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Songbird Flies Today
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Wed Feb 08, 2006 12:24 PM
from the free-as-a-bird dept.
from the free-as-a-bird dept.
fr1kk writes to tell us that with the recent advent of a preview version for the new open source response to iTunes, Songbird, BoingBoing has taken a few minutes to interview team lead Rob Lord. While this program may be a great alternative to the DRM ridden iTunes and Windows Media Player platforms it is still only a Windows release. The good news is that by being open source that will (hopefully) not last very long. The Songbird site appears to be swamped right now, but there are several different mirrors available to download the client.
Related Stories
[+]
Hardware: Songbird the Open Source iTunes? 226 comments
An anonymous reader writes "Cnet has an interesting story about a company about to release an open source alternative to iTunes. Apparently, the software can be used with a multitude of music services." From the article: "Apple's iTunes is 'like Internet Explorer, if Internet Explorer could only browse Microsoft.com,' Lord said. 'We love Apple, and appreciate and thank them for setting the bar in terms of user experience. But it's inevitable that the market architecture changes as it matures.'"
[+]
Songbird Source Released 114 comments
Rinisari writes "The source for Songbird, a music-oriented XULRunner application, is now available via Subversion. Rob Lord, CEO of Pioneers of the Inevitable, released the source for the not-yet-0.2 version of the music player, which integrates a music library and the facility to purchase and download music from a variety of vendors. If you haven't heard of it, read the features list and try it out. Slashdot previously mentioned Songbird when it was released as a preview in February."
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More on Lord (Score:5, Interesting)
Although I dislike Winamp [slashdot.org] for it's complexity, I did thoroughly enjoy his simplistic (and very well designed) homepage called "smudges of wisdom."
He seems to be an interesting fellow with odd musical tastes: Also interesting is that he goes through a list of decent books, some of which I'm familiar with. The best part about them is that they aren't at all the typical programming books [stanford.edu] you'd expect.
Re:More on Lord (Score:3, Informative)
I tried Songbird for a few minutes and gav
Winamp the lightest? (Score:3, Informative)
I'm sorry; I can't idly sit by and watch that be posted without repercussions.
From other slashdot users, I've been alerted to foobar2000 [foobar2000.org], the light quinnware [quinnware.com], a crude hack of XMMS2 for Windows [xmms2.xmms.se], etc. Just check out this site [vorbis.com] if you want to look up new lightweight players. There are lists [i4free.co.nz] everywhere.
Honestly, I was afraid that Songbird would be too bloated--trying to do everything
Yes, 'cuz that's what teenaged music fans want... (Score:5, Insightful)
(Disclaimer: I'm pro-open-source. But, seriously, how many "music fans" (of the sorts who presently tote about iPods) would even know what source code is, much less give a crap about it? They Just Want It To Work(TM), man.
Re:Yes, 'cuz that's what teenaged music fans want. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Yes, 'cuz that's what teenaged music fans want. (Score:4, Interesting)
Yet the market has held tightly to iTunes despite the numerous alternatives that have entered the market.
DRM-free.
I see no such assurances, nor do I see the ability to purchase unencumbered music from Amazon. The player merely connects to the store. It doesn't do anything else that I can see. And many of those stores are evil in of themselves. Using the BeatPort example, you MUST have Flash installed and enabled to use the site. How does that help Linux users and Windows users who want to use unencumbered software?
There's a lot of noise here, but very few facts, IMHO. Songbird would be a nice step in improving media players on Linux (assuming a version is ever produced), but as far as I can see, it's not the revolution that you're making it out to be.
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UseFree.org/drm -- list of DRM-free music sites (Score:5, Informative)
UseFree.org/drm [usefree.org]
Songbird works with most if not all of these sites, and thus makes it easier than ever to break our dependency [pledgebank.com] on RIAA's music [magnetbox.com] and the cancerous DRM technology [gnu.org] that it is pushing.
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Re:Yes, 'cuz that's what teenaged music fans want. (Score:5, Insightful)
Source code.
Well - thats pretty much answered in the article:How many people write extensions for firefox? Not many, but how many people enjoy said extensions?
The source being available mightent directly benefit most people who use an open source program, but they sure as hell benefit from others having access to the source....
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I predict... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ogg Vorbis wedge (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, this could be an effective wedge to help Ogg Vorbis gain traction. Everyone knows Ogg is technically superior, and everyone gives it lip service, but lack of players means lack of incentive for recording artists to use it.
If songbird keeps a clean and easily understood interface - not descending into the usual "intuitive... if you're a psychotic fanboy!" interface hell that has claimed so many media players - it will gr
Re:Ogg Vorbis wedge (Score:3, Insightful)
Very far from the truth. Most people have never even heard of Ogg.
