I confess: I live in iTunes (although I refuse to buy anything from their store). I can remember a few years ago when I couldn’t see the point of ripping my CDs. I still don’t even have an iPod but these days, if I listen to it, it’s digital. Even though iTunes works incredibly well (now that I’ve figured out how to bend it to my will), there are a few things I don’t like about it, most of all how it doesn’t want to let me use anything else.
There are a few alternatives, like Cog, but I haven’t found anything that can meet my musical needs all day long like iTunes does. Today Brian sent me a link to Get Songbird. I actually haven’t used it yet (it’s still in preview), but it looks like a serious contender.
It’s an open-source media player built on the same framework as Firefox. It looks like it could become as ubiquitous among discriminating web users as Firefox has. Watch their screencast and see for yourself.
And it has this adorable little songbird icon everywhere, with a cute little fart coming out of its little bird butt. I don’t understand it, but I like it.
Songbird can play all kinds of audio and video from websites just like it was on your hard drive. But this version is still a bit buggy for me. I tried to play a few pls files (mp3 streaming) for my fav radio shows and it was a hassle. It just didn’t work right away. Hey its beta software. I’m not switching yet. But I prob will when it hits version 1.0. Yeah FIREFOX software!
I’m playing with Songbird now and I’m pleased to see it has a built-in AudioScrobbler extension which means it works with my http://last.fm account. Although even that is a kinda buggy…
I won’t start using this every day, but I’m impressed enough to be very much looking forward to a proper release.