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.

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.

Now that you’ve had a chance to try Songbird 0.6, here’s a view to the road ahead.

Today we are launching the Songbird Release Roadmap. Behold the next three Songbird release codenames and themes:

• Fugazi: Improve performance and focus on usability.
• Genesis: Continue to improve performance and add features consumers expect in a music player.
• Hall: Integrate Web services.

The roadmap has deep links to feature specifications, Bugzilla implementation tracking and your feedback powered by GetSatisfaction. We’ll continuously update the roadmap with the most current planned features, specifications, release dates and more.

Please have look and give us a chirp. We’re listening.