We set out to build an open, customizable music player. Today, we’re launching with dozens of integrated services, hundreds of add-ons, and a growing developer community. We’ll be the first to admit that there’s plenty left to do. And, while we’re not ready for everyone, 160k users a month are expressing their vote for an alternative music player.

If you think like us, you’ve got huge aspirations and you’re out to change the world. You gotta start somewhere, this is our 1.0.

New Features

GStreamer
We now use GStreamer as our main media playback system, across all platforms – giving us higher performance, better reliability, and a platform for much more media-related functionality in the future.

Improved mashTape
When you listen to music in Songbird you’ll have the option to see Flickr photos, YouTube videos, last.fm biographies, google news (and more) for the currently playing artist. mashTape has been completely re-written from the ground up to be more extensible and flexible than ever.

Improved Album Art Support
The album artwork feature now supports drag and drop of images, as well as, toggling between Now Playing and Currently Selected tracks.

Complete Keyboard Shortcuts
We’ve cleaned up our Keyboard Shortcuts this release (and added some new ones for power users). Look for the link to a complete list of Keyboard Shortcuts in the applications Help menu.

Updated Linux Installer
We’ve created a single archive that has all the necessary dependencies so that Linux users can run Songbird without having to install any additional dependencies.

Re-usable Smart Playlists
By popular request we’ve implemented the ability to use a smart playlist as a rule within another smart playlist.

Reveal Original Files
We’ve added the ability to expose the media items in Songbird as files in your filesystem by right clicking and choosing “Show File”.

Recommended Add-ons Updater
A new update mechanism ensures that all upgraded users have an option to install the latest Recommended Add-ons. You can turn this feature on/off in the Preferences.

Hide & Show Display Panes
We were inspired by Atrieu’s Pane Button add-on and decided to add a few buttons to allow you to toggle between showing & hiding Display panes.

Simpler Column Headings
We’ve refined the column heading property list and made it easier to enable the properties you care about. Just right click on any column heading in a library or playlist to give it a try.

Performance Enhancements

We made some substantial gains this release:

• Drastically Faster Search: Searching in Songbird is now anywhere from 10x faster for small libraries to 1000x for large ones.
• Reduced RAM Usage: There’s a 70% reduction in RAM usage when importing and using large (100,000 track) libraries.
• Faster Media Importing: Importing media into Songbird is now 2-4x faster.
• Reduced Startup Times: Large library users (10,000 tracks or more) will notice that Songbird startup times are now twice as fast.
• Efficient Scrolling: Scrolling through your library now uses half the amount of CPU.
• Snappier Sorting: Sorting your library is now 3-4x faster, which adds up to significantly smoother browsing when scrolling and filtering.
• Optimized DB Size: We’ve optimized the database in Songbird and reduced its size by, on average, 60%. This leads to a variety of performance improvements throughout the application.
• Fewer Crashers: We’ve worked hard to identify and fix 11 of the most common crashes in Songbird.

For Developers

• We’ve created a simple guide for updating 0.7.0 Feathers to be 1.0 compatible.
• For extension developers, we’ve created a similar guide for updating extensions to be 1.0 compatible.
• We updated the Media Core APIs to take advantage of GStreamer. This allows for more power and flexibility in controlling playback.
• We’ve documented how developers can add support for additional playback formats by packaging GStreamer plugins as Songbird add-ons.

Early Feedback on 1.0

“Songbird is improving at a rapid pace”
- Ryan Paul – Ars Technica

“the program runs and feels faster”
- Seth Rosenblatt – CNET

“[Songbird] has much to offer and is an improvement over the betas we looked at earlier”
- Scott Gilbertson – webmonkey

“We are very excited about our parternship with Songbird because it integrates a rich deskop media player with our database of concerts and tickets. While listening to my music library, I can see when my bands are on tour. The integration was painless and an example of the open and extensible platform Songbird have built.”
- Ian Hogarth, Founder & CEO of Songkick concert ticketing service

“Songbird brings the limitless, often fan-created context of the Web to your desktop media player, and put media playing innovation in the hands of any web developer.”
- Ian Rogers, Topspin Media and Former GM, Yahoo Music

What’s Next

Our goal is to continue to focus on building a world-class, open music player. Our next release will consist of continued focus on performance and stability gains, implementing additional audio features on top of GStreamer, and much more. Stay tuned to the blog to keep up to date, or if you like to live dangerously check out one of our nightly builds and see the progress for yourself!

We’re always interested in hearing your feedback so please comment below and file bugs and/or feature requests in bugzilla.

Thanks to everyone who has been providing feedback to our latest RC’s. This update contains bug fixes and final tweaks. We’re closing in on a Final build and would like to make sure that you don’t see anything you might consider a show stopper.

To learn more about what’s new, check out the RC3 release notes.

As always, please file any issues, bugs, or crashes you find in Bugzilla so that we can address them before 1.0 final!

