The great thing about Firefox (sorry, one of the great things) is that by being open source other developers can use the code as a starting point to create their own more specialised browsers from.
Flock is one very good example and I’ve written about it on gHacks before. Songbird is another, and I have only just begun using this one myself.
I love the concept behind Songbird, and I like the software itself, unfortunately I think the biggest thing letting it down at this point in time is somewhat slow development. It’s not a criticism, but it does make it harder for Songbird to begin gaining a significant market share.
Version 0.6.1 offers some welcome improvements including support for 10 000 song libraries, performance enhancements, better media library searching,
I’ve been playing around with it for a couple days now, and while I’m not fully converted at this point, I’m seeing a product which looks extremely promising once it matures. If it can gain the kind of community which Firefox has then it has a very real chance of rapidly gaining rapid popularity. It’s greatest strength is that it can be extended like Firefox, although at this point it doesn’t quite have the sheer volume of add-ons, but as I said, creating a community will change this.
Considering the move towards cloud computing, online music streaming and always being connected Songbird is making innovative progress towards the kind of media player for the future. Windows Media Player is woefully inadequate for this kind of use, iTunes is too locked in.
It would be very much in stores like Amazons’ interest for this to happen as Songbird, unlike iTunes, offers song purchase choices to multiple online sites. Couple that with a iTunes-like interface and iPod support and we can say goodbye to DRM songs from Apple!
Related posts:
Songbird the ultimate Media Player ?How do you use your media player?
Songbird 0.7 RC1 Released
Songbird 1.2
The Complete Media Player Review (Part 1)
Windows Media Player CD-Text
Songbird in Linux
Play Embedded Media In External Media Players
