Howdy birders!
We’ve been hard at work on something super seeekrit and we’d like to give you a preview. No, it’s not a series of leaked Whitehouse cables or Military secrets, it’s way more awesome: Songbird is coming to Android!
We’ll be continuing to work on it for the next few weeks before a full release, but here’s a build for you guys and dolls to try out. First, though, I need to go over a few pieces of information that will make your use of it more pleasant.
- You’ll need an Android phone that’s running Android 2.1-update1 or newer for the OS
- To install, you will need to enable installing applications from unknown sources (Typically under Settings -> Applications -> Check ‘Unknown Sources’ Option)
- When we release a final version through the Android Market you will need to manually uninstall this build which will wipe data related to it
- This build will expire 4 weeks from today so do get your testing in while it’s hot!
- Download the APK
Let us know what you think! Also, have a quick look at the list of known issues we’ll be fixing before we make the full release, so you know if we’re already covering something you’ve found.
- When launching app via Widget, if drawer was open previously, it gets closed
- If you have an HTC Incredible, the wrong song may play when you have music on both the phone storage and the SD card
- On the HTC Incredible, stuff may be sorted oddly in the Artist, Albums and Songs views when you have music on both the phone storage and SD card
Have a great weekend! 
Here are some screenshots of it in action.
23 Trackbacks
[...] via [...]
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by songbirdteam, Planet Mozilla, Howard, Mike Fitzpatrick, Rand Fitzpatrick and others. Rand Fitzpatrick said: RT @repeatingbeats: ship it! http://blog.songbirdnest.com/2011/01/21/songbird-for-robots/ [...]
[...] ja, natürlich findet ihr auch ein Widget für euren Android-Desktop. Die Songbird-Jungs stellen in ihrem Blog die APK zur Verfügung, also wacker runterladen und in eure Dropbox werfen (so installiere ich externe APKs immer). [...]
[...] ersten Testversion als Android App. Letzte Nacht, bevor ich schlafen ging, habe ich davon auf dem Blog der Entwickler gelesen und musste das natürlich erst nochmal ausprobieren. Schließlich war ich unter Windows lange Zeit [...]
[...] for your Android device. Even better, they’ve announced the availability of the first public beta of Songbird for Android — and we took it for a [...]
[...] Songbird will eventually offer an API allowing third party developers to work with it, which could enable support for add-ons and other functionality although it’s unlikely that most desktop add-ons for Songbird will find their way tot he mobile app for somewhat obvious reasons. [...]
[...] ที่มา: Songbird Blog [...]
[...] for your Android device. Even better, they’ve announced the availability of the first public beta of Songbird for Android — and we took it for a [...]
[...] http://blog.songbirdnest.com/2011/01/21/songbird-for-robots/ Related Posts:Android icecream sandwich 2.4 in the wild…really?Have you tried the Sony Reader app yet? IT Professional Blogger currently obsessed with mobile technology. @wild5tar on Twitter. Anthony Farrior View all posts by Anthony Farrior Anthonys website Related Tags: beta, Linux, Testing Songbird on Android, windows version Previous Topic: Testing the keyboard on the Cliq 2 blog comments powered by Disqus /* [...]
[...] the link below to directly download the app.Download the Songbird for Android .APK file here [via Songbird’s Blog]*Once you download the .APK, just run it and the installation process should begin. You’ll [...]
[...] the APK click here for the website __________________ DID YOU SEE A TUTORIAL ONLINE OR MAKE ONE YOURSELF? IF SO, SHARE IT HERE AT [...]
[...] file. Just keep in mind that there’s plenty of options, like Winamp, VLC, and RealPlayer.[via Songbird Nest] If you enjoyed this article, please consider sharing [...]
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Wochenendliche Android App Vorstellung Folge 63…
Moin Moin, viel zu spät melde ich mich mit der neuen Folge der Wochenendlichen Android App Vorstellung. Bin einfach zu nix gekommen, daher geht’s jetzt auch gleich an die Programme:RadioProfiler — Diplomarbeit: Qualitätskarte der Mobilfunk…
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[...] Image From Songbird Official Blog [...]
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[...] Song und Interpret gefallen. Zur Zeit gibt es die App noch nicht im Market und muss über die Entwickler-Blog heruntergeladen werden. In 4 Wochen soll dann die endgültige Version verfügbar sein. [...]
[...] Descargar Songbird para Android [...]
[...] touche that menu is useless at the momentHere are some screenshots of the application:Frenchbirds Songbirdnest blog Androïd, mobile, music, [...]