Here are the most noteworthy and complete features we’d like to call out in RC2 and get your feedback on:

• Importing iTunes libraries will no longer trigger a hang.
• Using the the Windows Media Playback and QuickTime Playback add-ons we’ve brought back the ability to play pre-authorized DRM media: WMA DRM on Windows; Fairplay on Windows and Mac.
• mashTape has been updated and will no longer invoke Flash player security warnings.
• We’ve adjusted the buffer size for streaming media but we’re still working on the final setting. If you think it’s too high you can adjust it by following these steps.
• Video support has been temporarily removed from the application. Our move to GStreamer introduced some new video related bugs that couldn’t be addressed in time for this release. Since video has been an unsupported feature we decided that this was the prudent thing to do for now. You can absolutely count on us re-introducing video support in a future release down the road!
• When viewing Album art at fullsize you can now easily close the window.
• When clicking on a track in the library invoking inline editing of metadata is now less likely to appear when you weren’t looking for it.
• We resolved a number of bugs that could crash the application (thanks for always submitting your crash reports. Your anonymous data really helps us track down issues!)

The RC2 release notes contain additional details about this build including a list of known issues.

As always, please file any issues, bugs, or crashes you find in Bugzilla so that we can address them before 1.0 final!

Bloggers & Press: This release is not our final 1.0 product and is not ready to be reviewed. Since we’re still landing code we suggest postponing any review of the Songbird Player until our Final 1.0 product is released. If you’re interested in reviewing the 1.0 build feel free to contact us at: press [at] songbirdnest [dot] com. We’ll be more than happy to give you access to it prior to launch. Thanks for the care and attention you’ve shown Songbird over the past year.

• Improve Your Bug Writing: We have posted a recommended New Bug Template to ensure we get the details needed up front to move your bugs along the runway quickly. Information on Common Duplicates for single stop check in on high profile issues we already know about in QA.
• Community Test Runs: Songbird QA is using Litmus to write, run and document testcase execution. We will be setting up ongoing community test runs for you to help make the bird rock solid. A sanity test run for 1.0rc1 is up and ready for take off…so come on and join the flight in progress!
• Helpful Testing HowTos: Check out the Helpful Information section on our QA Home Page to learn how to add Crash Reporter IDs to your bug reports as well as other assistance to support your testing .

So fly on over and give 1.0rc1 a test flight! And enjoy the ride….

Here are the most noteworthy and complete features we’d like to call out in RC1 and get your feedback on:

• Audio Playback: We now use GStreamer as our main media playback system across all platforms – this means higher performance, better reliability, and a platform for much more media-related functionality in the future.
• Album Art: The album artwork feature now supports drag and drop of images, as well as, the ability to toggle between displaying artwork for playing or selected tracks.
• Keyboard Shortcuts: We’ve cleaned up our keyboard shortcuts this release (and added some new ones for power users). Look for the link to a complete list of keyboard shortcuts in the application’s Help menu.
• Smart Playlists: By popular request we’ve implemented the ability to use a smart playlist as a rule within another smart playlist.
• Performance Enhancements: We’ve improved many aspects of the application performance. Most notably, importing media into Songbird is now 2-4x faster.

The RC1 release notes contain additional details about this build including a list of known issues.

As always, please file any issues, bugs, or crashes you find in Bugzilla so that we can address them before 1.0 final!

Bloggers & Press: This release is not our final 1.0 product and is not ready to be reviewed. Since we’re still landing code we suggest postponing any review of the Songbird Player until our Final 1.0 product is released. If you’re interested in reviewing the 1.0 build feel free to contact us at: press [at] songbirdnest [dot] com. We’ll be more than happy to give you access to it prior to launch. Thanks for the care and attention you’ve shown Songbird over the past year.

• true, the property will show up in all column pickers for all libraries and playlists.
• false, the property can still be added as a column to a playlist, but can only be done so programmatically ( as opposed to the end user being able to select it from the column picker ).

At the same time we modified the column picker code to check the defaultColumnSpec and add those properties to the column picker, even if they aren’t currently shown to the user (this is important a little later).

Secondly, let’s cover the change that landed last night in the Webpage API. In all the different methods that create properties (e.g. createTextProperty()) there is a parameter hidden that maps inversely, behind the scenes, to userViewable. That parameter defaults to false. Having a default that meant the created property would be visible to all playlists didn’t seem like the right design. We decided to invert the parameter such that the hidden parameter is now userViewable.

How does this impact existing website that use the Webpage API? Without modification to their calls website will see:

• any properties created as hidden will now show up in all column pickers.
• properties created as not hidden will no longer appear in the column picker by default ( without calls to appendColumn() or insertColumBefore() ).

What should a site do to remedy the situation?

