Let me be frank for a second: I’ve been writing the exact same blog post about beta releases for a while, and it’s getting kind of old. For all of us. Let’s get the pertinent information out of the way:
It’s 1.8.0b3. You can download it off the nightly builds page. It has release notes. You should log bugs in Bugzilla. We fixed a bug that caused a deadlock on Mac when you were playing a video and clicked Next or Back a whole bunch. This is our last planned beta for 1.8.0. Call your mother. She misses you.
I refrained from dropping a #2-themed post on you guys for the last beta, so to make up for it, here’s a #3-themed commercial. I can’t hear the words “number three” without thinking of it. You’re welcome.
104 Comments
SubscribeI’m a Linux user, I know I know…it’s not supported. But the only way I can use the gui to launch (aka click an icon) any of the songbirds since support was dropped is to include gksudo in the command. Without this command it will simply not launch.
I always get this error in terminal:
(songbird-bin:5065): Gdk-WARNING **: gdk_window_set_icon_list: icons too large
Using gksudo, I still get the error but Songbird launches just fine. Having to enter my password everytime I open songbird is only a minor inconvenience, but still…does anyone have any ideas as to a solution for this problem.
Also a Linux user. (Gee, who would’a thunk?) Songbird appears to be getting slower and slower as the builds get larger. I like to stay up to date on these sort of things, but I think I’ll just go back a few versions when everything seemed to work honky-dory.
What mozilla/gecko platform is 1.8 based on? And what versions are you planning to use (or are using) for version 2.0?
Jajajajajajaj was very amusing the commercial one.
How good news that is the it finishes beta.
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A new beta, awesome!
…just as clumsy as 1.7 and Shoutcast radio still doesn’t work. Kthxbai. Hello, Media Monkey.
hey! what about the album artwork?, it still missing in W7, pleaseee…
The Last.fm plugin doesn’t connect in this build. I keep getting the last.fm page to authorise an application to connect, but after I click OK it fails to login.
Also a Linux user. I think that Songbird definitely has taken a dive performance-wise since it lost official support, but who could expect otherwise? Older builds are definitely more stable and usable.
Since so many people jumped ship from Amarok 2, I really thought Songbird would grab all that userbase. Oh, well. Here’s hoping it gets forked someday.
I like to stay up to date on these sort of things, but I think I’ll just go back a few versions when everything seemed to work honky-dory.
aussies make funny adverts
It seems that next version will be released in Q4 2010. Would it be possible to release an 1.8.5 with Xulrunner 1.9.2 and performance improvement before? It will be hard to keep this slow versio for 6 months…
I’m expecting an answer… Please!
Last.fm plugin does not connect!!
Bummin’ to hear there’s still so many problems abounding. But that’s why they call it Beta!
I’ve got such a large library (over 19k songs) that I’ve passed on the last few versions – 1.4.3 is working pretty well for me. It needs to be two things for me to ‘upgrade’ – faster, and more stable. Otherwise it’s a downgrade.
Glad you guys are still doing the Linux builds, thanks for that. I’m actually more likely to give that a try, than risk borking my Windows install.
@Conor – if you’re still in touch w/ any, make sure they know there’s the GetNightingale project.
Last.fm has stopped connecting for 1.73 too. Must be an issue / change on the Last.fm end.
I can’t import my music playlist and music smart playlist to iTunes, when I open iTunes, appear a windows “songbirditunesagent.exe stop working” and I have to choose close program in this window, any idea/solutions?
Correction
I can’t export my music playlist and music smart playlist to iTunes, when I open iTunes, appear a windows “songbirditunesagent.exe stop working” and I have to choose close program in this window, any idea/solutions?
