Hello fellow birders,
We’ve released a small update to 1.1 to address some of the usability issues regarding the lock-screen widget. There are also a few bug fixes in there which should make your Songbird experience on Android even more awesome. 
- Lock-screen widget should now always be in front of the default lock-screen.
- Dismissing the lock-screen widget will also unlock your phone if you use a non-secure lock-screen.
- The lock-screen widget will keep the screen on for just a little bit longer than usual to allow you to interact with it more easily.
- Using the lock-screen will no longer cause Songbird to go into the foreground.
- Even better styling when re-ordering items in playlists.
- Keyboard now auto-dismisses when starting to scroll through search results.
- Support for cover art present in folders for albums (cover[.jpg|.png] support)
We’re also trying to figure out why some of you folks with Nexus S’s running 2.3.3 are having problems with the widget. We’re hoping to have those issues resolved for the 1.2 release.
As always, your feedback is very much appreciated.
48 Comments
SubscribeI like Android
For what it’s worth, I also noticed that the regular (i.e., non-lock-screen) widget becomes completely unresponsive on my 2.3.3-equipped Nexus One.
Is there any kind of forensic information I can get from my phone that would help you figure out what’s going on?
Ed
Looking better with each release! Songbird has now replaced the default music player on my device.
When will the next update for the desktop player arrive?
The regular widget eventually becomes unresponsive when I stop the music. Other than that, it’s a great app. Running 2.2 on a Motorola Atrix.
Tested by playing music, opening my map app and then lock the screen. When unlocking, the regular lock widget shows for a second or two before the Songbird lockscreen shows, but when unlocking, I get to my map app. Really welcome update
HTC Desire.
The same issue widget as described above on 2.3.2 Xperia Arc.
http://blog.songbirdnest.com/2011/03/15/songbird-for-android-1-0-released/#comment-75174
http://blog.songbirdnest.com/2011/03/15/songbird-for-android-1-0-released/#comment-75180
still not working.
also it will be great to have an option to delete song from sd card.
Best looking music player for Android! I’m really missing support for FLAC files as I’m too lazy to covert it to mp3 :/
Any news on the desktop client?
So, when the Lockscreen widget is enabled, and I drag it to the bottom of the screen, I won’t be asked to unlock with my keycode/pattern anymore… Security, there it drops to zero… Songbird would have to display the regular lockscreen after “unlocking” with the lockscreen widget, otherwise all keycode protection is made pointless…
Also, I still have the issue with not being able to auth with facebook as described by http://blog.songbirdnest.com/2011/03/29/songbird-for-android-v1-1-now-available/#comment-75325 and myself in http://blog.songbirdnest.com/2011/03/29/songbird-for-android-v1-1-now-available/comment-page-1/#comment-75308
Hi, I noticed that sometimes songbird starts automatically when my phone is locked even if I just quit the application! I have an LG Optimus One with Android 2.2.2.
I have one issue which is that a single album by multiple artists is not being recognized as one album even if I change the album artists to match. I would be overjoyed if this was fixed in the next release.
I can reproduce the same homescreen widget not responding problem as yeliaB on my 2.3.3 Nexus One.
Just given it a play, seem to work flawlessly on my ZTE Racer.
You had me at lock-screen widget.
I can’t download it from android market.
Is there any direct download link?
Just download the desktop version to compliment this being on my phone. All is great, fully functioning on Galaxy S. I only ask one small feature however in further releases. The ability to ignore/exclude folders on the phone from being included in the library!
I make Voice Recordings and they are stored into a folder onto the SD card, separate from my Music folder. However they still manage to be included into songbirds listings.
I plan to make this my default music player for the long hall
!
Great work!!
Should link that qrcode up as well for people who don’t want to scan with their phone.