• For properties that should be hidden (e.g. urls to internal locations, site specific item IDs) use either the default argument, or pass false as the argument.

  songbird.createTextProperty( "http://example.com/hidden/foo", // name
                               "Foobar",                        // display name
                               false,                           // readonly
                               false,                           // viewable (used to be hidden)
                               0 );                             // nullSort
  songbird.createTextProperty( "http://example.com/hidden/bar", // name
                               "Foobaz" );                      // display name

• For properties that should be available across ALL playlists, libraries, set userViewable to true e.g. Creative Commons License

  songbird.createImageProperty( "http://example.com/global/CCL", // name
                                "CC License",                    // display name
                                true,                            // readonly
                                true,                            // viewable (used to be hidden)
                                0 );                             // nullSort

• For properties that should be available to the playlists for your particular site there are 2 options.
  • set the argument userViewable to false and then call append/insert

    songbird.createButtonProperty( "http://example.com/private/buyme", // name
                                   "Buy This Track",                   // display name
                                   true,                               // readonly
                                   false,                              // viewable (used to be hidden)
                                   0 );                                // nullSort
    songbird.webPlaylist.insertColumnBefore( "http://example.com/private/buyme",
                                             "http://songbirdnest.com/data/1.0#artistName",
                                             "100" );

  • set the parameter userViewable to false and set the defaultColumnSpec property to include your property ( recommended ).

    songbird.createButtonProperty( "http://example.com/private/buyme", // name
                                   "Buy This Track",                   // display name
                                   true,                               // readonly
                                   false,                              // viewable (used to be hidden)
                                   0 );                                // nullSort
    mylist.setProperty( "http://songbirdnest.com/data/1.0#defaultColumnSpec",
                        "http://songbirdnest.com/data/1.0#ordinal " +
                        "http://songbirdnest.com/data/1.0#trackName " +
                        "http://songbirdnest.com/data/1.0#artistName " +
                        "http://songbirdnest.com/data/1.0#duration " +
                        "http://example.com/private/buyme");
    songbird.webPlaylist.mediaList = mylist;

There are 2 reasons I suggest setting the defaultColumnSpec. There is currently a bug that will affect resizers in some cases when appending or inserting hidden properties programmatically (bug 13146). Using the defaultColumnSpec on the medialist will avoid this problem. Secondly, by using the defaultColumnSpec your properties will automatically show up in the column picker and if de-selected by the user will remain there. If you only add your hidden property programmatically and the user deselects it from the column picker and forces a refresh of the playlist (possibly by as little as re-sorting the list) your column would no longer appear in the picker.

• Updating Extensions for Songbird 1.0
• Updating Feathers for Songbird 1.0

If you are an add-on developer, please take a quick read through the guides.  If you’re an extension developer we’ve made significant changes to support the new Media Core API.  If you’re doing anything media playback-related, things will need to be changed around.  Fortunately we’ve got some migration examples in the guide, as well as code recipes illustrating use of the new APIs.  If you’re a Featherer, we’ve packaged up the new graphics and CSS differences into handy .zip files for you to easily update your Feather.

A huge part of Songbird’s success has been having awesome add-ons, and we’re looking forward to having as many 1.0-ready add-ons as possible when we launch our upcoming 1.0 release.

This is a big update for us that delivers a slew of improvements that address many of the most common complaints we’ve been hearing from users regarding performance and stability. While we’ll be the first to admit that we still have a lot of work ahead of us we believe this is a milestone for the project and worthy of a new version string, notably:

• Reduced RAM Usage
• Reduced Startup Times
• Fewer Crashers
• Faster Media Importing
• Drastically Faster Search
• Switching Media Cores to GStreamer Is Completed Across All Platforms

These are just some of the top level reasons why we’re willing to call this version 1.0…and why we are proud to announce a stable music player that both the community and us can extend. We’ll be following up with additional blog posts about the status of the next release and more specifics about the progress we’ve made. We appreciate all your contributions to the project and hope you’ll continue to work with us to make Songbird better!

We decided it was time to move from alpha to beta for the following reasons:

• Refreshed the UI
  We’ve been working hard on making the application more consumer friendly. Hopefully, both new users and experienced users will find the new user interface simpler and more intuitive. We’ll continue to ensure that the Songbird voice comes through in the design.
• Identified Songbird 1.0 Platform Support
  We locked down the platforms we’ll be supporting for 1.0 they are: Windows Vista/XP, Mac OS X Intel Machines, Linux 32- and 64-bit.
• Shipping a New Media Core
  Nightly users have already had a sneak peak at running Songbird with GStreamer on all of our supported platforms. By default, it’s only supporting FLAC playback but in our 1.0 release it will be our default media core for all media playback!
• Landed Numerous Core Media Player Features
  We’ve landed metadata reading/writing, have enhanced our drag & drop functionality, enabled syncing to MTP and iPod devices, and are days away from shipping support for album artwork and smart playlists.
• Performance and Optimization Improvements
  We’ve worked on making the application more stable and zippier in all sorts of ways. Users will notice that searching, scrolling, importing media and reading metadata are at or very near the needs of a daily use media player.

Our plan is to ship Songbird 1.0 before the end of 2008. We’re putting the finishing touches on planning the feature work that you can expect in the 1.0 application. We’ll update the Roadmap as soon as our planning work is complete.

By going into beta we are signaling that a wider audience of users are qualified to start using the application. The more feedback we can get in the upcoming months will help us ensure that we ship a 1.0 that we can all be proud of and use daily. Now back to wrapping up the current release!