Hello robobirders!
We’ve just released Songbird for Android Beta 2 and it’s available via automatic updates on Android Market. We’ve fixed performance issues as well as bugs that were present in Beta 1. Let us know if you run into any problems with this new version.
Here’s a list of interesting changes.
- Performance improvements: CPU usage reduced when playing back files, memory usage should also be down
- Scrobbling using Last.FM or ScrobbleDroid
- Song Announcer apps such as TuneAnnouncer should now work as expected
- Alarms, Notifications and Ringtones should no longer show up in the Songs listing
- User interface touch ups
We’ve also just released Songbird 1.9 for the Desktop. Give it a try, it’s chock full of goodness! 
The following QR code will take you directly to our app in Android Market.
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59 Comments
Subscribehttps://market.android.com/details?id=com.songbirdnest.mediaplayer
for those who want to install it from the Android Market website.
killer feature request:
please allow for us to make smart playlist from right from the phone!! This would make songbird killer!!!
Smart playlists in the app would indeed make it supermegafoxyawesomehot! Nice going anyway, love it already – can’t wait to see what future releases will bring to both the app- and the desktop version!
Love it already! And I’ve already downloaded it for the desktop! Really awesome app.
Love the app. Nice job! One issue however: after updating to the new beta, album covers are not showing up. It was fine previously in the last beta release to the Market.
@?
Weird! We haven’t seen that happen over on our end but we’ll try and figure out what’s going on.
@mike
Neat idea. Not sure how it would fit in currently but we’ll definitely think about it
@jyggen, iadvize
Thanks guys!
Glad you like it!
Should have mentioned that I’m playing MP3s on Sony Ericsson X10 (2.1). Sorry about the missing info.
Thanks for the update!
Still no album covers in ogg files (samsung galazy s, android 2.2), but I am waiting for it patiently…
Keep up the good work!
nice build
+1 on the smart playlist feature request
This is the one feature which would put songbird beyond the solid and beauty HTC standard player
If its too difficult to implement I could easily live with a filter view which would pretty much cover the functionality of a smart playlist
Yay!
Scrobbling Works when playing, but try fast-forward and it’s a little jerky with TuneAnnouncer. It appears that you’re scrobbling both LastFM and Scrobble Droid – TuneAnnouncer picks them both up! Is this going to be a menu option to choose?
I also see in the log:
Service fm.last.android.scrobbler.ScrobblerService has leaked ServiceConnection fm.last.android.scrobbler.ScrobblerService$1@462d70f0 that was originally bound here
android.app.ServiceConnectionLeaked: Service fm.last.android.scrobbler.ScrobblerService has leaked ServiceConnection fm.last.android.scrobbler.ScrobblerService$1@462d70f0 that was originally bound here
at android.app.ActivityThread$PackageInfo$ServiceDispatcher.(ActivityThread.java:1154)
at android.app.ActivityThread$PackageInfo.getServiceDispatcher(ActivityThread.java:1049)
at android.app.ContextImpl.bindService(ContextImpl.java:871)
at android.content.ContextWrapper.bindService(ContextWrapper.java:347)
at fm.last.android.scrobbler.ScrobblerService.onStart(ScrobblerService.java:243)
Excellent update! Everything seems to be working great with Last.fm.
A couple of suggestions…
1. Lock screen control – Not really urgent, it seems like a cumbersome task anyway
2. Independence from the stock music player data – This one is particularly annoying, since it basically reduces the app to being little more than an extra layer over the stock application (playlists bother me the most). I suggest this not only for that complaint, but also in case you take a humble request such as…
3. FLAC support – This obviously isn’t required either, but it WILL get your app a lot of attention. I guarantee it. For srs.
Also seeing a lot of smart playlist requests. #2 might help that along.
Thanks again!
@Curly
We are using broadcasts like the stock music player is using but those do not causing scrobbling to occur. The only broadcasts TuneAnnouncer should be picking are the ones that mimic the stock player. Are you using a bluetooth headset while listening by any chance?
The service connection leak is a last.fm bug.
