) People share music between users. So ratings would be shared and keep screwing each other up.
    2) Ratings can still be sent to players and such without embedding them as an ID3 tag.
    3) Changes the hash of the file. For P2P and such, a bad idea (and yes, there is such thing as legally transferred songs on bittorrent).
    4) More risky. You don’t particularly want people opening data files and closing them constantly, or they may corrupt the song the moment something goes wrong.

    Why do you want them embedded in the file exactly? Maybe there should be a way to export the song ratings, but embedding them in the file makes no sense. ID3 tags are for storing permanent information to a song, not information you’ll keep changing.

  64. Christer Danmo Feb 26, 2009 2:38 am Permalink

    It would be nice if the rating got transfred to the Ipod atleast, which it does in Itunes.

    I agree about not saving the ratings in the id3 tag for sure.

  65. Dark Passenger Feb 26, 2009 4:03 pm Permalink

    Thanks Andrew. You are the first to tell me a logical reason other than “iTunes doesn’t do it”. I agree. Music is shared. Not everyone will want the same ratings but will want the same (correct) info. My frustration is having as many songs as I do, and rating them for parties etc. then losing all of it when I reinstall Songbird, Windows, or move directories. See my frustrations? There must be a way.

  66. Teo Mar 1, 2009 4:10 pm Permalink

    “Leo Feb 22, 2009 9:48 am

    You should only be concerned about EQing if your mixing/mastering skills/taste are better than those of your records’ engineers/producers. I seriously doubt that is the case. But hey, if more people thought this way, who would buy all the super-horrible-philistine-bass stereos?
    ”

    - what kind of idiotic assnine comment is that??
    The ability to ’sculpt’ your own music is as basic as can possibly be. Nearly ALL programs and devices have it.
    Look back in time you halfwit – .most music players in early 90s HAD an Equalizer built-in…SoundJam, the precursor of iTunes, hello?

    To release a music player in 2009 that doesn’t have built-in Equalizer is BIZARRE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  67. Krzy Mar 8, 2009 9:09 am Permalink

    @Andrew,

    No matter how much brainstorming has taken place on Ubuntu forums, you have to accept the fact that someone may really want to do it. There may be someone out there who is not interested in sharing their legally bought music, hence may be interested in tagging the ratings. I feel exactly the same way as Dark Passenger. I don’t want to lose all the ratings once I reinstall Songbird or decide to another organizer..

    If anybody knows any way that I can tag the ratings, please drop the lines here.

  68. Andrew Luecke Mar 8, 2009 5:56 pm Permalink

    @krzy, my point is that there might be a better way though.. Like being able to export the ratings, and import them later. I can see where u guys are coming from.

    I guess a plugin to do this wouldn’t be a bad thing, or an option in songbird..

    However, it would have to be OFF by default. Because on any multi-user system, or home network where songs are shared, ratings would incorrect persist from other people, and then they will start complaining that they never set that rating (which is probably why no major music players seem to do it).

    My suggestion would be via addon though honestly.O

  69. Andrew Luecke Mar 8, 2009 6:00 pm Permalink

    @krzy, my point is that there might be a better way though.. Like being able to export the ratings, and import them later. I can see where u guys are coming from though. I guess a plugin to do this wouldn’t be a bad thing, or an option in songbird.. However, it would have to be OFF by default.

    Because on any multi-user system, or home network where songs are shared, ratings would incorrect persist from other people, and then they will start complaining that they never set that rating (which is probably why no major music players seem to do it). Hence why it must be disabled by default!

    To me, instead of rating files, i keep my albums split into 2 directories and use smart playlists to keep them seperate. One directory is music that sucks, the other is ftw music (which I use filters for to also split it into newer music).

  70. Wes Mar 11, 2009 7:44 am Permalink

    One idea is to create a field in the Songbird preferences where you can type a personal PIN code, so Songbird will only use the ratings saved with that specific PIN code after it.

  71. Markus Apr 1, 2009 4:49 pm Permalink

    The problem about _NOT_ sharing ratings is as following:

    I use a Mac and a Windows PC and want to play the music from the windows-pc on my mac.

    Windows: foobar2000
    Mac: Songbird

    So with nearly 100k Songs its USELESS to MANUALLY tranfer and sync all ratings.
    The Hash changes even if I add another Genre, so who cares? I have my own Genres, my own Tags and I remove crappy Standard-Tags from iTunes (so I only have 3 kinds of each music style, not the full-fletched style-splitting i.e. minimal, dance, electro, house, and all kinds of it… its simply “house” or “dance” for me; Also is it a BIG advantage when DJing… 4 kinds of Music, nobody cares if its called house or dance, its the same kind)

    So, my proposition: Make it a OPTINAL feature to add “Rating” – Tag to the Files and sync it like any other ID3-Tag.
    Imho BitTorrent also does share Tracks for a limited Time, so “no longer shared”-mp3 can be tagged with rating and so on.

    I would recommend to make it a checkbox behind Rating whether to share it or not. MassTagging is possible, so I see no cons.

    Ofc OFF by default, but there HAS TO BE such a feature, not everyone has a multi-user-system. Or another proposition to fix this: Set the (system/account-wiede) setting: Ratings-Tag-Name, i.e. rating_daddy, rating_son, rating_mom, everone can pick according to his preference, still optional. The best of both worlds.

    Please consider this issue as important, not being able to share is a big con for me.

    regards
    markus

    p.s.: to the EQ-discussion: ofc, the Sound-Engineer optimizes the Song for your special room with exactly your sound-system….. wow, wanna have one, too. *BIG d’oh*