Cheers
A really good player, needs a couple things yet until I can switch for good:
1: really needs a landscape mode
2: I have experience the same lock widget issue as several other have reported…regular lock widget appearins for a few seconds before songbird widget finally takes over (HTC Incredible)
3. would love a couple color / theme options rather than the purple
@saman
Sorry, the only way to download the APK is from the Android Market. If you can’t download it from there it means that Songbird doesn’t support your phone. You can always follow the QR Code (it’s linked) so you can view the page from your desktop.
@John G
We totally plan on enabling users to exclude folders from the music that we show.
@Ryan
Thanks for reminding me, it’s now linked
@dave c
1. Yes, we know. We’ve already mentioned several times that it will be in the 1.2 release
2. That is normal at this time. We’re always into improving the experience though so the next step would be to completely take over the lock-screen when Songbird is playing instead of over-laying it. We think the current experience is pretty nice though.
3. Yes, themes are planned but we’re not sure when that’ll happen right now.
Please add the ability to add the playlists I’ve selected to sync with my device.
On iTunes, with my iPod Touch, when I select to sync a specific playlist to my device, it adds the songs on the playlist along with the playlist itself.
However, in Songbird, my songs go to my device but now I have to manually manage playlists on my device.
Really looking forward to the “exclude folder” option! Currently my phone records also start showing up in the player!
Another nice to have feature would be support for “folder as a playlist”. That way, Podcasts can be managed quite easily.
As a coder I would suggest using a .folder_info file which made that folder special so that it could exclude the content, expose as playlist only, etc.
I love @Harsha R’s idea, there… though please name it something more like .sb_folder_info.
But then, I tend to prefer file-based configuration info, over databases.
Are there any plans to support compilation albums? It’s getting a bit frustrating having the player separate each track by a different artist from the same compilation into a different album.
If you want to exclude some folder you can already put a .nomedia file in it, thus it will be excluded.
The only “limit” is that the folder is excluded for all the players…
Love songbird, but just updated and all my album art has disappeared. It seems ok on the stock music app.
very annoying. have no idea how to fix it.
Thank you for this. It is great. However, I would like to see things like being able to select all/multiselect songs and add them to a playlist and creating playlists from folders.
@Rich Maskell
Does the album art still show up in the list of albums? Also, what does your folder structure look like? Do you store all of your music in one single folder or are the tracks split by artist and album? If you could reply via email to android-support@songbirdnest.com it will be easier to help you diagnose this problem than via comments on the blog
@Pop Cristian
Yeah… we’re trying to figure out an elegant way to add multiple songs to a playlist. Right now you can add entire artist, genres and albums to playlists though by pressing and holding and then selecting add to playing.
@Antonio
Could you give us a little more detail about when this happens? Also, do you have headphones with headset controls connected at the time? Songbird supports the media keys on such headphones to play/pause (if there’s only one button) and go to the next or previous track (if it has buttons for that).
@Uzuuru
The lock-screen widget should only auto-dismiss non-secure lock-screens when it’s showing. If you are using the built-in lock-screens (either PIN or gesture) it should show the secure lock-screen afterwards. If you are using a custom lock-screen application it is probably not identifying itself as a secure lock-screen and that’s why the issue is happening.
The facebook authentication problem should be resolved in the next release. We’ll be using the facebook app to authenticate when it’s present.
I like so much songbird it works fine on my LG Optimus
I haven’t much chance to play with this yet, but it looks great and I like the way the lockscreen widget unlocks the phone (no problems so far on my Desire).
I’d like to add another feature request: smart playlists and track ratings like in the desktop version. For me that is the killer feature which I have yet to find in any Android player.
I really like it so far (just downloaded it), But there’s a few things I’d like to see in future releases if possible:)
Ability to read embedded lyrics and ratings.
Support for playlist folders. I have tons of playlist in my library which are organized into folders to keep it clean and organized.
On screen volume control.
Make the shuffle/repeat and play/pause buttons a tad bigger.
Fast forward/rewind with the status bar doesn’t always work or is too small.
Also, maybe move the pause/play button off the bottom of the screen a bit. They’re a little too close to the soft key buttons on the bottom of my device, so I hit them accidentally if I’m not careful.
