OSNews

What I find awful about it is the fact that a feature will appear on the Windows version and it'll take at least a year before it finally appears on the *NIX or Mac version. Yet again the non-Windows platforms are seen as the bastard red headed step children of the operating system world.

Edited 2009-12-31 02:55 UTC

Have you tried Banshee? It is a first rate media player in my mind. Amarok 2 is slowly recovering as well, though it may be a while before old timers are truly happy.

I've tried Banshee in the past but it was horrible in terms of locking up with large libraries. As for Amarok 2, I haven't given it a go. For me, I have a Mac and only use it for the library function; for ripping I prefer using XLD which enables me to rip CD's with true VBR rather than the constrained VBR which iTunes employs.

I wish and I hope that maybe the massive gap between iTunes releases is because Apple are re-writing it in Cocoa and hopefully we'll see CoreData being used to index music rather than the almighty massive XML file that is used right now.

It IS slow (P4 at 3Ghz here). But then again, iTunes doesn't fly on Windows either.

And besides, that's why I wrote that Palm, Google and Nokia should HELP these guys. Because they already have done the bulk of the work, and they have the framework, all it now requires is polish.

I second that; if Palm, Google and Nokia each contributed 2 full time programmers each; and dedicated to getting across the board feature parity and support for my iPod Touch - I for one would be more than happy to leave the iTunes world; the unfortunate problem that as a Mac user I am treated like a second class citizen when it comes to features when compared to the Windows version of songbird.

Edited 2009-12-31 03:12 UTC

Why would Nokia want to help Songbird?

There are already the following very capable players that run purely on Nokia's platform (which is Qt):

VLC
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

SMPlayer
http://smplayer.sourceforge.net/

qmmp (like Winamp, lightweight)
http://qmmp.ylsoftware.com/index_en.php

cuberok (like Amarok, no KDE dependency, works on Mac)
http://code.google.com/p/cuberok/

Quasar (for handhelds)
http://freshmeat.net/projects/quasar-media-player

and the following which also require kdelibs as well as Qt:

Amarok (the most capable, works with iPods)
http://amarok.kde.org/

Juk (KDE 3.x)
http://developer.kde.org/~wheeler/juk.html

All of these media players (some of them are also music collection managers) work far faster than Songbird.

Most of them require only Nokia's Qt platform (which includes Windows, Mac and Linux).

Edited 2009-12-31 04:43 UTC

Your comment makes no sense. Just because Songbird doesn't run on Qt doesn't make it useless for Nokia. None of the players you mention have all the features of Songbird. Amarok is close, but it is not ported to Mac/Win to run on its own, AFAIK.

As for Songbird not being fast: iTunes is not fast either on Windows. Didn't stop it.

Songbird requirements are too steep for almost all of Nokia's devices:

http://getsongbird.com/system-requirements.php

The features that Songbird appears to support:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songbird_%28software%29#Featur...
that are not supported by faster players are DRM-related (including Fariplay and Windows Media DRM on Windows platforms).

Songbird appears to be constrained to x86(-64) architectures (probably due to DRM and binary codecs):


All things considered, especially considering Nokia's current multimedia devices (which are mostly not x86)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N900
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N97

The one exception might be the Nokia Booklet 3G which uses an Atom processor:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_booklet_3g

Given that most of Nokia's multimedia devices either won't run Songbird, or won't run it well, and also given that Nokia could choose from a growing selection of quality Qt-based software, Nokia's choices for media players probably wouldn't include Songbird.

PS: media players specifically designed for Maemo include:
http://maemo.org/downloads/OS2008/multimedia/
Kagu, Canola2, UKMP, Mplayer, KMplayer, WorldTV99, YouAmp and MediaBox.

Edited 2009-12-31 06:37 UTC

>Songbird requirements are too steep for almost all of Nokia's devices:

What in the love of God are you talking about????

Nobody is talking here about porting that app on cellphones!!!! We're talking about a DESKTOP COMPANION app, like iTunes. How fast (or not) is the cellphone makes no difference whatsoever, because Songbird is supposed to run only on a desktop OS. This is an iTunes replacement app, not a cellphone media player app! :o

We are in need of an iTunes replacement, a **sync** app, not a new media player for cellphones.

Nokia. Perhaps also Qt, and Maemo, which are Nokia's platforms.



