Songbird Media Player
June 24th 2008 09:52
Is anyone else having playback problems with iTunes? Do a search on Google, and you’ll find the answer to be “Hell YEAH!” I’m a big supporter of Apple products and services, but I’m also a fan of options in all facets of my life, especially with media. It all started a few months back while reading an article in Rolling Stone about someone (or someones..) who had become fed up with the poor audio quality of Beatles CD’s and decided to rip FLAC files to their computer from their collection of pristine Beatles vinyl.
To make a very long story short, they put the files on the internet so other people could get them (search “Purple Chick Megaupload”) and I went after it. I didn’t know what a FLAC file was at the time, but I did know iTunes wouldn’t play it, so I had to find something that would. In enters Songbird, an open-source media players from some of the guys who made Winamp and the Yahoo Music Engine. It not only handles FLAC files but also MP3 (of course), AAC, WMA, AIFF, MIDI, Apple Lossless, yadda yadda plus files with that pesky DRM crap. And the really great advantage is that since it’s open-source, it’s cross platform and developer friendly (not to mention free of course) and there are a plethora of extensions you can download to make it even cooler.
There’s an extension to display your album art much in the same way iTunes Cover Flow does, you can scrobble your tracks to Last.fm (if your cool like me) and you can even download an extension that imports your entire iTunes library into Songbird. It doesn’t play video, but I’m sure it’s only a matter of time.
It’s also visually customizable, with a variety of great skins. You can even make it look exacltly like iTunes if you so choose. There’s a built in web browser, eMusic compatibility (via another extension) and you can even search for DRM-free MP3’s with the SkreemR shortcut/bookmark on the sidebar.
Songbird is a great program for open-source purists and the anti-corprate big business haters out there who would rather throw their grandma in front of a train than download anything from Apple or Microsoft. (I love my grandma dearly and always protect her from trains, but a small part of me is with you.) It also seems to correct the skipping problem a lot of my tracks seem to be having in iTunes as of late. (The point at meant to get to in the opening.)
Check it out, (most of you probably have) if you hate it, its not like you paid for it.
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