That video is only slightly obtruding on the tabs. xD
It’s looking better, better.
this is disappointing…constant minor freezes(which it recovers from) should you try to sync a mobile device(Android phone), more than 8x the wait to mount the device(what used to be near instantaneous now takes at least a minute and a half), performance hit noticeable in a smaller(~3k songs) library, and that’s just what i’ve noticed in the first 40 minutes, god help you if you want to do something like look at your library or go into settings or alt-tab to/from Songbird while it’s syncing anything…
Please consider doing a 1.8.x update with no other purpose than to increase performance. It will do a lot to make things better. It means a lot more to people than crippled video support(none of the files I have work in it due to codec issues), visual changes, and pretty much anything else you’re focusing on. CD burning may be a nice idea, but get the basics covered before you implement something which isn’t a must have in today’s world. I generally defend you guys on this stuff, but I’m getting tired of seeing performance take a massive hit with each release in favor of features that aren’t needed.
I upgraded from version 1.7.x because I hoped someone has fixed the fundamental search problem here logged and discussed in length here;
http://getsatisfaction.com/songbird/topics/slow_library_search
But no. Instead of trying to fixing this or answer the communities questions who are trying to help, let’s bulldoze over with more video features. Not only this. but on Windows platform, whenever the app performs a long running task longer than ~3 seconds it sends the Windows message pump into a non-responsive mode, causing Windows to treat Songbird as locked and the Songbird window becomes ghosts and cannot be clicked. Well done. Together as a community, it looks like we will finally achieve our goal to one day make Songbird a single-thread, single-operation app. I hate to get off-topic, but does anyone want to help me with a console-only branch of Songbird?
Songturd. Awesome.
To be clearer;
I upgraded from Songbird_1.7.3-1700
I reverted back to version 1,7,3t and suddenly, again, like magic;
* Whenever a long-running task takes longer than around 3 seconds the UI does not report to the Windows message pump as inactive, so the window does not lock.
* Library searches go from 20+ seconds back to 10 seconds.
How can I be any help?
@maddogeco The advert is from New Zealand, not Australia.
is there some kind of “mark as spam” option that I’m missing? because if there isn’t there needs to be one – there several spammers in the addon comment threads in addition to little mister shure microphones up there.
lol guess u not even reading your blog, the lastfm plugin is still not working and we still havent hear from you yet.
last.fm issue addressed here:
http://getsatisfaction.com/songbird/topics/cant_login_last_fm-z7ql0
Another Linux user, Songbird 1.8.X works pretty well for me, even faster than previous release.
However, the Last.FM plugin issue is quite annoying. Except that, it surpass other jukebox for better mixed charset handling.
Songbird, I like it, but it is so sl–o—w. And this for such a long time now – I wonder if you guys just wait until computers get faster?
Hey i got a brilliant idea. Instead of using a Mozilla Backend, create your own, but if need be only use it to render websites and thats it. Build the foundations for the program yourself, that way you can control the overall performance for this program much more efficiently. If VLC can be created to use pretty much any codec, a huge range of networking features, a web user interface, amongst many other features, yet it is so damn fast. Fast to load, fast to cache files.
FOCUS ON PERFORMANCE PEOPLE. I am a games developer and I can create a game that has intense 3D graphics, mathematics, physics, artificial intelligence, amongst much more, and it can run smooth on my machine. So why does this “small” app in comparison take a while to load and run.
BACK TO BASICS. REWRITE YOUR FRAMEWORK IF NEED BE. USE A PROPER FAST PLUGIN BASED SYSTEM.
That said, I moved from using Winamp that I used for many many years. I want this application to succeed, so please stop adding more features, and go back to basics.
Peace out
I agree – shelve video stuff and more device support for later and just upgrade general performance. Its great that you want it to be able to do a lot of stuff, but if it can’t do any of it well people won’t want to use it.
NEED ADDITION FOR CLASSICAL MUSIC !!
I Like Songbird very much but i had to deinstall sb and (unfortunately) to install itunes, because i am one of those guys listening to pop/rock AND classical music. I am missing a “work” tab, which is useful when a classical work has more movements, so i have a better overview and i can sort according to title, album or work. I would be very pleased if developers od songbird bear my suggestion in mind.