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142 Comments
SubscribeI’m using it, and so far it’s pretty smooth. Nice job. I can’t wait until extensions are incorporated.
Also, there should be an option to select music from only the music directory. Songbird is picking up the media from some of my games and apps as songs.
Inquiring minds want to know:
1) is this still based on Mozilla?
2) why is it set to expire?
Very slick, though if you use the widget to open the app while music is playing then it won’t let you select anything until you scroll the album art up and back down. (Nexus S: Android 2.3.1)
Please post a QR code. It’s just a URL, but we wouldn’t have to type it in.
Love it, great to see it! its working great more me, other than the lack of support for my bluetooth headset’s play/pause/next/previous buttons.
Nice, I’ll definitely be trying this out for a bit.
Just for the record, though, it doesn’t seem to have any kinds of settings to tweak(like whether you want to scrobble or automount or “unpause on connect” or something). Is this something you’re planning to add in down the line or you guys going more for the “bare bones” style app?
I keep getting URL unsuccessful
so sick. err, i haven’t tried it yet lol but how effing awesome is this. will test momentarily
It’s slow, but thats to be expected as a beta. Unfortunately, the lack of a landscape orientation is a dealbreaker for me and music apps. There doesn’t seem to be an options menu either (Motorola Droid).
@all
There are no options currently and the menu key doesn’t have anything in it. This is normal
@jamesey
Yep, we’re in agreement there. We may not be able to provide this in the first release though.
@Mark
1) It’s a native Android application.
2) We set to expire because we want to make sure people update to the final release.
@Michael
Ohhh, nice. We hadn’t thought about that. Making note of it.
@rougegoat
Hmmm, it should unpause when the SD card is re-mounted. Good catch. Filing a bug for it. We’d like to support scrobbling as well at some point but we have no time frame for that right now.
@Ethan
Hmm. I have seen that happen but intermittently. Most of our testing so far has been done on Android 2.1 and 2.2 as none of us have a Nexus S. We’ll give it a round of testing in the emulator with 2.3 and try and squash that bug.
@brandon
Can you tell us which parts are slow for you? We do know that the home screen for the application can be a little sluggish because of how it counts things. Is that what you’re referring to? We are planning on having landscape layouts for all parts of the application but not for the initial release.
GAH! mhsdgbflkjasgfkjgf I’ve been wanting this for SO LONG!
This app is beyond awesome. It sucks that I can’t use songbird anymore because you guys dropped linux support.
/sigh
Native Android App. So Mozilla’s superb addon system will be useless…Nice. All Addon developers. Please spare time to rewrite them.
As neat as an Android port is, why would you guys drop Linux in favor of, well, Linux?
@Jigar Shah
I don’t want to get into a huge debate about this one so I’ll be as brief as possible. Mozilla is not a viable platform on top of Android. It’s my personal feeling that it never will be as competitive and feature rich as what the native APIs offer.
Add-Ons are also going to be targeting different functionality than on the desktop and will have to be written very differently from the get go. The idea that an add-on that is written for the desktop could simply run on a mobile is, well, silly.
That being said, we do plan on offering an API for service integration. There are no APIs available in the current release.
There’s also huge differences in how Android itself is meant to work and how applications are meant to interact together. I’ll let you read up on that yourself
And lastly, I don’t really appreciate the tone of your comment. It’s one thing to ask questions out of curiosity but entirely different to make spiteful remarks. I hope you understand why we made the decision we did at some point.
@squarewheel
While Android does run on top of Linux I wouldn’t say it’s Linux. Mobile presence is essential in the future media marketplace. We also still make Linux builds and they do work. They just don’t get official testing passes. I’m going to stop here as I’m just going to start repeating things we’ve been saying for the past year.
@Aus
It’s the lack of feature support that Linux is suffering from though.
I want CD Rip and Device Syncing for my Droid on the Linux version of Songbird.
I switched from Songbird to Rythmbox because of this.
Don’t get me wrong, I love songbird to death — it’s still my favorite desktop media player…just not on the OS I actually use.
Does this mean that Philips is planing to release android music players?
Very nice.
Needs scrobble support (which is easy to add
) otherwise it doesn’t work with Tune Announcer which I use all the time.
Keep up the good work.
I’m loving it. Is it possible to add a scan only sdcard\music option. prevent random audio books from being added to the app.
This is amazing!
But I’ve got the same issue as Ethan (Nexus One Android 2.2):
“Very slick, though if you use the widget to open the app while music is playing then it won’t let you select anything until you scroll the album art up and back down.”