One other small detail, (there needs to be an edit button on these blogs, lol)
when a song is paused and you hit the previous/next buttons,
it automatically starts to play, rather than remain paused as I’m looking for
the song that I want.
i loved when you blogged about http://PokemonWalkthrough.info ;D
http://gubbenilådan.se – älskar den låten : )
how can i change or remplace the font of the songbird ?
i cant see the text !
y try reintalling, and nothing !
pleasee !
I just got Songbird for Android. It’s REALLY nice looking. I love good UIs, which are so uncommon on Android. Yours is absolutely fantastic.
The only thing is that my FLAC collection shows up under “unknown” as the artist. This is exactly what happens in the stock player (I’m on a Galaxy S which supports it, but does not read the ID3s correction). Is this because you’re using the stock media layer (not sure if this is the correct term) to play the files, but just use your own UI over it?
Either way, this is much better than anything else I have (PowerAMP is horrible and I’m not sure why everyone raves about it) and I will definitely be using it over anything else. I just hope you can support FLAC (fully) soon!
Thanks!
@mariano
Je suppose que tu es français et donc je te dirai ça: tu ne peux pas encore remplacer l’interface graphique de Songbird sur Android. À l’avenir ils ont l’intention de mettre en oeuvre des plugins. Des thèmes pourraient être l’un d’eux. Mais des thèmes ne sont pas maintenant disponible. Désolé pour mon mauvais français!
When is 1.2 coming out? It feels like an eternity.
@Jim
We’d like to see smart playlists supported too
@Dieharddan
Thanks for your feedback. Lyrics and ratings are things we’d like to do in the future. As for the UI tweaks you’ve requested — we’re always revising and improving on our UI and you’re likely to see some of those changes in the future.
@mariano
It’s not possible to change the text yet but as Cavin pointed out, we will be building support for feathers (themes) in the future which will enable replacing fonts and colors.
@Cavin
We do use the built-in media playback framework and media scanner. Looks like that scanner doesn’t support FLAC tags very well
Are your files raw FLAC or are they FLAC in an Ogg container?
We do have some loose plans right now to use our own metadata reading library instead to fix album art issues, and problems like you’re reporting. We’re not sure when we’ll get to that at this point though.
@Youtube10
You’re kidding, right?
It’s only been 2 weeks since we’ve released 1.1.1. Don’t you worry though, we are hard at work on 1.2 and it will be ready in about 3 weeks or so. There’s a lot of stuff changing in that release so you’ll have to be more patient with us as we work out all the kinks.
2 weeks is forever, in internet years! Or, at least, in Short Attention Span Theater. :p
However, speaking of forever… how ’bout 1.9.4? The last NOT-Android announcement was for 1.9, back on Feb 9. Oddly, my 1.9.3 says it’s build 1959, 20110127.
I’m sorry, I use Songbird as my daily player and I find bugs get more annoying as time goes on. I use a Nexus S, so the widget freezes, the music player forgets the playlist its in and resets, and a host of other minor bugs. Forgive my impatience.
When you finally release themes support, please do add an AMOLED-friendly theme (black background).
I hope both themes and now playing list will be released in the next version.
@Aus My FLAC files are raw files, most of which were ripped by myself through XLD for Mac.
NIce one this has replaced my itunes
So has the PC/Mac version been completely thrown out the window now? It’s been forever since the Roadmap has been updated, it’s time for v 2.0 guys? The current version of Songbird constantly stops responding everytime I go to close the application and has a bunch of other bugs.
I’m currently using in my android haweii, and listening to the complete discography of ricotta redonditos works, thank you very much dear programmers constantly bird greets you:)
Any word on a set date on the next? *crossing fingers for agile sw development process so we see one in a few days time*
@chickenstu
Oh dear no. We haven’t given up on the desktop client
We should have a beta of 1.10 ready very soon.
@EspenA
Hehe.
We’re very close to having 1.2 ready. We’re currently in QA.