And to prove my point in an instructive way, I assume you actually meant that "Everyone knows that Vorbis is technically superior" (which is also not true, of course).
Otherwise your statement is akin to "everyone knows that QuickTime is technically superior".
Here's the thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Here's the thing (Score:5, Insightful)
However, if you do buy from iTunes, Apple provides the most lax DRM in the market. I have never, ever come across any limitation. I can burn as many CDs as I want, share the music with multiple computers, and copy them anywhere at will. When someone rattles on about iTunes DRM, it's clear to me they don't really use iTunes at all. If they did, they'd know the DRM is so invisible that most users don't even know it's there. I always forget it is.
So you read about the software and then realize, this thing is designed to connect to multiple online stores, so it will be just as DRM ridden as anything else! Looking at the screenshots, I suddenly recognize this as the iTunes clone that Mac fans were ripping on last year. The interface is a 100% brain-dead clone of the iTunes interface, widget for widget. They couldn't even come up with their own idea. This makes OSS look bad. I can certainly guarantee this software will never take off in this state, and making goofy claims that "FairPlay is the 8-track of our generation" (huh?) doesn't help any. The developer is very arrogant and claims shopping in one central location like the iTunes Music Store is some backwards idea, when in reality, we've already DONE the multiple stores thing for years, and people have gravitated to one central source (the majority choosing iTunes). It's been the natural progression of the market. That seamless vertical experience is needed to connect it all together. Steve Jobs has stated that relying on 3rd party support in the consumer hardware space doesn't work, and so far, he's been proven correct.
I have no experience with Windows Media Player's offerings, so I can't comment on its DRM. But I find most of the DRM commentary on Slashdot to be alarmist and inapplicable to the real world, and stuff like this just makes OSS look like kooky copycat artists fighting some unseen force that most users aren't even coming into contact with in their daily experiences.
The developers should probably expect a response from Apple's lawyers shortly. The iTunes interface is patented, and this is just blatant! Get an original idea, guys.
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Re:Here's the thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Thank you for pointing this out, because I was just about to.
My music is all MP3's ripped on FreeBSD using lame, mounted over a samba share, and managed by iTunes. iTunes then gets used to play from the computer, rip CDs, or populate my iPod shuffle.
DRM doesn't even factor in to the equation.
The iTunes software is nicely designed, works well, has a lot of features, and came free with my iPod. Why would I start looking for a v0.1 FOSS replacement for it?
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Re:Here's the thing (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Here's the thing (Score:4, Informative)
> know it's there. I always forget it is.
I've bought plenty of albums off ITMS, and it is indeed easy to burn them to a CD and then rip that, especially when buying a whole album. When buying individual tracks, things get a bit messier, since CDEx can't lookup the metadata anymore.
But saying that the DRM is invisible is silly. I have a Roku SoundBridge, which works just fine with iTunes, except for DRM-ed tracks. None of the ITMS albums and tracks will play on the SoundBridge, unless burned and re-ripped into iTunes. And this won't ever likely change, since Apple seems to have no interest in licensing their FairPlay (ha!) DRM to third parties.
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DRM is fine, unless you're a podcaster. (Score:3, Insightful)
Guess what podcasting needs? Right.
I'm going to have to use someone else or he's going to have to send me the original files as an MP3 (Thank Heavens nobody records to tape anymore.)
iTunes DRM Bites Hard (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfortunately, there is no software for Linux which is capable of doing that. DVD Jon had released FairPlay and some other tools which could unlock those files, but Apple broke those utilities with the release of iTunes 6. You have to log into iTMS with a computer to generate a key for the computer. The tools can no longer log into iTMS, and so they cannot generate a key for my Linux box.
I can't copy the files off my Mac to my Linux box, I can't copy the files from my iPod to my Linux box, I can't copy the files to any machine that can't run iTunes, including any other portable music players made by companies other than Apple.
Sure, the several thousands songs I ripped from CDs to MP3s are fine and I can move those around, but at my current rate I would soon surpass the number of MP3s I have with the number of DRM-encumbered MP4s I have. (I don't plan on purchasing so much as one more song from iTMS until there is a way to transfer them to my other computers and devices.)
iTunes is fantastic if all you want to do is rip CDs onto your Mac or sync songs to an iPod. My iPod is breaking down (and is well out of warranty) and any replacement I buy will definitely not be an iPod, and my only Mac is an old iBook with horrendous sound ouput quality compared to the sound system on my Linux desktop. I've had to resort to burning my MP4s to CD (a lot of CDs), re-ripping them into Vorbis on the Linux box (losing some sound quality due to encoding the music twice), and then manually retagging all of the songs since the meta-data is lost when burned to CD. Whatever convenience I gained by using iTMS has now been lost.
iTunes *IS* DRM encumbered. Well, more accurately, iTMS is. [b]And that's what Songbird is competing with - the music store, not the music manager.[/b]
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Not invented yet? (Score:5, Funny)
It can connect to classes of service that haven't been invented yet? Impressive. I shall go away and ponder the transdimensional time-travelling inplications of this statement. Over a large brandy.