Greetings
Wulfenstein
I feel to tell them that I don’t believe that the team of Songbird will stop to make. Because since you associates with Philips they have changed a little and I believe that most of the new characteristic is because Philips wants them (That believes).
Just another Linux user here. I found it amusing (read as annoying) that when I started up Songbird today I was asked to fill out a Songbird 1.0 Survey. Problem is the second I pressed yes it brought me to a page that thanked me for filling out the survey before I even filled out the survey. WTF?
Jesus, what keeps breaking the last.fm addon? Second time this has happened in the last couple months.
Let’s dump video support, make device support entirely addon-based, and work on performance! I’ll give 1.7.3 a try which is supposedly faster.
Scratch that, 1.7.3 was just as bad as 1.8.0b3. But I just tried 1.4.3 and it was blazing fast, I didn’t have to wait three second after clicking a band name to have the list populate. You can find it on FileHippo, http://www.filehippo.com/download_songbird/6782/.
I’m a windows user with a library of almost 40k songs. Songbird was never the fastest, but it’s been getting more and more unbearable with every update. It got to the point where it would take a few minutes for search results to come up, and I’m running a core i7 at 3.4ghtz with 8gb of ram! Sorry, I’m switching to foobar2000 until things change. It was nice while it lasted. Foobar2000 gives me instant results and speed.
So… It’s July 26th. You guys still have 11 points or so according to the tracker, but most seem website related or trivial.
Any updates? Certifying with Phillips?
Wait a second… You guys had an intake velocity of -1 points. What?
Well,
I too was hoping songbird would help me play my flacs on a mac, but it’s so slow for any single action that I gave up and switched to MediaMonekey in Wine. Would you believe it ? MediaMonkey in wine is still better than the native Songbird. Poor Songbird
I hope someday, the dev team will listen to it’s “customers” (almost every comments of every release announcement is related to poor performances), and try to fix those bases before adding more features. Even version 1.4.3 seemed slow to me.
I’ll come back from time to time to look at comments and see if things improve. Or maybe I’ll just get used to MediaMonkey and stay with it.
Good luck, dev team, Songbird needs you.
I love Songbird so much but I downgraded to 1.4 because 1.7.3 is so slow. Why cant you just fix the speed. Oh science I would pay 20 dollars for this program if it didnt take 5 god damn seconds to load an artist and that my favortie add on Bird Tabs would work…
22 days without a blogpost… that’s like a year, in intarwebs time!
What’s the state of the state? What bugs have been fixed? What’s the memory profile and speed looking like? What’s the frequency, Kenneth?
Inquiring minds want to know!
Please, I have to know, when will songbird be compatible with ipods on windows 7?
until it is im stuck with itunes
@stevedog
I did everything that was in that post but it still didn’t fix the last.fm issue. It won’t login at all and just gives “An error occurred while communicating with the Last.fm servers”
Pretty much this error http://getsatisfaction.com/songbird/topics/last_fm_scrobbling_not_working_even_after_patch
顶一下
I was genuinely excited about this post, until I realized…
…I’m a linux user.
Oh. Guess I’ll leave, then. Sorry to have ever bothered you folks.
how can i display filter pane with the media flow on the top, i can get only one or the other
thanks
Downloas Songbird 1.8.b3 64/32-bit .deb installer
https://sites.google.com/site/songbird18b3/songbird
Guys, I second everything regarding performance, songbird is getting slower and slower, I have a mere 5000 songs and the search function is unbearable, the UI has extreme lag on it. I’m running on a 2.66 Dual Core Mac Book pro with 8G of memory, SongBird 1.7.3. Songbird should be blowing itunes out of the water but it terms of performance it’s like I’ve jumped back 15years.
Sort the fundamentals out, I know a huge amount of peoples time and effort is put into this and it’s appreciated but the lack of performance will drive folk away.
Cheers
@ oz-experience
Right click on the media-flow panel and select “Settings>Show Filter Pane”. This should make the filter pane appear below the Media Flow panel.
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What’s new for the songbid 1.8, folks ?
