Download Songbird 0.3 RC1

Songbird developers have a new release candidate on Friday released† The program has now arrived at version 0.3 and can be used from this page be downloaded for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. Songbird is an open source and cross platform music player using Mozillas XULRunner and VLC. The player can play mp3, wma, aac, ogg and flac files, among others. Songbird is being developed with the idea of ​​counterbalancing programs such as Apple iTunes and Windows Media Player. It is not only capable of running music files, local playlists and music databases, but it can also play music files, playlists and music databases that are located somewhere on the web. In addition, the functionality of Songbird can be expanded with the help of extensions. An overview of all current and expected features can be found in this document† The release notes of the new Songbird can be read below:

It is more weeks until our developer community and other early birdwatchers can start diving into our new Songbird platform.

“Platform?” you ask?

Why, yes, Songbird 0.3 is our “Developer Pre-Release.” We will be introducing a set of APIs and other platform improvements that enable Web sites to integrate seamlessly with Songbird’s media player features. The release also simplifies Feathers creation and starts to stabilize the API for add-on developers.

There is much more to come, including a new developer site with documentation, getting started guides, developer tools and code examples. We can’t wait to see what you do with them and get your feedback for improvements.

But right now, we could really use your help banging on the 0.3 RC to help knock all the bugs loose. Between 0.2.5 and 0.3 we pulled the engine out, and while we have a much improved library API and database, we seem to have a few bolts left over — particularly on the Mac.