Headlines

December 02, 2008

iTunes competitor, open source Songbird released...

Wired Listening Post | Read Full Story >

Songbird is like an open source version of iTunes that handles just about everything that program does, while swapping out the iTunes store interface in favor of the world’s music blogs.

You can stream music from those sources directly within the program (try that with iTunes’ browser), purchasing whatever music you encounter there that strikes your fancy from multiple sources: Amazon, Amie St., eMusic or iTunes. Or, if a blog or other site offers songs as free downloads, those are gathered neatly at the bottom of the screen as well (see screenshot to the right).

At its core, though, Songbird is a solid music playback program—albeit one that can be customized with add-ons from Songbird and other developers, a strategy we’ve seen before from Songbird founder Matt Lord, formerly of Winamp, which itself had a wide variety of plug-ins. Lord set his sights squarely on iTunes when he launched Songbird a couple years back, accusing the program of being “like Internet Explorer, if Internet Explorer could only browse Microsoft.com.” Songbird, with its emphasis on unfettered access to the web’s music sources, proves his point.


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#1 rick says:

Mozilla isn't involved. Songbird was released by the company of the same name. The app incorporates open source software released by the Mozilla foundation, but anyone can go download it and use it in their project.

#2 Editor says:

Thanks, rick, for the clarification. Headline changed.


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