Nokia happen to make cellphones, it happens to be their primary business.

Now, with that fact in our minds, I will repeat my question ... why would Nokia spend their money on helping Songbird?

Edited 2009-12-31 06:42 UTC

>I will repeat my question ... why would Nokia spend their money on helping Songbird?

Because if Nokia wants to survive the current smartphone onslaught, they will have to fix their freaking usability and services (something that only very recently figured out that they should do).

And one of the main things people want to do with their phones these days, is having a great mp3 experience, similar to that of the iPod's.

And creating a spiffy mp3 player is only 50% of the job. The other 50% is the SYNC application. Since Nokia phones don't work with iTunes, and using Explorer to drag n drop mp3s is less than ideal for most people who already use iTunes, a new sync app is needed. And the only sync app that is an iTunes clone and it works, is Songbird.

Do I really need to make everything so clear for you to understand all these basic things? Qt, non-Qt, doesn't freaking matter. What matters is what customers need and what customers get. And it's CHEAPER to contribute to Songbird rather than write such an app yourself. It took Songbird 4 years now to get to this stage. Do you think that the current slaughtering of Symbian in the market has 4 years to waste?

I'd guess not.

I'm out.

Absolutely agreed! Ask why Apple has de facto monopoly in the portable music/online media sales business. The reason is not in their great player but the whole hub integrates perfectly in too many aspects.

One can not beat Apple by providing non-integrated bits of some awful download client and messy device syncing application. It must be one-click solution and Songbird is in the position of being cross-platform middleware (between media source and portable device) with some additional nice features.

The reason I don't use Songbird is because it doesn't play well in my media hub which is podcast RSS - X - iPod. The iPod is only there because of the X part.

I think you need to get some orientation here. Read the news in the past year with Palm almost getting sued for using iTunes. The problem for Palm, Android, and Nokia is that they don't have a good, multi-platoform iTunes-CLONE for their users to use with their mp3 smartphones. And Songbird is coming very close to that realization. It's the ONLY app that does, because it's multi-platform, and it operates like iTunes, which is what users want. That's what we are talking about here. Not a new media player for cellphones. Each cellphone can have any media player it wants to have, it's irrelevant.

It only becomes relevant, if having an actual new protocol (like iPods have one) to store music in databases, that might make it faster on players with over 16 GBs of storage (MPT/MSC are very slow at over 16 GBs). Only in that case, a new protocol might need to be created, and it would benefit everyone if it's a protocol accepted by all new players and smartphones. But other than that, what you wrote about Qt and porting Songbird to cellphones is not what we're talking about here.

My personal favorite: MOC / MOCP http://moc.daper.net/

iTunes is being used by people now, comes with every iPod and has a massive installed base. Quite how you figure people are going to use a cheap knock-off that has all the performance and arcane issues of any XUL application I don't know. We also have a ton of other media players, particularly on Windows, such as Winamp should people wish to use them. Sync? People are already using iTunes for that.

No one is terribly interested that it is just as slow as iTunes. It will make no one switch, not that they would anyway.


Palm, Google and Nokia don't give a shit because it's not quite that important to them and the framework is a pile of dog turd that is trying to compete with a firmly entrenched existing application in iTunes. The thing choked on getting through a quarter of my music collection that Winamp has happily imported in for years. I don't know why you think it would be important to these companies since it's all been done before. If they want to create such a player then I'm sure they can make a better job.

There is very little point to Songbird. We have applications like Winamp as alternative players and there have been many, many efforts to create alternative iTunes knock-offs and iPod sync alternatives.

I would rather Palm, Google, or Nokia help XBMC get syncing support since it already has polish.

I've always found it silly to integrate a full freaking web-browser with a music collection manager/player. It's a whole lot of unneeded stuff, especially since I doubt anyone actually uses it for browsing the web, instead opting for a separate browser.

I still use Songbird, it's less of a memory hog than iTunes, but it's still awfully slow and seems to actually be more of a CPU hog, especially scrolling the list of songs you've got almost hurts.

I'd ditch it if I could, but I haven't found any other player with a similar UI. They all try to look like Winamp and I hate the Winamp UI. I like having a clear view of all of my songs, a search for whenever I want to listen to a particular song, and so that I can sort my songs by the score I've given them.

