Yup, we have another beta for you guys. The CD Rip stuff is now installed by default, so no magical voodoo is required and there’s no need to have iTunes installed. We fixed a few bugs too, cuz that’s just how we roll. You do need to download the full installer because we aren’t generating updates from the last beta to this one. Be sure to quit Songbird before installing over your current installation. Trust us, it’s better that way.
The Development and QA teams have been burning the midnight and weekend oil to bake these builds and bust these bugs and all they’re getting out of it is a never ending supply of Indian and Thai food. That and your undying gratitude of course. Think happy thoughts of them while you ride your bike or head to a movie this weekend as they’ll all be living vicariously through you until this release goes live.
Several of you reported a virus warning you received via Bugzilla, Twitter and Get Satisfaction yesterday. Mozilla reported that AVG confirmed it is a false positive that will be removed in the next Definitions update, so there’s no cause for alarm and you can fly your bird without worry. Thanks for all the looking out!
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[...] Source : Blog de Songbird [...]
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SubscribeDownloading Mac version, love your work, everything is being polished like it should.
Songbird next number one media player!
Does this support Lyrics Master, Mash Tape and Last.fm Scrobbling Support
Hi,
Songbird is certainly going to finds its way between top level media players thanks to ints pluggible architecture and very polished design.
Though I believe CD ripping should have come after video playback because all users do have some video library but few of them uses cd-ripping to make mp3 out of CDs. But Kudos for bringing up this feature.
I am a linux user and so I approciate if I can find some web page explaining which features are scheduled for Linux for each version.
I do not know what should I expect to see in this release or even whether I should think about updating my 1.2 to the new release or not.
Thanks.
Can you please let me know what new features this version bring to Linux?
@Sarah: You might find some informations there: http://wiki.songbirdnest.com/Roadmap
Kanye is going to be an excellent release. Great work! I love you guys!
Since we didn’t had Songbird 1.3, many of the new/better features are acumulated… Thus, I too think Kayne will be outstanding!!! Many features and improvements…
PS: I just bought a Mac. Hope the OS X version is being treated with love, rsrs.
Good luck this weekend! Thanks for all your hard work team!
CD RIP for Linux is still not added? What a disappointment …
Linux missed the IPOD addon !
Cannot run SB anymore after updating to Karmic, some problems with GStreamer apparently
.
I saw Songbird and it was love at first sight. Beta installed and running.
Thank you guys, you rock.
Doesn’t like Windows 7 64bit, running fine on my other 32bit XP box though.
Works fine on Windows 7 RTM 64bit here..
When will CD Rip be available for Mac and Linux? I couldn’t see anything in the roadmap that specified which features are windows only, and which are actually cross platform. It’s really a shame that more and more features appear to be windows only. I’m starting to wonder if the Mac and Linux versions are eventually going to be abandoned.
Could we please have some clarification?
Will CD Ripping on Linux be included in 1.4 final or not? There were two features which were scheduled for 1.4 that make Songbird (for me at least) virtually perfect as a decent alternative for iTunes on Linux: Ripping and Podcast support.
I see the podcast feature has been delayed and now I read that ripping isn’t in the current betas. But the language is not clear at all. Is it not being supported at all on Linux in 1.4 or just not added to the builds yet? If the former, then there are very few new features for us Linux users. That’s a crying shame if you ask me.
Any clarity here would be great.
TIA
@ LInux and Mac users: Apologies if my verbage was at all unclear. CD Rip will not be included in 1.4 Final. It is Windows only for now. We do plan to add support for Mac and Linux but we do not have a time line yet. While it’s true there is not a new, bright, shiny feature, for Mac and Linux there are overall performance improvements, bug fixes, etc.
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@Laura
Can you all change the Roadmap so it accurately reflects which of the main operating systems will receive which new features in 1.4? I’ve seen a number of Linux/Mac users request this before but I’ve never heard someone from POTI directly address why it has not been done.
CD ripping isn’t very necessary for me as a linux user of Songbird.
Accurate ripping is needed for this action & I use ‘Rubyripper’ as an accurate CD-ripper. It’s the linux alternate of windows’ famous Exact Audio Copy.