Mates,
i’m with songbird since 1.0 and i really enjoy the look, the features, the open source concept….
but the one thing i desperately need is a responsive search function. i have about 35000 tracks in my lib and every single one of my 3 pcs gets locked into 100% cpu usage for minutes (up to more than 10!) with no result.
i don’t expect songbird to be the fastest, most bug free blabla … that’s maybe for multi-million dollar companies to accomplish, but somehow in some way this problem must be fixed.
as this problem is the same on an intel and 2 amd machines with completely different configurations (except winXP) i don’t really know how to report the bug or the circumstances. sometimes lib-search is quick but 2 searches later it locks it all up.
wishing you all the best and a sh*tload of motivation. i love songbird and how far you’ve come. don’t give up on that please, i’d love to keep using this beauty of a software!
Seriously, August 9th now. The tracker says no work has been accomplished on Orbital in 3 weeks.
I am yet another ubuntu user and I am really upset about the move to “not support” Linux officially anyway . . . come on guys . . . Firefox . . . Thunderbird . . . Google Chrome . . . Skype . . . Boxee . . . Adobe Flash . . . Adobe Air and the list goes on . . . the best software is multi platform supported and embrassed . . .
I can’t understand why you would remove it from the download page . . . It is disrespectful . . . I could understand giving Linux users the latest stable deb that you “officially supported” like Skype and others but it is like you have turned your back on us . . . we are the users that share your products the most . . . I use Songbird on my linux pc at home but I have installed dozens of copies for windows users . . . because it is (or “was” ) multi platform supported
I feel like you guys turned your backs on us and this isn’t right . . . offer the last stable deb on your download page of linux at the minimum or what you should do is open up a apt channel and let the linux development move at it’s own pace
I have to agree – putting a note on the downloads page that explains the state of the Linux build would be nice. As would changing the answer to the FAQ entry for “Debian/Ubuntu Package Repositories?”.
While I love the answer “We’re working with Ubuntu to try and get Songbird into their repositories.”… if that no longer reflects reality, it needs changing.
Over a month with no movement. Are things going poorly? Do you guys need support in some way? What can the community do to help?
Seconding gryphon!
Maybe you don’t need to be cherished… But if you do, please give us some love too
and some news!
Lucky we have TRAC to still see some moves (by the way, there was a change today for 1.8 there… A new build coming soon??)
Read you soon, I hope
@katana346
it works
thank you very much mate
by the way lyricmaster does not display the lyrics anymore
only a link to their website http://www.lyricsvip.com
any fix ?
thanks in advance
Hey,
Is Songbird dead?
I’m a MediaMonkey user intrigued by open source alternatives (aTunes, Songbird etc).
When I have the ability to select all results from a filter and edit the genre, artist, common information of any kind for all tracks found, then you guys will have something here.
For now, filtering is slow (updates on every character entered rather than waiting for completed criteria as a whole) and the lack of tag management from filter results makes this just a nice try but not something usable.
And if I’m wrong about any of those issues, then it’s too damn hard to for an average user to figure out anyway in which case it’s still a failing grade.
Looks pretty, but it’s not ready for prime time yet.
There are no recent blog entries, no new versions. Is Songbird dead?
Yep, looks pretty much dead at this point. Oh well, it was a good run… *plays taps*
We’re not dead (nor pining for the fjords, though parrots aren’t really songbirds, are they?)… we’re working on getting 1.8 finalized and certified as quickly as possible. We are still on-track for an August release, as per the roadmap.
I will try to get more information out on the blog and work with the community to make sure everyone is in the loop on releases, performance and features… but it’s only my second week with POTI, so I might not have all the answers at my fingertips yet.
More soon!
Monty Pythons rulez!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vuW6tQ0218
Thanks a lot Rand for this update
Huzzah, Rand! Signs of life! Looking forward to the update, definitely.
And a quick little search for ‘singing parrot’ on YouTube will either convince you they are or aren’t, depending.
@Ringo Fonebone – this is very easy to do. Type your filter and let it process.