Cheers,
Ian
iTunes, DRM-ridden?! (Score:3, Insightful)
Get your facts straight: files encoded from your own CDs do NOT have any DRM in them. Only tunes bought from the built-in on-line music store have DRM.
iTunes is a player/ripped/jukebox/music store program. You DO NOT NEED to buy DRM tunes online, you do not even need an internet connection (although it comes in handy for the CDDB feature when ripping your own CDs).
Re:iTunes, DRM-ridden?! (Score:5, Informative)
OK, here we go...
Get your facts straight:
A very good idea.
files encoded from your own CDs do NOT have any DRM in them. Only tunes bought from the built-in on-line music store have DRM.
True.
iTunes is a player/ripped/jukebox/music store program.
Windows Media Player is a player/ripper/jukebox/music store program.
You DO NOT NEED to buy DRM tunes online, you do not even need an internet connection (although it comes in handy for the CDDB feature when ripping your own CDs).
Also true of Windows Media Player. Like iTunes, Windows Media Player 10 will rip your CD's to mp3, with no DRM.
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Re:iTunes, DRM-ridden?! (Score:3, Informative)
It would be fair to note that mp3 ripping is new to WMP 10, which is XP-only, and wasn't installed by default on most Windows PCs in use today.
All copies of iTunes currently installed can rip to mp3, while only a fraction of the copies of WMP can, which puts things in a little better context.
wonderful (Score:5, Funny)
Re:wonderful (Score:3, Interesting)
When I tried to change "skins", I lost access to the menu bar.
We Need an Extension (Score:5, Funny)
Re:We Need an Extension (Score:3, Funny)
Too bad he doesn't have one theme that's worth a shit. Black or dark red? What is this, the vinyl choices for the interior in a 57 Chevy? Give us the iTunes gray, or a glossy white theme, anything but these dark, hard-to-read interfaces.
Say what what? (Score:4, Funny)
Which what what?
Mozilla-based? (Score:5, Informative)
Now, maybe that's common knowledge, but it's the first I've heard of it, and I think it's worth mentioning. Especially since talk of cross platform porting is.
Re:Mozilla-based? (Score:5, Informative)
It's actually a pretty significant milestone for Mozilla because Songbird (AFAIK) is the first major product released that is built on the XULRunner platform [mozilla.org].
XULRunner is exactly what it sounds like -- a small runtime to allow deployment of XUL-based applications on machines that may not have Firefox installed. Think of it as a JRE for XUL.
Until XULRunner, there was no practical way to build full-fledged apps using Mozilla tech that didn't run inside one of their products (Firefox, Thunderbird, Sunbird, Seamonkey) because that was the only way to get access to a XUL interpreter. Songbird is an interesting demo of how XULRunner gets you beyond that.
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Re:Mozilla-based? (Score:4, Funny)
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DRM Ridden? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:DRM Ridden? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:DRM Ridden? (Score:3, Insightful)
1.) The guy had an iPod and an Apple laptop. The laptop had his music, which he synced to his iPod.
2.) He decided to buy a Sony Vaio, but he didn't copy any of his music from the Apple laptop to his Vaio. Even iTunes reminds you to make safe backups.
3.) You don't say whether he sold his Apple laptop or not, so presumably he did, which means he got rid of his own music collection.
4.) The iPod wasn't readable in Windows, which was your friend's fault. W
Re:DRM Ridden? (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:And that's that problem... (Score:3, Informative)
Do you even check into this nonsense you're spouting?
You can play your songs on up to 3 computers concurrently. If you get a new computer, you can "de-authorize" an old one and then authorize the new one through a simple menu command. Do it as many times as you get new hardware. You can also play them on unlimite
Re:DRM Ridden? (Score:3, Informative)
It will quite nicely. In fact, with a little free help, it will play Ogg Vorbis files also. [xiph.org]
DRM Ridden? (Score:3, Insightful)
So what, are they going to offer the same content without DRM? Think not. How does DRM play in here? If iTMS has DRM it's because the copyright holder has agreed to allow iTMS to distribute content based on the DRM. Being OS isn't going to help this new system out in that regard. Now they may cater to those who are searching for content that is not DRM'ed, but that's content.