@flibitijibibo
Forgoing the use of the MediaStore database isn’t really an option. However, we will be managing playlists from in Songbird itself. We will also have tools to prune dead genres and playlists (genres and playlists with 0 items in them). We’ll also be fixing up that data when we can.
We hear you on the lock screen controls, it’s currently the #1 requested feature. FLAC would be nice, but Songbird for desktop automatically transcodes files before transferring them to your Android phone so it doesn’t seem quite as urgent to us. The DAC on the phone isn’t super duper high quality so a lot of the better audio quality you get out of FLAC is sadly lost during playback.
@Pepso
Yes! We will definitely support that when we integrate the use of TagLib into our app. We already noticed that files with perfectly good album art aren’t being read properly by the default album art import process.
How about displaying track number on the now playing tab (4 of 12 for example)? Also, wondering if the app will update the play count on the desktop app when syncing?
Oh, and the app is totally awesome btw!
@Jason J.
Thanks
The track number could be an interesting piece of extra information. Would this be the track number in the total size of the list that’s currently playing or the track number in the specific album?
Currently the desktop app and Android app don’t talk to each other directly but there are plans to change that
@Aus – I would think total size of list so that it could accommodate playlists. Album track number wouldn’t make a lot of sense out of context.
Awesome that they will talk, that would be an awesome feature. I use play count a lot in smart playlists in iTunes… and I would love to delete iTunes.
This app is literally awesome, wouldn’t have known it was a beta if it wasn’t for the blog and has already replaced the stock player on the nexus s for me!
Feature request: I think it would be brilliant if this syncs well with the desktop by which I mean keeping playcounts updated across both.
Aus,
re scobbling:
Nope not using a bluetooth headset.
I’ll track down the scrobble requests more fully tomorrow. However, Tune Announcer will pick up ALL scrobble broadcasts, so if you broadcast LastFM scrobbles and ScrobbleDroid ones, TuneAnnouncer will pick both up and action them both.
Other applications let you choose which scrobble broadcasts you want to use, so you only ever broadcast one type. Since there’s no menu on SongBird, I guess this isn’t going to be an option in the near future. I’ll enquire as to whether Tune Announcer can be modified to ignore duplicates.
Great progress though, keep it coming
@Curly
Ahhh, gotcha. Thanks for the info, it’s really helpful
I would love for TuneAnnouncer to work properly, it’s a pretty neat app. 
Hi, i’m new to Android since a week only, and i discovered the “strange powers” of the “permissions” of the Android applications !
Could you explain me why the app should:
- read phone state and identity
- send sticky broadcast
as seen in the details of the Android market application’s page ?
Thanks for my education
!
(Something to make become paranoid, if the apps doesn’t come from a real known company !!)
@Fabien
Sure, I’ll explain how we use those permissions.
* Phone State: we need to read phone state so that we can pause playback when you get a phone call and resume when that phone call ends. That’s the only thing we do with those permissions.
* Send Sticky Broadcasts: we use this permissions to send information about the currently playing song to other applications that may be interested. ‘Sticky’ means that if the application wasn’t running when we first sent it they will still get the notification later. We use this to enable scrobbling and to make other apps such as TuneAnnouncer work.
Just in case you were curious about other permissions we need, here they are:
* Internet: We need to have access to the internet so that features such as flickr photostream and facebook work
* Network State: Before we try to do network operations, we like to check if the phone is actually connected to the internet or has the ability to do so. This saves battery.
And that’s it
re Scrobbling.
Had a more detailed looked at the Scrobble events you generate.
1) You send two events when fast-forwarding for the Default music player. The HTC player doesn’t do this, it just sends one.
2) You generate events for both Scrobble Droid and the default music player. Most other players let you choose one.
There’s an update for Tune Announcer that lets you select which Scrobble broadcasts it will process. Deselecting the Default scrobble works best with Songbird. It also has a nice debug mode which toasts the scrobbles.
@Aus
Would it be possible to either switch or give the option to switch the order of display in the widget and notifications area from ‘Artist – Song Title’ to ‘Song Title – Artist’? It just seems to me that Song Title is a bit more important when it comes to displaying information and should therefore come first, and not risk having part of the name getting cut off.
@syst3m
Yeah, that’s an option we could offer.