PROTIP: type fast, so it accepts the entire word. If you type slow, it starts processing your request between each letter.
Use the standard control-A to select All, then right-click and select ‘View Metadata’. Changes made here modify all the selected items.
I found songbrid today.
I started and stopped using it today.
Search is slow. It must be near instant. Waiting more than 500 ms is way too long.
Speed aside, searching is not easy, same poor design as iTunes.
Shame.
Well, I like the design, and even if i didn’t, there are enough add ons to change it.
My Question: Can you make songbird more adapted to windows 7 taskbar?
Continue the great work, a little more stable and this is going to beat media player 12 and itunes together
Once again, can we add some FLAC album art support? I’ve been with Songbird since the beginning but if still doesn’t get done then I will need to move on….
Oh Vincent, you poor thing! You had to wait less than a second for something! I’m so sorry you spent so much money on software that’s completely uselessly slow! And so glad you shared your thoughts on something you barely touched with the rest of us!
/sarcasm
I need the iPod-Support, otherwise this software could not replace iTunes. Please do something about the Performance as well. On my machine it takes over an agonizing minute to boot and its an quite new notebook with core i5 and 4gigs of RAM running windows 7 64 bit, even some of this load time to the MediaFlow Add-On. Even iTunes ist mindblowing fast compared to this. But in general the Software ist very good.
In my opinion, you should also start working on something like “Songbird little”, only the music player without browser, that way it would be faster and probably more stable, cause good browsers we already have, but players like this there aren’t has many as I would like. Still, just an opinion
you should keep the interface & completely rebuild the software.
And you should listen the users by removing the browser part.
I mean who use the integrated browser ? Maybe 5% users ?
Made a refferendum and you will see.
People already have a web browser.
At least if you don’t want to remove it please make it optionnal.
(Firefox 3.x is definately not a good browser & everyday there is more users that switches from firefox to chrome/chromium.)
So you realy should listen your users !
For now people who are looking for a fast audio player with a nice interface have look at foobar + Silent Night customization :
http://www.foobar2000.org/download
http://arnie77.deviantart.com/art/Silent-Night-V-4-154667359
@Vincent – please provide an example of searching that you approve of. I’d be interested to see how it’s done.
I kinda like the built in browser, but I almost never use it. I’d be quite happy to drop it, if it makes a smaller footprint, easier code-base maintenance, and moar speedz!
I’ll be setting up a survey soon, to get a better idea of which features people like and use most, which need improvement, and which don’t make sense. I look forward to getting more clear feedback from the community.
Also, I should have a firm drop date for 1.8 shortly.
I’d be glad to answer that survey.
).
I personally really like the browser embedded in SB. That is what make the difference with other players. I’m even ready to accept a short drop of performance to have that (ok, not THAT drop we have now
It’s so useful to learn about what you are listening to, or to discover new music to download.
I’m no tech, but I even doubt that removing the browser, if making sense technically, will upgrade performance that much. Performance seems to be related to database management more than to browser integration. And the underlying layer of XULRunner (or equivalent, sorry for the confusion) will be needed. Maybe the perf is more related to that kind of thing or the database, than the brower itself.
And of course, in addition to better perfs #1, keeping the browser #2, my #3 is definitely Podcast. I can’t understand that Philips does not demand this feature in its new player. It’s really the last big lack compared to iTunes, imho.
Wow, hadn’t written that much for long
I’m glad to hear things are happening.
First of all, I believe most of the codebase, including the library tab, is based off Firefox. A songbird without it would be radically changed.
Besides, I like the automatic pop-up on pages with music that list all the music on the page. I want that to be emphasized, because it seems to be the main integration between web and music for songbird.
Lastly, I find the amount of updates on add-ons to be disturbing. You guys need to speed up Songbird, wow some people with performance/design, and get some more people to pitch in, or at least port add-ons from Firefox into this database.
I’m still laughing at Mighty’s comment calling Firefox a bad browser.
I was talking about firefox 3.x
In past the best browser was firefox with no other choice.