Great
Is this app going to be open sourced ?
Very nice.
How much will it cost when it comes out?
I have got two questions :
1°) What about Songbird 1.9 for PCs ? I wish that you have not left aside Songbird 1.9 just to make a release for Android. It would be a very silly thing.
2°) Do you plan to make other mobile versions of Songbird on other devices (MeeGo for example) ?
Looking great already, way better than the currently existing media players.
I do have a ‘few’ suggestions though:
1. Remove the ‘the’ from sorting, or rewrite the names to: Final Countdown, The
2. When you liked a song and click the button again, unlike it immediately, dont show the popup screen first.
3. When at the main screen of for example artists, add the possibility to slide through Playlists / Artists / Songs / Albums / Genres / Search.
4. When add the screen of a specific artist or genre, add the ability to slide through the tabs (Songs / Albums / Artists)
5. Remember the photo stream setting, right now when I turn it on and restart the application, it’s turned off again.
6. As said before, add the possiblity to only retrieve songs residing in a specific folder.
7. At the top bar, with the playlists, artists, songs etc. menu, you should remove the more button and just be able to slide through the options.
8. Add queue functionality. When long pressing a song, it should be added to the end of the queue. Also add the possiblity to turn a queue into a playlist.
9. Landscape mode =)
10. Restyle the ‘Shuffle All’ button, for example with a minor change of background color, to set it apart from the list itself.
11. Remove the delay of a notification (for example when clicking the facebook like button, there is a second delay before actually showing the notification).
12. Use the Androids official notification option instead of your own styled one. It fits within the style of the application and it is much more standardized.
I hope this’ll will prove helpful!
- Jeroen
One more thing, when liking a song you should change the application name to Songbird for Android instead of just Songbird
- Jeroen
Good support for lyrics and sorting for “album artist” would make the difference. I learned about the latter that it’s a missing feature in Android media server, but I’m think it should possible to work around this flaw.
I like the interface, but would prefer to reverse the drawer content: main screen should be album art, drawer with track list.
Great news! I would love to use Songbird to handle what I currently need the following three apps to do:
Podcatcher = Doggcatcher (by far the best on the market)
Internet Radio = StreamFurious
Music = Meridian
And any app that handles podcasts, should be able to handle torrent feeds too. Good support for bluetooth headsets and lyrics is also important.
Now I really need a new phone…
I find it funny that this is was posted on the day I was searching through the many players for android. Too bad I already dished out some cash for an existing player. Oh well, can’t wait to try it out!
oh yeah, and FLAC support
Something I noticed last night while walking home from work. If you have blutooth headphones, they can’t control(previous, play, pause, skip) the Songbird app. I got so confused when I tried to pause a song for one reason or another and the default music app started playing at the same time. Very confusing to say the least.
qrcode:
http://qrcode.kaywa.com/img.php?s=6&d=http%3A%2F%2Ffiles.songbirdnest.com%2Fmedia%2FSongbird-01-20-2011.apk
Excellent news! This just made my day.
I have actually been wondering if/when this would happen since I got my first Android phone and realized the music player was sub-par…
I like it so far. Haven’t had many issues.
I’d love it if you could embedded album art to work properly (if that’s even possible). I haven’t seen a good player yet that supports it.
+1 for FLAC support
Add another FLAC request on the pile for me.
I will say though, what’s there now is VERY impressive. Even the things that aren’t really features are adding points in my list. Right now the headphone jack on my Droid X is busted, so with the standard player the program will stop the music every time I give the input so much as a menacing look. With Songbird for Android I can actually listen to a song without performing phone-surgery in public.
Just out of curiosity, will the Android app have any ties to the PC software? I’d love to see interactivity between the two! I’d particularly like to see something done with the playlist system, because the native Android method is rubbish (the thing can barely FIND cuesheets, let alone read them properly).
Lastly, an unrelated question: I see Linux builds exist despite lack of support, which is great, but what about the addons? It’s somewhat heartbreaking to use a player like Songbird without one of its greatest selling points, but I’m more curious than upset about it.
Oh derp on me. Just took a second look at the nightly builds section. Nevermind on that last paragraph!
I can’t open the .apk file after downloading it on my Droid Eris running 2.1; I checked the ‘Unknown Sources’ Option, but I keep getting the error message that no application can be found to open the file.
Please help.
-Tony
I’d love to give you guys bug reports, but so far i haven’t found any
As for Suggestions however:
Bluetooth support
A options menus that works with the button With if nothing else close songbird. Support Twitter like facebook.
Offer a software volume button/or a link to the media volume in software.