Any thought to providing a landscape view for the App? With the various docking options out there it would be nice to have the view rotate with the orientation of the phone.
@MikeO
Yes, we’ll be adding landscape support in the near future.
@Curly
Just noticed an update to TuneAnnouncer. Selecting one of the two ‘scrobbling’ methods makes it work perfectly with Songbird
@Aus
Yup, Songbird’s now my main player with TuneAnnouncer able to choose the scrobbles
@Aus
As part of the phone state, could you guys have it check for voice input/commands too. As it is now, if you try to give a voice command or input while Songbird is playing it doesn’t pause the music like the default player does.
Also, not essential, but some features that would be cool to have eventually would be some gesture controls (when the apps open) and maybe a larger widget.
Anyway, thanks for the cool app!
Is it going to be Open Source? Couldn’t find the source code anywhere
@mesome
Yeah, we’ve noticed that too and it annoys us as well. We’ll be fixing that for Beta 3.
@schischa
There are no plans to open the source to the Android client at this time. Things may change though.
It’s not that important to me if the app becomes open source or not… you’re fast in develop/support anyway
But IMO you should look out for some translators for the final release (or at least for version 1.1)… so how about multi-language?
@Henning
We would love to have the app in multiple languages. We’re just not setup right now to work with translators. As soon as we are, we’ll post about it
I like the way the Android app is heading. Thanks for the beta!
I can recommend having a look at Playerpro and the way that app’s UI is centered around the music: with album covers, automatic downloads of artist pictures, possibility to read about artists, albums etc. I believe you could get some ideas for further development.
After upgrading to beta, I get a short silent moment whenever another app tries to sound a notification, even though notifications volume is set to mute.
Milestone, Android 2.1.
Also, is this the right place to report bugs etc.?
After upgrading to the latest beta….
Facebook doesn’t work on X10 Mini…
I can’t allow songbird on facebook… the button doesn’t appear in my screen…
I’ve been getting this bug for a while and I finally think I have enough info to report it.
It seems whenever plug in my headphones (Droid X), Songbird will randomly begin to play, then stop, then play in this pattern in an infinite loop. The only solution I can get to work 100% is just uninstalling it (though there have been 2 random cases of it finally stopping the loop, be it playing or stopped). I also had to uninstall the scrobbler since each play would sent info to it, causing like 5 minutes of scrobble notifications.
My guess is it has something to do with headphone controls, if such functions exist in the app (the source would be appreciated…
), as the trigger is definitely the 3.5mm input.
@Kaio
Sounds like that may be an Android bug. It will always try and reduce the Media Volume during notifications and it sounds like it’s doing it anyway even though your notifications are muted.
@r.ricco
Can you give us a little more information? Are you having trouble authorizing Songbird to post to Facebook because the Facebook login screen is too big or is the Facebook button in Songbird not showing up?
@flibitijibibo
I think this is already fixed for the next beta release. My guess is that the headset jack is a little bit loose and plugging it in is causing a bunch of headset hook events. We do try and handle headset disconnect but the only thing we do in that instance is pause playback.
Still missing equalizer. It can’t compete with the stock player on the Desire HD at this time, since it has SRS, Dolby Mobile and EQ, while Songbird doesn’t have either of those. Songbird can’t be my main player until an EQ is implemented.
With that said, Songbird is a gorgeous app with a fantastic future on the Android platform. Keep up the awesome work!
Hi There
So, you guys did return to Linux
This is an awesome app ! Thanks allot.
I did notice that when the screen is locked you can use the volume buttons to control the volume and next and previous song. Nice touch. No need for locked screen controls.
Where is the “setting” for it ? lol
Album art ? Will the app fetch or fo you need to have the art in the folder.
btw, Nexus S with Cyanogenmod 7 Nightlies. No issues
Thanks and keep it coming
Nar
@Lala
Indeed. We are planning on adding an equalizer, though I’m not sure when we’ll be able to put it in. What kind of features are you looking for in your EQ? Auto-EQ (load preset based on Genre). The ability to make presets? a Pre-Amp?