Won’t fly on linux, and likely not on Windows or Mac either. The latter two are obvious, since iTunes is just better than Songbird, hands down. The former is debatable, but likely true for KDE and gnome (GTK+). I mean, there are already comparable “jukebox” apps that integrate better in KDE and (especially) GTK than songbird (e.g. Amarok and Banshee).
I bet if there were some sort of (not half-baked) GTK-integration, songbird would be a lot more popular. Right now it’s just one of these ugly-ass apps, inconsistent with the rest of most linux user interfaces, that feels bloated (with few good add-ons among the endless sea of crappy ones) that’s sort of interesting to check out once in a while (e.g. when new versions come out) but that isn’t seriously considered by many as a proper replacement for similar apps like itunes and banshee.
@molecule-eye
I actually don’t like iTunes myself. It installs a load of crap with it – hell, I think it even needs a full installation of Quicktime just to run and there’s far more capability to expand Songbird than iTunes. Just my two cents, but I’d rather use Songbird over iTunes any day.
@molecule-eye, everyone is entitled to their opinion.
However, personally I find many of the songbird plugins good enough to justify my use of Songbird over iTunes currently. It also supports many more file formats (such as FLAC and Ogg too). Furthermore, anyone with a media player that isn’t an iPod, can’t use iTunes anyway.
Once Video Support and Podcasting support, get added to Songbird (which is upcoming), you will find that Songbird will be easily able to compete against iTunes, and once the new XULRunner/Asynchronous library patches get integrated, its almost guarenteed that winamp is doomed.
In regards to Banshee:
1) Banshee doesn’t support features such as theming last I checked, it isn’t compatible with Windows, and its extension support to me seems pretty rushed (all the linux players I’ve seen have the same problem). Mono isn’t really designed to allow its developers to really mess with its interface. Thats why Songbird/Firefox uses its own. Thats also why integration is worse for now (but will get fixed).
2) Songbird supports more environments. On OSX, neither Songbird nor Banshee have much chance of competing against iTunes (because Apple users walk into an Applecentre and users walk out convinced iTunes is the only thing out there). Either way, looks like Songbird 1.4 is better then Banshee on OSX anyway.
3) The gap between Banshee and Songbird is much smaller then you think, and once video/podcasting is added, Songbird will probably accellerate ahead.
4) Finally, seems a bit odd to only target the minor platforms. One would have thought that supporting the OS with the largest userbase would make sense..
Either way, I didn’t really like banshee much, and I feel that Songbird’s design has the best long term chance for success. Not really a linux user anymore (Linux has some rediculous design issues).
@molecule-eye
As you said yourself, everyone’s entitled to their opinion. Personally, I don’t want every app on my system to have a different, flashy look. I want programs that fit in nicely with the other program on my desktop. Songbird has theming, but I’ve yet to see a theme besides the default that I like.
I also take issue with your suggestion that the gap between Songbird and banshee is smaller than we think. Video will not be ready in Songbird for at least another 2 months, and podcasting is not even scheduled yet on the roadmap. Not to mention that several basic features do not exist in Linux, including CD rip/writing, playing CD’s, watching DVD’s, a mass storage class, and so on… These features will take at least a year, probably longer to develop. In the meantime, Songbird has huge performance issues. It takes over 30 seconds to even start the software. Who cares if it can browse the web or if you can rip a CD (on windows only)? It’s no fun to use software that feels sluggish, and the fact of the matter is that POTI is always making promises and never delivering. Songbird will never be a finished project, and there will always be people like yourself saying, “just wait another release, that feature will be here soon.” In the meantime, the people behind Banshee are getting shit done. Just imagine what their media player will look like in 2 years when Songbird finally gets feature parity with the 2006 version of iTunes.
meh, my previous post was inteded for naaaaa, not molecule-eye
Am I and the three or so other people the only ones who are having lots of trouble syncing an iPod with the 1.4 branch? It seems nobody has mentioned it at all, so I assume the issue is unique to iPods.