Landscape.
A queue
You guys literally made my day when i saw this blogpost, so thanks
Hi, I just LOVE it that you published an Android Version of Songbird, I’ve been searching the market occasionally, hoping to find Songbird one day. Thanxalot!
Just one suggestion: a memory is limited on my HTC Desire, I’d like to have an option to move Songbird to the SD-Card. I know that this implies not beeing able to use the Widget, but that doesn’t bother me too much as I use to keep my Home Screens clean. As an alternative, perhaps the App and the Widget could be separate Apps that are installed together but used separately.
All in all, Songbird runs very smoothly on my HTC Desire with Android 2.3. Keep it up, you’re doing great!
Also getting the error message that no application can be found to open the file.
Please, please include last.fm scrobbling without having to install the Last.fm app. The Last.fm requires permissions from your phone that is beyond any reason.
To solve above problem I downloaded to my comp, put the file in Dropbox and installed on my phone from there. Look forward to playing with it.
Cool! The app is really nice!
There are two things that I want to point out though:
– last.fm scroblling would be nice
– On my Galaxy S with Froyo the app is taking too much cpu time, at least according to task manager. I don’t notice any slow-downs but the task manager indicates constant 30% to 50% cpu usage. I guess that’s not too good for the battery …
Keep up the good work!
Hmmm… is there any feature that can make playlist?
Great work … I love it.
Wahou very cool, but have somes regrets :
My native app music use only 10Mo of my RAM and your use like 30Mo…
However, can you add the ability to change the music directly from the notification ? (like on galaxy s)
Thank you !
Ps : where can we translate this app ?
@aus Yeah it is just the homescreen and navigation that is sluggish for me. It responds smoothly, but it takes a couple of seconds between button pushes for anything to happen. The now playing tray slides out instantly though. Also I love the interface.
When you get around to implementing the Menu please put in an option to be able to use headset controls.
This looks great! I’d also love if the app submitted songs to Last.fm! I haven’t found an app (other that the built-in media player) that does this and it’s the only feature keeping me from switching.
@Svetlin
Hmmm, we aren’t seeing that kind of load when it’s playing on a Motorola Droid/Droid2, Droid X or HTC Incredible. That’s confusing. We’ll investigate.
@all
Last.FM scrobbling without last.fm client request duly noted
Also, thanks for all the positive feedback! We’re loving it!
@flibitijibibo
Yes, we are planning to have interactions between the desktop client and the android app.
@brandon
Thanks for the info. It’ll be very helpful to make things faster.
@alijaya
We are planning on having the ability to create playlists but it’s unlikely to make it into the first release.
@Picool
Hmm, that’s odd. We’re not seeing that kind of memory usage. Do you have a lot of music on your phone? Could you tell us how many tracks, artists and albums you have? It would be very helpful.
@DasFaultier
Interesting. We hadn’t thought about making the app movable to the SD card as it’s pretty tiny. As it gets bigger we’ll try and add that option.
@Jeroen
Wow. Thanks for taking to time to write all that up. It’s all great stuff!
The delay you see in the notification is because we only show it once the request to facebook has completed successfully. We do this to avoid seeing multiple notifications in case of failure (which we think would be annoying).
@Danny
There are no plans to charge anything for the app.
Very smooth app, looks great! Particularly like the fact that I can access the music player from anywhere via the slide up panel. A couple of suggestions:
* Allow users to organise the “quick links” at the top, I personally prefer to browse music by album
* While browsing music it’d be nice to be able to swipe an entry to the left or right (ala the official twitter app for android) and then select an action such as play, queue, add to playlist etc
* I presume you’ll be shipping it with some kind of settings menu?
Overall it looks very interesting, I hope this app manages to fulfil its potential!
Just tried the player, and I have ti say that this will defiantly be my player of choice once its a bit more complete. Cant wait to see more.
Maybe I’m missing something obvious, but when browsing tracks and playing albums it seems songs sorted alphabetically rather than by track number. It’s quite frustrating not being able to listen to an album in the original order.
Otherwise, keep up the good work!
This an extremely cool thing, good job all. Though you will, naturally, REALLY want to differentiate “Songbird Portable” from the standard full-featured songbird player, or people will get their hopes up for all the plugins and goodies that help make the original so awesome.
And… yeah, Linux. Sigh. Wah. I do very much appreciate that you keep making the builds, but man I was hoping to see you guys get the Ubuntu music player slot. Perhaps some day. I use Win 7 and Linux both about equally, so I always favor tools that work under both.