Let us know
@Nardus
Thanks! We like it a lot too
Settings are planned and will appear pretty soon. Album Art fetching is something we’d like to do as well but we’re not sure when that feature will be ready.
Ive tried this apps, and i feel greatt indeed
Thanks for the vendor
The volume controls is only for when you have head phones plugged in. When on Bluetooth, you cant use the volume rockers to jump to songs, it would be nice to have some lock screen widget control.
Awesome app, ive been waiting for so long to see my PC music player to have it’s version for android. and its awesome, but im missing some features that we have on the PC version, like the feathers, and lyrics… please make an option to see lyrics from ID3 and/or LRC file’s, and the option to seach for the album images!
Great Job by the way…
Some applications don’t play the game, so if like “Worms” you get songs in Songbird, add a file “.nomedia” in the directory where you find the music.
New beta is pretty good, when we will get a final version ? And a website to translate it ? ^^
Any chance of gapless playback in future versions?
Where’s the link for a linux version on the site? just windows and mac
@Caio
Those are all things we’d like to do but we’re not sure when they will happen. (Album art fetching, lyrics and feathers).
@Picool
We’re still trying to figure out when we’ll be releasing v1.0 final because we feel like there are some key features that it’s still missing. We don’t have an official list of those features just yet but when we do we’ll post it to the blog.
As for translating, there are a few options out there but one of the most appealing ones currently is Crowdin. We’re not going to use the current translate site as adding support for android language files would be more work than we can handle right now.
So, I guess I need “scrobbledroid” to scrobble. I can’t find it in the market and I can only find source (no binaries) via the google code project. How should I install it?
@M
You can use Simple Fast.FM scrobbler -> https://market.android.com/details?id=com.adam.aslfms&feature=search_result
Seems to have marginally better reviews than ScrobbleDroid -> https://market.android.com/details?id=net.jjc1138.android.scrobbler
And both are far better than the permissions hungry last.fm client.
@Fernando
what Nardus meant by saying: “So, you guys did return to Linux”, was that they have published songbird for android which in fact uses linux as underlying architecture.
songbird is still available for linux but no more officially supported.
hope that helped you
And by the way: Songbird for Android is really really really freaking awesome. I’ve tried 10 so called music player apps or more, none of them was what i would expect from such an app, but you folks build this beautiful music player app in no time and I really love it!
Thank you!!!!
If you add a lock-widget and an equalizer you truly build “the music player for android” and the best player available for smartphones.
Oh and thnx for the new desktop release, i’ve been waiting for this so long
@M: I have the official Last.FM app installed and SB scrobbles fine with it.
@Garzun
Thanks! We’re super happy that you like it
@M
Hmmm. That’s confusing. ScrobbleDroid should definitely be available on Market. Here’s a direct link: http://market.android.com/details?id=net.jjc1138.android.scrobbler
@All
Anyone that’s using the Simple Last.Fm Scrobbler should also be able to scrobble to last.fm/libre.fm. I’ve tried it with the latest version and it works great. Just need to enable ‘Scrobble Droid Apps’ setting.
This latest beta is not installing for me. I’m able to download but it say “Package file was not signed correctly”.
Using Samsung Galaxy 3 (Apollo). Had no problems with previous beta version, until it told me it had expired
(sad panda)
@Aus
Is there anyway to make the default for Artists the album view instead of songs? After selecting Artists on the main screen on my Evo, you then select the artist, and then songs is the first selected tab. I’d rather it be albums or at least have the option to change it.
Also, when disconnecting my bluetooth headphones and then reconnecting them, the music doesn’t pick up where I left off. It starts on shuffle, which is kind of annoying. The built-in music app can do that, but not Songbird.
@Jamie Jones
You’ll have to manually uninstall any previous community betas that are installed as the package signature was changed for the official release to Market.
@Sean Kersey
That’s something that we could offer as an option but we’re pretty happy with Songs being the default. Maybe a press-hold context menu option would be useful there?
Yeah… We’ve noticed that hiccup with the bluetooth headset and will be fixing it for the next beta.
@Aus… jolly good show, old chap.
Songbird for Android Beta 2 is awesome! I cannot imagine life without it
. Thank you guys.