Now you can chose between firefox, chrome/chromium & opera.
I confirm that I don’t need a web browser in my audio player. And I don’t need video support. Better using dedicated applications.
People are free to chose softwares they want to use.
I mean I would like to use songbird but I don’t want to have to use firefox.
Enjoying the beta, but this bug with last.fm is super annoying. My scrobbling history is experiencing a dry patch. Any help appreciated!
I just found this post that explains how to edit a .js file and get it working.
http://getsatisfaction.com/songbird/topics/cant_login_last_fm-z7ql0
You`re running out of days in August to release this, gentlemen
Perhaps you should work on a light version, without browser, video support and optional device support; I’ll gladly go for that since I don’t use any of those, nor will in the future. I just want a good audio player, songbird already is, but it can be better.
You have 6 days left in this month, guys!
Any word/plans to add support for the Samsung Galaxy S?
I don’t think there’s any need for a ‘lite’ version… *IF* all those features stay in plug-ins, as they should. If you want ‘em, add ‘em. If you don’t, don’t.
The default install is ‘lite’, and you add weight as you desire. I never add any of the scrobbling, concert-finding, or lyrics-finding plugins, for instance. I would turn off the cover-art-finding if I could – I think that should be a plugin as well. Everything in my collection that HAS cover art, has it… the constant scrabbling for info that doesn’t exist annoys me and my network connection. :p
The point of a plug-in based framework is that your core stays light and fast and extensible. It lets you add new features without adding noise to the app as a whole.
Now… has Songbird managed to do this? I dunno. It’s not easy, that’s for sure!
Racing the clock…
Not an expert of XUL, but I doubt about removing web browser from Songbird completely.
Basically, the interface of Songbird relies on the JavaScript interceptor.
Slow because of web browser? I don’t think so. Firefox 4 is bleeding fast here. Well, certainly it would take Songbird some time to switch to Gecko 1.9.3 platform.
BTW: Time for a 1.8b4 release?
it takes nearly 2 months to move from b3 to final with no releases in between? This final release better have some surprise up its sleeve to make the wait worth it because otherwise that’s pretty ridiculous.
Can’t imagine how long we’ll have to wait for 2.0…
Well, there’s now 3 days left in August and still no final 1.8 and I’m not surprised. I feel like I have lost the will to wait. I hope Songbird will soon be just like Firefox and will hopefully be replaced with a better Chromium based alternative. The minute something surfaces I’m shooting the Songbird and eating it. I seriously don’t understand why they don’t switch to a chromium based browser. Flock did it and the result is a faster browser and overall better experience for me, the end user. It seems like progress with Firefox and Songbird just can’t keep up with Google’s awesome browser. I will probably download 1.8 when it finally makes its appearance in September but I’m sure that I will be underwhelmed again and then have to wait 3 months for a new one.
To me it seems like the moment POTI took over the development of Songbird, things started to go wrong. I had to re-install earlier versions to get SB working again. At he moment there are to many features being worked on, instead of making the system fast and stable.
Also the number of Add-on updates and numbers of add-ons in general went down dramatically, as if people lost their interest in them (not counting the increasing number of commercial add-ons).
I’m still hoping that SB will get the essential improvements soon, as it is still much better than many other players/library organizers, and I have tested more than 10 different programs since SB’s bad performance. Would be a bitter loss of a motivated project of individuals, which could be ruined now by a company.
Let’s hope and wait…
Opinions??
Wow I followed Song Bird at the very beginning of the first betas hoping someone would finally put out a good alternative to iTunes, we’re all waiting for this.
But I remember having tried three times, and three times I quickly stopped using it for the performance but also the interface “snap”.(also because it didn’t correctly sync with my iTunes library)
Now, I read the comments and I see that it has become a bloatware full of useless addons & functions. (why no Iphone app ?)