@Forest,
After looking at banshee it appears that the difference is that Songbird has a company behind it, and obviously creating resources and features is allot harder when you also need to be keeping books and making sure you have funding. Hence why many of the features are Windows based, because the biggest target audience will be Windows users. Lately I heard that 1 in 100 computer users are on a Linux based machine and 1 in 10 bought computers are macs… so that’s 11/100 possible unhappy customers who have a problem with songbirds lack of features on their systems.
With POTI potentially trying to license songbird to companies it would therefore make sense for it to be more windows based because they need to make money. So maybe in 5 years time Banshee might not be being developed any more but POTI will be making money from songbird still? If they actually had to deviate from a UNIX based type of operating system and had to use multiple sources of libraries to implement features I would expect they’d struggle a bit like POTI.
@ ethanjim
So the crux of your argument is basically that Banshee is not struggling like Songbird because Songbird has more money? Songbird has a team of professional people paid to work full-time on their product. Banshee is developed primarily by volunteers. I hardly see how this is an advantage for Banshee. Usually, the point of paying people is that it frees up time so they have more time to work on something, not less.
But putting that issue aside, you are also mistaken about “UNIX based type” operating systems. The next release of Banshee runs on Windows. It’s actually a fairly straightforward port since Banshee is written in Mono, which is basically an open source implementation of Microsoft’s .Net development framework.
You are right that Windows users significantly outnumber Linux and Mac users, but I don’t particularly buy your argument that this is the best strategy for Songbird. Microsoft has a monopoly on users, but Linux and OS/X have a monopoly on open source software developers. If you want the community to help develop your product then you have to give them a carrot. What kind of Linux or Mac user is going to volunteer time working on a software project that doesn’t offer the same basic features to them as everyone else? Actually, forget the “same basic features.” POTI can’t even be bothered to change the Roadmap so that it accurately reflects the fact that key features are Windows-only. That is misleading and harmful to their end goal.
Besides, there are a number of companies making money writing code for Linux. I can think of Canonical, Red Hat, Novell, Intel, and Google, just to name a few. Money is really not the issue for POTI.
The big difference as I see it is that Songbird is taking forever to mature. The project hardly seems as relevant these days as when it started, and I’m not convinced that it will still be around in 5 years as you suggest. I hope I’m wrong because I do still believe in their lofty goals, but the thing is, computers are getting smaller, not faster. Songbird is a 900 pound gorilla, and it’s always playing catch-up on features. On the other hand, Banshee has a lot of momentum. Their product is maturing at an amazingly quick pace, and it seems like they have more practical ambitions than Songbird that better fit into the direction computers are heading.
For example, I could never run Songbird on a netbook, but Banshee runs just fine on slow computers and even has a new alternate user-interface specifically designed for small screens. Most people don’t listen to music on a computer anymore; they listen to it on an mp3 player or a phone. Banshee has the potential to run on a phone. Songbird does not. So while I love the idea behind Songbird, I’m just not convinced that the project is really going anywhere.
I finally found the cd ripping tab but i don’t understand why i cannot rip to mp3. Its like the standard music file type across the board and yet I get the semi obscure ogg, WMA and flac? WTF. I just want a plain ol MP3. Hopefully Kanye will have this.
PS totally offtopic..
how do you guys come up with names for releases. Some of them are hilarious.
One more question. When you rip cds is it just supposed to start or is there a button? I got this big warning saying that this version of songbird is not designed to run on your version of windows which is Win7 Ultimate 32bit. so maybe thats why I cannot rip?
Why the hell are you using a proprietary component for ripping? I can’t believe it. The proprietary parts used to be limited to add-ons, but now you are actually creating a core component based on a proprietary product. I know, cross-platform ripping is hard and I know you need to ship things now (to satisfy investors), but this is the wrong way (even if it is license-compatible).
It is just as wrong to make Mac and Linux second-tier platforms (as someone else already pointed out) — users (like me, I admit) won’t help you with witing code.
I checked the roadmap and it seems that 1.4 will not be available on its own. because we are reaching Kanye release date.
Does the delay means you are working on a cross platform release or after this delay you will only release the windows version
Wheres the 1.4 final? Damnit I’ve been waiting .. waiting .. waiting too long!
..]other great source on this topicis ,blog.songbirdnest.com,..]