I’m holding out on fully switching to the new build on my portable drive (which I carry always) until… well… it gets over to PortableApps.
No smart phone for me, but this announcement helped make it even more likely that when I do, it’ll be Android.
Thanks for the update! Under 35 days ’till the next one? *grin*
Yes, Open source it pls!
This is how the widget looks on my samsung galaxy S ( 2.2.1 ) : http://i.min.us/jbK8wi.png
@Aus
Is this app going to be open-sourced ?
Will FLAC will be supported in future releases ?
Are you going to add translation support ? (Frenchbirds team can handle french translation)
Installed it last night, and i’m loving it!
One of the things that kept me with the standard music player on my Desire, was the search function. In Winamp, PlayerPro and others, the search function was really unprecise. But that is not the case with Songbird!
ATM it uses to much battery though – on my way home from school, i listen to music for a total of 1 hour-ish, and it ate about 35% of my battery… No 3G, WiFi or any other app was running.
Why won’t it work on my HTC Evo 4G?
Will it ever?
I have try the app on my LG Optimus One.
It is working fine!
The app is beautiful and very light.
It’s great.
Just one suggestion : It may be interessting if it was possible to order the files by “album artist”. When some song is made by a duet i put the name of the 2 singers, but i’d like to have the song stored under the artist who made the album and not under “artist1/artist2″
Good job
It doesn’t work with the controls on my bluetooth headphones. It doesn’t seem to offer much over the default Android music player.
Sorry Songbird, you gave up on me (dropped Linux support) so I’ve given up on you.
@Mitamae
We’ve tried on EVO 4Gs and it worked great for us. Could you give us more information?
@MikkerBabz
Hmm. I’ve used for several hours on my phone without it draining the battery like that. Did you have photostream enabled the whole time?
@Aritra
Did you customize any of the display or theme settings on your phone?
@Antoine Turmel
There are no plans to open the source code to this application at this time. We won’t be adding FLAC support anytime soon as that format is space prohibitive on devices that typically don’t have that much storage to begin with. Translations are already supported but the application will initially be released in English only.
I have been using tons of music apps on the android and pretty much narrowed mine favorite down to justa few.
1. Winamp, I like the way the app navigates and remember where you were in the music list once you want to go back to the artist list and play a new one (meaning i don’t have to scroll from the top of the list all over again if i am down in the “P” category). I even like the way to go back to the album track list but pulling the app shade down with the album art on it. It works really well, I just wish it had an equalizer and wouldn’t let my music get choppy if i am multitasking with the internet or using GPS. The syncing option only works with a PC so for me that app is just for playing.
2. Doubletwist. I use this app because i can finally find something that moves all my itunes music without have to go fetch the new folders in my computer and drag them over. The wireless syncing is also a big plus. Other features are the same as Winamp, but for me the app does not allow too many shorter paths to get to music you like. It is very basic in design and there is no lock-screen controls.
3. Songbird, this is an app I tried to use on my mac so I could sync my Evo library back and forth but the Mac app did not want to work too well for me. So I gave up on the syncing. I still use it to organize my music though. I would love to see the app on the android be able to sync with the Mac app on the computer, that would make me use the app hands down! I would also love to see the music selection to be remembered as you go back to the artist lists. If i am down in the end of the alphabet, i do not want to have to scroll back down from the top list back down. Also, i have noticed that the app does not remember having albums selected once you find a certain artist to listen too. extra steps are just not needed if you want to be the best app out there. I have had no trouble with the widgets on my evo, or playback. The app feels stable and does not chop the music up when i multitask. Those are my two cents:
1. syncing capabilities
2. position remembrance when scrolling through artist names.
3. remember song or album view when in artist selection.
4. lock-screen controls
@Ben
Awesome feedback
We would love to have a lock screen widget and have a feature task open for it.
When using the ‘back to playing list’ button, it should scroll to the currently playing song. It’s the button on the left that has an arrow and a list like icon.
On my Evo 4G I get an error that reads:
“The content is not supported on the phone. No application can be found to open this file”
Obviously I’m doing something wrong on my end, any ideas? I love Songbird and was so happy to hear it was coming to android… Please help….
@Mitamae
Sounds like the APK didn’t download properly. Could you try and download it to your PC first, then side-loading it onto your EVO 4G?
Just what I was looking for. a social music player. would love a feature to be able to post messages about the song on your Facebook profile. Just downloaded the app and already have a few comments on my “Like-ing” the song. Great Job guys.