I am disappointed but not surprised: 99% of the time, software projects have to stop because either they’ve been bought by someone, or because nobody had interest anymore so the developpment stopped or…because the devs focused so much on adding more functions than they could handle with each new release, that even maintaining the performances becomes impossible…
Remember the core aim of Song Bird from the beginning: being a better alternative to iTunes, that’s all people are asking for and that’s all you should focus on.
Also fuck Phillips if that’s related..
Ever heard of “Zawinski’s Law”?
Since performance got worse with every release I started looking for alternatives on windows (never used it on Linux there are way better alternatives there). I ended up using Foobar with the columns plugin. The standard theme may not be as shiny as Songbirds gui but damn it is fast and responsive.
I second the “Fuck Philips” sentiment.
Ever since Philips bought POTI out, the software suffered from their demands (no more iPod support, no more Linux support, unnecessary Video support and other proprietary Philips Songbird features instead of stability and performance fixes for the free player.
The case against is “without their funding there’d be nothing”, but let’s face it, a broken Player _is_ nothing.
Songbird can never be a mainstream software. It has been suffering from lots of issues plus a new one called Philips… It’s unable to do the basics in good performance let alone bringing us more!
I had VERY high hopes when I first saw it. Rest in Peace, Songbird!
For now people who are looking for a fast audio player with a nice interface have look at foobar + Silent Night customization :
http://www.foobar2000.org/download
http://arnie77.deviantart.com/art/Silent-Night-V-4-154667359
Thanks for this nice software. Keep up the good work. Looking forward to the next release.
And August is fuckin over.
how to update from 1.7.3 ?
change the app.update.channel to beta doesnt work.
Yeah, this is pretty ridiculous. I’m really not the melodramatic sort to complain about the tiniest thing, or say something like “OMG, I’M NEVER USING SONGBIRD AGAIN!”, but I mean seriously, the amount of bugs in the previous release coupled with the prolonged silence – apart the occasional, and unfulfilled, promise of more info soon – is just not on. I mean, at least let us know what’s happening.
The thing is they can’t win now. It’s the last day of August and for some reason they promised a new version by the end of the month, and people have become rather fixated with this. If they suddenly release a new version today, and it has just one bug, people will say they rushed it out just so they could keep their promise of delivering in August.
The thing to do is surely this: update the blog. Just tell us what’s happening. Transparency is always the answer. The thing is, it does matter. Making a commitment to a piece of music software is, actually, quite a big deal. Switching between them is no mean feat. It’s therefore important to keep everyone updated so we don’t think we’re backing a dead horse.
Say something.
August is indeed about over, and we’ve been juggling like mad to get this out today… but it’s looking more like end of this week or sometime next week at best.
I truly apologize about the delay!
There have been a lot of projects competing for resources in a very tight time frame, and we’re doing the best we can to get the new version locked and released. Hopefully, some of the new processes we’re putting in place will let us do this in a much more timely manner going forward, and also allow us to incorporate feedback from users in the community in a more transparent way.
Finally news, it was already time.
Good to see how’s it going this version is.
Hurrah, news! And HONEST news!
That’s all I’m asking for, really. I want to be kept in the loop about what’s going on, good or bad. I think that’s true for most of us.
@Elliot Harris is quite correct – it’s a BIG deal for me to change music players. I’ve got about 20k songs, with about 7k of those painstakingly rated, catagorized, and put into playlists. I’m almost back to where I was when my former favorite client – MusicMatch Jukebox – became unusably wrecked via forced updates and then abandoned.
I don’t want to change again.
How about not giving any release dates anymore?
All it does is stalling Add-On development, since the new stable release is due “any minute now” and developers decide to not release their add-ons for soon to be outdated versions.
Please make sure that 1.8 will be the definitive version for some time to come so the add-on devs will be able to catch up.
Songbird has been in a state of “constant beta” since 1.4.3
We’re a few days late, but it’s here: http://blog.songbirdnest.com/2010/09/02/songbird-1-8-0-available/
I’d make fun of our Build Engineer for the “coincidence” that release 1.8.0 is also build 1800… but that’s just how it happens sometimes. I’m sure. Right?