Mozilla Songbird

I dunno if this has been advertised here yet, but I recently switched from iTunes to Songbird and it was the best decision I've made in a while.

There's a shitload of addons and skins, it functions as a browser, it can be integrated with last.fm and maybe spotify too, it fetches lyrics for you, it shows news/concerts/photos/stuff about the artist that's currently playing, when surfing the web it grabs audio files on the website and adds them to a playlist, compatible with many phones/iPods/Linux/Mac, and probably a bunch of other shit I can't think of.

You all should try it out. My two friends, who previously used Windows Media Player and Winamp, are using it now.

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

sounds like all the things that turned winamp into bloatware. i just want my music player to play music.

hmmm that sounds pretty intriguing to me. i'm too lazy to give a crap about what browser i use (IE), or what media player (itunes), but this sounds worth the download, particularly because i'm bored.

  On 3/17/2010 at 8:51 PM, chaosmachine said:

sounds like all the things that turned winamp into bloatware. i just want my music player to play music.

Yea, it's all about the sleek interface and features. I happen to like that shit though. Hence why I was using iTunes in the first place.

also because you look like a happy little fluffy cloud

Songbird is ok, i like some of the features, interface is nice, seems like it might have good media management

but on initial glance a few things annoy me:

takes 2x the memory as winamp (120mb)

and you can only have ONE watch folder? thats seriously stupid.

foobar 2000

  On 3/17/2010 at 9:19 PM, 42Orange said:

 

but on initial glance a few things annoy me:

 

takes 2x the memory as winamp (120mb)

 

and you can only have ONE watch folder? thats seriously stupid.

Woah, 120? Mine generally doesn't go over 85.

Watch Folder?

  On 3/17/2010 at 9:31 PM, Murveman said:

  On 3/17/2010 at 9:19 PM, 42Orange said:

 

but on initial glance a few things annoy me:

 

takes 2x the memory as winamp (120mb)

 

and you can only have ONE watch folder? thats seriously stupid.

Woah, 120? Mine generally doesn't go over 85.

Watch Folder?

i might have more plugins enabled, and come to think of it 120 isnt too bad considering its a running a browser as well.

Watch folders are folders that you can set the program to watch for new files. For instance i have a soulseek directory, a torrents directory, AND a music folder which i put new tracks into regularly. If these folders aren't watched, new tracks dont get added to my media library and i have to add the manually.

also i'd like to take this opportunity to reiterate what a steaming pile foobar is. What an ugly, confusing, unintuitive, and backwards program.

Nuff said

  Quote

i might have more plugins enabled, and come to think of it 120 isnt too bad considering its a running a browser as well.

 

Watch folders are folders that you can set the program to watch for new files. For instance i have a soulseek directory, a torrents directory, AND a music folder which i put new tracks into regularly. If these folders aren't watched, new tracks dont get added to my media library and i have to add the manually.

 

also i'd like to take this opportunity to reiterate what a steaming pile foobar is. What an ugly, confusing, unintuitive, and backwards program.

Ohhh, right. Yea, one watch folder is pretty stupid.

While on this note the other downsides are no drag-n-drop from the player to a folder, which I got used to in iTunes.

Edit: Except you can select a song in your library and see the folder it's in. So it almost makes up for it.

And there's no visualizer, except I think there's a contest going on having to do with the design of one.

Nonetheless, the good outweighs the bad in my honest opinion.

You know you are not gay when you use foobar2000 as your main media player.

okay i just downloaded this, as iTunes is obnoxious. But are other players less suck? no.

yeh the interface is okay i guess. i successfully synced it with the existing iTunes library, now what is there to say, it plays songs and grabs all sorts of pictures/text from various sources. i like the standard theme visually.

then something happened.

then it's updating the library again.

then every song in the library has a duplicate.

/deleted.. the end.

  On 3/17/2010 at 10:35 PM, phling said:

okay i just downloaded this, as iTunes is obnoxious. But are other players less suck? no.

 

yeh the interface is okay i guess. i successfully synced it with the existing iTunes library, now what is there to say, it plays songs and grabs all sorts of pictures/text from various sources. i like the standard theme visually.

 

then something happened.

 

then it's updating the library again.

 

then every song in the library has a duplicate.

 

/deleted.. the end.

That's fucked up. I didn't actually use the iTunes thing. I just moved my iTunes Folder contents to the songbird folder.

when i first got my mac i spent a while searching for alternative media players to itunes and eventually settled with songbird. think it's pretty rad myself and like the add-ons available, but most of the add-ons central to my listening enjoyment aren't compatible with the newest version, so i'm not updating til that changes.

Should I switch from itunes to foobar?

I like this, I can now sing along to Alice Cooper's "Muscle of Love" now with the help of the lyric thing. huzzah!

foobar is great, plays music gapless too

VLC FOR LIFE

yeah vlc for me. Its even got a playlist

winamp isn't really bloatware if you don't let it be, i use it with the classic skin that's been around since winamp started basically, and the funcitonality is basically identical to what it was 10 years ago.

the main thing i use in winamp which keeps me from wanting to try other media players is the f3 search

when you have 20,000 songs or whatever in your entire collection, scrolling to the track you want is pretty retarded. plus it depends entirely on all of your tracks having proper naming conventions / correct ID3 information for them to be ordered correctly such that you can find them. in winamp you can just hit f3 and type like "ap" for example and it'll list all artists/tracks starting with or containing those letters, and the list gets shorter in realtime as you type more letters and terms. basically you can locate + play any track or artist in your gigantic playlist within seconds. or is this standard in other media players?

(i know other media players have search features but i dunno, winamp's is just so damn efficient and awesome)

foobar rulz em all if u dont agree its just cos ur not smart enuf to figger it out

and yes, alky most players have that feature lol.. i also keep two boxes, sorted by artist and one by album for skipping quickly with much less scrolling

i don't see whats so wrong with itunes other than no flac (a huge downside)

but then again i have a mac and an ipod

Songbird is cool but foobar is still the king.

  On 3/17/2010 at 10:48 PM, chassis said:

Should I switch from itunes to foobar?

unless you're addicted to eye candy, yes. Extremely light on system resources, plays every format imaginable, powerful tag editing / library organizing features, and you can customize it to be as complicated (or minimal in my case) as you desire.