I have been playing around with this for a few days now, and overall I love the design and functionality. The interface is appealing and makes good use of the touch interfacing, yet simple and functional. The performance is great; I have yet to experience any issues (other than the “wrong track on DInc with music on SD card and phone memory” bug mentioned in the post.) but there are a few things that would really put the proverbial icing on the cake (I will file these as feature requests or support any currently existing requests in Bugzilla but I figured I’d voice my opinions here as well):
1. Option to have music stop playing when headphones are unplugged. I must emphasize that this should be optional, as I see that other birders find the current functionality quite helpful, though I myself find the “pause on unplug” functionality very essential.
2. Lock screen controls. ‘Nuff said.
3. Customizable fields/”quick links” in the header (I do not use playlists and would like to be able to remove this link and use albums instead)
That said, good job and thank you.
@Patrick, please go away. If all you have to say is that you don’t have anything to say because they didn’t pander towards you, then don’t say anything at all.
(FTR, I’m primarily a Linux user)
So just a follow up, where should feature requests for this be sent to? Is there a separate Bugzilla for Songbird Portable? I went to the Songbird Bugzilla and it didn’t have the option for portable and didn’t seem like the right place…
@katana346
We’ll take care of that for you.
Before when i downloaded it from my EVO i received that error that there wasnt an application to open the file but i was still able to download the APK file.
I did as suggested, downloaded it from my PC and loaded it on the phone through USB, and i get the same error…
What am i missing?
and update or an app?
It’s a solid start…thanks!
Last.fm scrobbling would be great to see, though I’d look at using the existing Scrobble Droid API instead of baking it in…that way only people who want the feature need to install Scrobble Droid (the official Last.fm app can pick up calls to the Scrobble Droid API too, if that’s installed already), so the core Songbird app can stay lean & mean. (Plus, we would likely be able to get Last.fm functionality sooner that way, I’d bet.)
Also, the app seems to play flac for me…or am I crazy?
As a long time critic of Songbird, let me just say that this is awesome! I commend you for keeping up with a changing world and for going with a native Android app instead of Mozilla. I love Mozilla, but it is just not ready for a mobile world.
Another suggestion for this great app
it will be better if music stops when I unplug the headphone
I’m will test the app.
Just one thing,… I think the icon in the notification bar won’t be “readable” with some custom IU (like HTC sense) because of their dark notification bar.
Maybe a colored icon would be better (or at least more IU crossover)
@Aus
Nope… i actually don’t know what the photostream does? but i know i havn’t turned it on – if its the button next to the “Like on Facebook”.
For some reason, it doesn’t play any songs on my milestone. But it already looks cool
A few suggestions:
* Add last.fm support (via the Scrobble Droid API?)
* Add an option to select the main folder where the music will be collected from
* Create an own website for is
Keep up this great work!
…update: For some reason, after I killed the app once via a taskkiller, it now plays the songs
Love the desktop client and the app sounds brilliant. Bit disconcerted that there are no plans to open source it though. Is there any particular reason for this? Is it likely to be made open source when a final version is released? If not will the desktop client remain open source in future versions/why the discrepancy?
Thanks very much
All Android music players I know stop playback when you disconnect the headphone. Also it would be nice if one could use the cable headset button to un-/pause music.
Nice app.
However it went into a common Android development trap: some fonts and buttons are too small. When making UI on android, you have to force yourself (as a developper) to not make things too small. It really helps usability.
@b0b
I’m sad to hear you say that. We spent a lot of time considering the sizes of everything to make sure they would acceptable and easy to interact with. We’ll improve the design over time and hopefully at some point you will think everything is exactly the right size
@Aus
It is evident a lot of care has been put in the design – props for that.
As an Android app developper too, I know well it is difficult to find the right balance between UI size and the functionality you want to expose. The first version of my app was super high-rez (not unlike Songbird) but didn’t felt very confortable to use until I upped most font sizes (and I have no particular vision problems). Seem obvious but using bold fonts often improve readability.
On an unrelated note I suggest you map the search key (long press on hardware menu key) to your custom search dialog.
For anyone getting the issue that no program can be found to open it just download the app and use a program like ES File Explorer. Worked on my EVO.
Apps looks really sweet. If we get shoutcast support it will fully replace winamp’s app for me.