"DRM ridden iTunes and Windows Media Player" (Score:4, Insightful)
Last I checked my
Proxy settings (Score:5, Informative)
You can add the following lines into your config.js in the Songbird directory.
pref("network.proxy.http", "type proxy here in quotes");
pref("network.proxy.http_port", YOURPROXYPORT);
pref("network.proxy.type", 1);
Of course, replace the port and proxy values, and you're in. Its based on firefox, so I just got the settings from the Firefox config and changed from user_pref() to pref().
A solution to a need that doesn't exist (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly, if the software "just works", doesn't force DRM on you, and has the features you need, why spend the time making a product that just attempts to do the same thing? Are there compelling new features in SongBird that iTunes doesn't provide? The way I see it, iTunes is a very nice, free digital audio player that also has the ability to sync with an iPod and use iTMS if you want to take advantage of those things. If you don't want to use iTMS music or an iPod, then just don't use those features.
That being said, hopefully SongBird will have some great innovations that'll push other software makers ahead as well... I'm just not sure there's any more to it than "we don't have DRM and you can see our sourcecode - yay!" and if the developers stick with that mindset it'll never go anywhere.
Great, iTunes doesn't install anymore (Score:4, Interesting)
But alas, Songbird is garish, slow, and overwrought with features. Trying to be everything to everyone by embedding web browsing and access to many alternative music stores and sponsored websites, Songbird misses out on the point of being an iTunes replacement, simplicity. Like most open source projects, people have to learn where to draw the line between duplicating someone else's success to doing too much to surpass it.
Perhaps being a proof-of-concept product they will tweak it and streamline it enough to be both usable and simple. But I don't think we need a Mozilla based web browser that builds multimedia playback into it. Nice try. Should have just made a FireFox extension.
I guess I am forced trying to get iTunes running again, in the short while at least.
For someone not familiar with DRM downloads (Score:3, Insightful)
Can I use this new app to purchase music from any site that supports purchases (i.e. Apple, Napster, Rhapsody, Amazon, etc...), get a plain old MP3 file, which I can then play/burn onto any device I choose?
I had some experience with Rhapsody a few months back, but it seemed to be in some proprietary format, and I could only use their software to play/transfer/burn the file to my media. Will Songbird get around all of that?
thx in advance,
jeff
thx,
jeff
In re: "from the free-as-a-bird dept." (Score:5, Funny)
Attn: Robert Commander Taco Malda, Jeff Hemos Bates
I represent the law firm of Dewey, Cheatham and Howe, on retainer for Apple Corps [wikipedia.org] d.b.a. Apple Records. Our clients hold international legal and commercial rights to the recording Free As A Bird [wikipedia.org].
Your unauthorized distribution of lyrics to this performance constitute, at a minimum, a violation of U.S.C. 666-69-3117 and of the provisions on distribution laid out in the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). You are thus ordered to cease and desist the distribution of these and any other Apple Corps lyrics in your "dept" headings. Our firm has not ruled out further legal action to enforce our clients' Intellectual Property rights.
Signed,
Robert Cheatham, Esq.
Dewey, Cheatham and Howe
Re:In re: "from the free-as-a-bird dept." (Score:4, Funny)
What song is it you want to hear? [wikipedia.org]
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Is that iTunes? (Score:3, Funny)
Microsoft should hire these guys! (Score:5, Funny)
Bzzt! Next!
People seem to be missing the point... (Score:3, Insightful)
It is designed to be extensible. Hopefully there will be an iTunes plugin in the future, it also offers people a chance to use music differently.
It is only release 0.1. I'm sure iPod etc syncing is in the works.
Perhaps it will flop, but at least people tried.
Re:Been waiting for this one... (Score:3, Insightful)
You're missing the point., but its pointless. (Score:3, Insightful)
Just by replicating the MP3 tags, you would be able to set up a store. Of course processing of payments would be something your store would actually have to do.
This means any indy artists with CD burners, label printers
Re:Yep, DRM'd iTunes (Score:4, Informative)
However this is not totally correct. (I found out after buying my own iPod).
The summary is like this: You can manage your iPod from as many iTunes installations as your want. But in order to do this, you have to disable synchronization from Preferences window.
I know it's still a limitation, however it's not DRM related. Actually the problem is with the sync algorithm. Consider this: you add "Metallica.mp3" to PC A'a library and another unrelated "Metallica.mp3" to PC B'a library. After that you sync with PC A, then sync with PC B and then delete the mp3 on PC A and then to the both syncs again. What should happen?
This is a very difficult question, because there is not one anwser to it. So they chose the obvious solution: sync works with a single copy iTunes, however you can upload songs from as many PCs as you want if you disable sync.
(Btw, sorry my moderations will be undone, hope someone else redoes them).
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