I personally use iTunes. It has 3-4 small bugs, but other than that, it does the job perfectly for me.

iTunes would be good if it wasn't Apple product and if it wasn't so god damn resource-heavy :/ It seems it's impossible to get a plain music player/manager, without browsers, without video playback, without kitchen sink..

These days it's close to impossible to get anything without being forced to get the kitchen sink with it. Honestly, the only music player that I can think of which has a somewhat similar UI to iTunes and yet doesn't come with the kitchen sink is Rhythmbox. It's a music player, pure and simple, with some functionality for utilizing some iPod models. No video, no web browser.
Too bad it's basically been abandoned, I really enjoyed using it though it's still useable for the moment.

I actually have always loved Rhythmbox. It's fast, sleek, has really clean and clear UI, it's stable, and it's non-bloated. But the issue is, it's a Linux app. It's not available for Windows.

I could make the exact same argument when it comes to WinAMP or iTunes, but in reverse. And, technically, Rhythmbox is not a *Linux* app it's a *GNOME* app, which means it'll run on any platform you care to get GNOME running on. And yes, that'd mean Windows too if you really wanted to, would be a bit of an effort just for a music player app though. Thing is, the "Oh, it doesn't run on my os of choice" bit doesn't really matter. Use the os with the most apps you need, but recognize that you will not have access to others. Can't have everything .

Use the os with the most apps you need, but recognize that you will not have access to others. Can't have everything

Unfortunately. If I could have what I wanted, I'd have Linux with GNOME as desktop, but with all the games and gaming performance of Windows.

Rhythmbox isn't abandoned that's a novell lie so that they get banshee as the default player on ubuntu and other dists

Do you have a source for that claim? Only asking because it sounds a bit odd to me that Novell would do such a thing. I've not read of any bad blood between the two projects. Personally I prefer Rhythmbox as it seems more stable, though I do like Banshee's feature set and visual style.

Besides, why would Novell care what the default is on Ubuntu and other distros? I'd think they would concentrate on their own distro and let others do as they please. After all, it's not like they make any real money off of Banshee development.

Winamp was one of the major losses I was forced to deal with in my switch to Linux back around 2006. I never did like the idea of a media library, that's what my damn file system is for--it's all nicely organized by genre, band, year/album, and finally song.

I don't know how Winamp's UI is not clear, as you load files (typically, in my case, an album) into a playlist and don't have to worry about a bunch of useless metadata all over the screen about all the songs in your collection. Of course, since WA5 Windamp does provide that pointless "library" functionality, so you can have it either way.

Winamp is, IMO, the best. Though Audacious seems to be the next best thing.

Winamp was one of the major losses I was forced to deal with in my switch to Linux back around 2006.

I only know of XMMS, but I think it's more or less a direct clone of Winamp. I know there are others too, but I don't know the names.

I don't know how Winamp's UI is not clear, as you load files (typically, in my case, an album) into a playlist and don't have to worry about a bunch of useless metadata all over the screen about all the songs in your collection. Of course, since WA5 Windamp does provide that pointless "library" functionality, so you can have it either way.

The problem with Winamp is that I don't do playlists. I like to have my whole music collection right there, every single song, and I play them in random order. Oh, I also have the habit of rating my songs and ordering my collection based on the rating, with the best songs at the top and easily accessible. Whenever I want to play a particular song which isn't in the view I just click on the search field and type in the name, doubleclick the song, and clear the search again. Winamp however insists on always creating a new playlist whenever I do that and then I have to import all of my songs again. It's really annoying.

Errrrrr, you can do that. You have one local media list that you can go through and sort.


Errrrrr, you can do that as well and at the very least list the most played tunes you have in your collection.

I don't know what you're doing with Winamp but you're doing it wrong.

The removal of last.fm radio is actually last.fm's fault since they restricted access to the radio for non paying customers. Also they are going to remove their old radio API, which Songbird probably used

I would recommend not using tarballs and look at your distros repository and install from there. There are probably some configuration hooks that are different on your distro vs. the tar ball install.

Fat lot of good that'll do if your distro doesn't have it.

I have to agree. I never really liked Songbird all that much. It always choked when imported my media library.

For windows, I use:

mediamonkey - works great with large libraries
foobar2000 - anything local on my laptop

For linux, I use:

amarok 1.4.10 - large external library
banshee - local library..

Thanks for the tips! Just installed foobar2000, seems pretty slick and responsive.