@aus and Bob
I actually think that the text used is almost slightly TOO big in places (song titles and headers specifically.) That is one thing that has bothered me about a lot of Android apps is the use of unnecessarily large text (at least to me.) It is too bad that there cannot be an option for text size…
works great on my N1, my new default music player
Great player, very promising! The performance is great and the user experience very smooth. Here are some suggestions:
1. One more request for an option to pause playback when the headphones are unplugged.
2. Also one more for lock screen controls
3. One tiny interface tweak: on the album list, the allotted space for the album name is too small. As a result, the name is often truncated. I guess maybe the number of songs can be hidden, as it’s not a crucial information. I’d rather read “A Night at the Opera” than “A Night at the O… 12 songs”
4. Maybe an option to sort the album list by artist name. Very few players offer such a feature, though I think it’s the most natural way to browse through your music, just like through your CD collection.
Anyway thanks a lot for this great player!
Apps very slow for my Moto Milestone too. The high-res graphics maybe?
Aus, Any chance ratings and playlist count syncing are going to be included at some point? That would be the ultimate “I-ecosystem” killer for me!
Love the player on the HTC Hero, it even picks up newly added albums, which the default player doesn’t, (I previously used Meridian as it can rescan the SD card).
The only problem I’ve found is that the button to return to last played track doesn’t remember where it was after the phone is switched off, this makes listening to audio books very difficult as I need to remember where I got to and then scroll through 100 odd tracks to get to it. Meridian Player remembers where it got to even after being turned off, can this be added?
Cheers….Rich
Never been a big fan of Songbird – I’ve been an iTunes user for such a long time, I’m a regular stick in the mud. However, since getting an Android, I’ve discovered how much of a balls-up the other media players have made of the whole thing. I’ve given this a trial, and so far I’m liking what I’m seeing, and my expectations are raised for a full release. Hopefully you’ll manage to master the playlist issue that all the other music players can’t seem to get to grips with – that when someone makes a playlist, they sometimes like to be in control of what order the songs are played in.
Really nice application. Here’s a little feedback, I’m using a Motorola Milestone (which is essentially a GSM Droid):
1) The music list also includes custom ringtones from /sdcard/media/audio/ringtones, there should be at least an option to hide those. Maybe even a way to pick which folders should be indexed.
2) While the application runs fine, it seems heavier than other music players. Phone seems to struggle a lot more to multitask when Songbird is running.
3) I’d really like a “Browse by Folder” option.
4) Another vote for lock screen controls. Just make it something discrete, not a full-screen monster like Winamp does.
Finally a player that doesn’t mess with the itunes sorting of albums! I’m waiting for the final version!
p.s.: Are you planning some kind of coverflow?
Second Badaro’s thoughts exactly.. I would love a browse by folder option and would be good if we can keep the ringtones out of the library….
Get that done, plus maybe look at wireless syncing later and you’ve got a great product on your hands…
Great app!
I have just one request: to show the album covers embebed in ogg files!!
Songbird for PC do it, but not his little brother…
Thanks for the great work!
@Badaro
I can’t say that I notice a difference running Songbird vs Winamp on the same hardware you have. That being said, we’ll improve speed over time. I already have a lot of ideas, which unfortunately will have to wait until the first point release.
@all
We’re likely to release one more beta for you folks to try out over the weekend. We’ll make a fresh blog post if that happens.
@Aus
I have 17 artists, 25 songs, 17 albums, 13 genres
The memory is like 30Mo when Flickr is activated (if we aren’t in the app too), and sometimes I see like 30% of my CPU used to listen one music (10Mo of RAM used here)
@Picol
What are you using to look at RAM usage? Those numbers sound absolutely crazy. I’ve never seen the RAM usage go past 7M in all of my tests (this is using DDMS to track the heap size which is all the memory allocated to a process).
I use the Task Manager from Samsung Apps
@Picool
I would imagine it’s just wrong in how it calculates memory usage. 30M is absolutely absurd. I’ll try and get my hands on that app and see what it says on the hardware we use for testing.
I can provide you a screenshot :
http://upload.penspinning.fr/SC20110127-182036.png
I’ve had dreams about an android app that allows sorting by album artist information. I know it wouldn’t be a priority, but please please please with cherries on top.
@Picool
Thanks. The screenshot is definitely helpful.
@Ian G
You never know
Would you want to browse by album artist where there would be a specific view for it or would you expect browsing by Artist to have an option to toggle between Artist and Album Artist?
Hmm… not sure. Would prefer a specific view, but if you wanted to save space on the landing browser screen then an option would be great too. Wouldn’t mind either way.
Ratings and Smart playlist sync at any point?
Are you planning to integrate a Video-Player (like you did in the desktop-version)? That would be really nice!
I just want to say, thank you! Songbird is now my default player for android, and for it being a first beta that is fantastic work. I’m looking forward to the next beta and even more so to the final release.
@bdjnk
Awesome!
