# Songbird Media Player



## Phantom Lancer (Nov 27, 2009)

For those of you who have not yet tried out songbird , now is a good time ! . It is available for most Operating Systems (windows , mac ,Linux) . Developed by the people behind WinAmp and Yahoo music search engine it is an open source software . This is positioned as a web media player as it integrates with the web seamlessly .

features that set it apart

-> Retrieves metadata such as Band information , Album Art etc from Amazon for free while your media plays
-> Can be used as a browser (uses firefox base) and has tabbing functionality similar to Firefox
-> Multitude of audio/music specific add-ons similar to firefox
-> Feathers - a theme manager lets you easily skin your media player .

Its still not present in the ubuntu's official repository so you ll have to manually download and install it in ubuntu

*Songbird in my Ubuntu 9.10*​*i597.photobucket.com/albums/tt52/Indianrep/Screenshot-11.png


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## thewisecrab (Nov 28, 2009)

I'm using it as my primary media player in WinXP . .loving every minute of it. . .I tried it during it's beta days in Ubuntu, was impressed then too . .the addons are different yet better. The "feathers" is like Personas, and nice too.

Though I sometimes find it sluggish (during the loading of the app) but once it's open, it's smooth sailing


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## Krow (Nov 28, 2009)

/me is the foobar guy.


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## Faun (Nov 28, 2009)

/me is the Quodlibet guy in Linux and foobar guy in Windows. 

I tried Songbird, its really like the firefox of media players. Props to the developers !


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## Phantom Lancer (Nov 28, 2009)

thewisecrab said:


> I'm using it as my primary media player in WinXP . .loving every minute of it. . .I tried it during it's beta days in Ubuntu, was impressed then too . .the addons are different yet better. The "feathers" is like Personas, and nice too.
> 
> Though I sometimes find it sluggish (during the loading of the app) but once it's open, it's smooth sailing


yup its a bit of a resource hog . Takes a second to start up , not something you see very often in Linux apps . 
But i dont mind turning a blind eye to that , sound quality is top class and its makes great eye candy . 
I hope they iron out all the minor issues , this media web browser concept is really a winner all the way imo .


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## desiibond (Nov 28, 2009)

last time when I tried it was when it was in beta and it was terrible. let me check now


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## x3060 (Nov 28, 2009)

thanks for this...never knew of about it. been a media monkey person for a long time now. will give it a try.


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## Krow (Nov 28, 2009)

^Your avatar says that. 

I prefer a lightweight music player. I don't mind a lack of features like lyrics and album art, etc. I just need a minimalistic one. Foobar2000 consumes about 3mb of ram when minimised in windows, of course after a painfully barebones install.

However Songbird is good (addons, browser  ) , along with Media Monkey too. I hate Winamp, is very buggy on systems with low RAM. The classic 2.x versions were brilliant. Not the 5.x ones. 

I use Rhythmbox in Linux. Can't really come to terms with Amarok. Looks like I gotta try the Quodlibet thingy kanjar mentioned.


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## thewisecrab (Nov 28, 2009)

@kanjar, krow

AFAIK, Songbird uses the same platform and engine as FF, hence the similarity.

Actually, I stumbled upon it a long time ago, when I was looking for a player that could provide CoverFlow and not be a HUGE resource hog (a la iTunes). 

Songbird could do that. And of course, mashTape, Lyrics, Concert Swag, etc. were just more things that made it better (addons for Songbird are awesome, I must say)


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## desiibond (Nov 28, 2009)

just finished installing it and damn, it looks superb on windows 7. 

and i can tweet directly from this player


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## thewisecrab (Nov 28, 2009)

^^
Using feathers? And I doubt whether you'll have drm probs with this one too


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## XTerminator (Nov 28, 2009)

Krow said:


> /me is the foobar guy.



me too


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## Rahim (Nov 28, 2009)

I use Songbird on Debian and tried Amarok 2 on Arch( just for consistency) but BOTH lags a lot during song searching and it takes almost 10 seconds to get active.

Songbird, on the other hand, do take resources but has many intuitive features but I am an Opera lover, so don't use Songbird's browser.


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## azaad_shri75 (Nov 28, 2009)

how is it compared to VLC.


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## Rahim (Nov 28, 2009)

^Wrong comparison bro, as Songbird is media management capable while VLC is an all-in-one media player. Both are different.


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## Krow (Nov 28, 2009)

azaad_shri75 said:


> how is it compared to VLC.


Compare VLC to KM player, etc. Compare songbird to foobar, media monkey, iTunes, etc.


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## hellknight (Nov 28, 2009)

installed latest version of AmaroK on Fedora 12.. the graphic equalizer option is there but it is greyed out.. any advices.. i'm using Xine Lib as the backend..


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## ssk_the_gr8 (Nov 28, 2009)

was a media monkey guy on xp, have shifted to WMP with Windows 7, will give it a try.
the last time i tried it was good but buggy.


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## Rahim (Nov 29, 2009)

hellknight said:


> installed latest version of AmaroK on Fedora 12.. the graphic equalizer option is there but it is greyed out.. any advices.. i'm using Xine Lib as the backend..



Phonon still doesn't fully support this feature YET. So it might get sorted in future releases.


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## Faun (Nov 29, 2009)

Krow said:


> However Songbird is good (addons, browser  ) , along with Media Monkey too. I hate Winamp, is very buggy on systems with low RAM. The classic 2.x versions were brilliant. Not the 5.x ones.
> 
> I use Rhythmbox in Linux. Can't really come to terms with Amarok. Looks like I gotta try the Quodlibet thingy kanjar mentioned.


I heard AIMP2 is better than Winamp. Havent tried it as I use foobar in windows and hardly boot into windows unless I need to play some game.


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## 6x6 (Nov 29, 2009)

does songbird has equilizers? 
I use mostly rythmbox but could not find equilizers in it. so sometimes use audacious, which reminds me of winamp 2.xx


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## desiibond (Nov 29, 2009)

yes. it has. you can download equalizer extension pack


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## thewisecrab (Nov 30, 2009)

Most addons on FF (Adblock plus, greasemonkey, Stylish etc.) are on Songbird. Posting on forum now while listening to Lamb Of God at the same time


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## Cool G5 (Nov 30, 2009)

I use XMMS on Linux & Winamp on my windows system. Will try this out once I get some free time by my hand.


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## Krow (Nov 30, 2009)

Rhythmbox FTW!


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## danova (Dec 14, 2009)

I tried it during it's beta days in Ubuntu, was impressed then too . .the addons are different yet better.
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