@Aus
Since I found no other way to contact you: If you’re interested in German translations, let me know
It’s cool to have the same default player on my smartphone and on my pc. Can’t wait to get the final release. And hopefully sync between both Songbirds will be available one day.
Did not find and play songs from external SD Card on Galaxy S GT-i9000
Why not?
There are no Präferences for searching files and music folders.
@Aus
I reinstalled WinAmp to test (I’m using MixZing nowadays), and it performs much better than Songbird on my phone.
Not sure what’s wrong between Songbird and my phone, but it really struggles with multitasking when Songbird in running the background. Even the animation when opening Zeam’s App Drawer gets laggy.
Thoughts re. Scrobbling.
If you go direct and not via the LastFM client, then please ensure that you also broadcast media intents for Playing, pausing, etc with artist, album, track details, playing (yes/no) in the data.
There are a few applications out there (Tune Pop, Tune Announcer) that receive these to ‘do useful stuff’. It would be a real shame if these didn’t work with SongBird.
The standard android ones are:
Something like this would be great.
(whoops, didn’t accept the XML formatted tags
Android:
com.android.music.playstatechanged
com.android.music.metachanged
HTC:
com.htc.music.metachanged
com.htc.music.playbackcomplete
com.htc.music.playstatechanged”
@Curly
Thanks for that info. I think I should be able to add that in before the final release.
Awesome Player but i miss a few features like deleting song or Searching for Songs or Post this song on twitter or last fm scrobler and so and btw sync with the desktop CLient would be great
@Poapfel
You can search for songs by hitting the hardware ‘search’ key on your phone or by going into ‘More -> Search’.
Nice player. Clean & tidy. Landscape mode would be great, also as mentioned before, ability to select music from a specific folder. ( Galaxy S )
love the nice and clean interface! I have one function missing that isn’t mentioned yet, and that’s support for showing and sorting on the bpm in the mp3 tag data. As a dancer I care a lot about the tempo of songs and I do have many playlists entirely bpm-based.
Maybe you could add a “show tag x,tag y, tag z” in the settings, so everybody don’t have to see it, if they don’t like it.
Cool!!
Great Player! Works without Errors on the Galaxy S with Android 2.2.1.
Last.fm Scrobbling Support would be great.
GO ON!!!
So Android is OK for new development but Linux on the desktop gets dropped??!? Thanks a TON guys…
Bobby
@Bobby: 4chan has a section for you. Go look for appreciation there.
Ok then rlly cool i like it. Yet not to be able to make playlists just sucks
I LOVE this music player however I have a suggestion
1. you need a way to be able to change the song options from the lock screen like on the default android player
@Brendan
Yep, a lock screen widget is in our plans but not for the 1.0 release.
No joy trying to download this to my DROID 2 Global. I have enabled download from unknown sources as suggested but download fails and I get s’not supported on this phone message.
Help?
Sorry, forgot to mention I am running Android 2.2 uprooted.
UNROOTED!
The addition of browse by genre is great. The only other player I’ve found so far that does it is poweramp. however they only give you a list of songs once you tap your chosen genre thus making it a bit useless. I really like your option of songs, artist, and album. However when you tap the artist it just brings up a list of songs even if there is more than one album from that artist in your library. An ability to choose your album after tapping the artist would be great. A lock screen control and album art download would also be a wonderful addition to what is looking like a seriously good media player. good job.
I downloaded a few songs using the internal browser of Android, but Songbird doesn’t see the new songs yet, unless I reboot the device, but that’s just unweildy.
How can I get it to update its songlist?
Love the app!!!
Please add lock screen controls and folder sorting.
Otherwise the app is solid as a rock. Pretty darn good for a first public beta!
Very nice player… But it’s a shame it doesn’t use the Dolby Mobile and SRS enhancements on newer HTC phones – music does sound better with one of them on in the stock player. My top feature request!
@MadJo That’s an annoyance with all players generally. There’s an app which can kick off a rescan manually in the market (Rescan Media), but I don’t see why that functionality couldn’t be incorporated into Songbird
Love the app on my EVO 4g. However I can’t get the album art to show up. Is there a setting I am missing?
I’ve found that songs tagged as “Industrial” show up under “Alternative/Indie” on my Android when using Songbird. I am running 2.2.1 on a Samsung Galaxy S and I do not have this issue with Songbird on my PC.
@Jonathan
Hmm, that’s pretty odd. Do you happen to know if that song has both ID3v1 and ID3v2 tags? Maybe Android is reading the wrong one…
I love it . its working great