Download Songbird 1.1 beta 3

The third beta release of Songbird version 1.1 was released on Friday. This open source music player is based on Gecko and is therefore available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. Songbird is developed by Poti, short for ‘Pioneers of the Inevitable’. This group includes developers who were involved with Winamp and Yahoo Music Engine, among others. More information about the possibilities of this program is on this page to find back. Below is an overview of the most important changes that are in the pipeline for version 1.1:

On Demand Fetching or Album Artwork

Songbird can now fetch album artwork from the web at your command. Simply select or right-click a track and choose “Get Album Artwork”. You can also select your preferred source of artwork. By default, Songbird will retrieve album art from Last.fm but you can install from other sources such as amazon.com via an add-on.

MTP Device Support

We fixed many bugs affecting MTP devices on Windows. We’ve also added the ability to synch authorized Windows Media DRM’ed content to your MTP device. To see if your MTP device is supported, or to report your findings, visit our MTP Device Support page.

Watch Folders

You can choose to watch a folder hierarchy for changes and the content will auto-magically be imported in your library. If a file is removed from the watched folder, the corresponding track will be deleted from your Library.

Better Sorting

Library sorting supports unicode collation and better handling of leading definite and indefinite articles such as “The” and “a”.

Replay Gain Support (Normalization)

If a track’s metadata contains replay gain (including iTunes-specific) information, Songbird will adjust the playback gain appropriately.

Reduced Installer Packages

We’ve reduced the installer package size on Mac and Linux by about 45% on each of those platforms.

Improved Memory Usage/Performance

As part of our project to bring down memory usage in Songbird, we’ve re-tuned the database to be less greedy with your system’s memory. On some memory starved systems, this should actually increase performance, but most users shouldn’t notice any difference in searching, sorting, scrolling, filtering, or smart playlists. Users with very large libraries (>100,000 tracks) will see the biggest memory use improvements. If you do find things are more sluggish than you remember, please see Tuning Songbird Memory Usage and try adjusting the page cache size upwards. If you find any problems in these areas, please file a Bugzilla issue against Songbird.

7digital MP3 Store Add-on (Beta)

We’ve partnered with 7digital to bring you the highest quality MP3s (320kbps). You can easily search, purchase, organize and get recommendations directly into Songbird. Just click on the 7digital Music Store node in your Songbird service pane. The UK store is fully stocked, but the US and other European stores are still continuing to populate a complete catalog of music. We’re still working out the kinks for this Beta 2 release, so if you find an issue, please let us know.

Known bugs/issues

For play of DRM files, make sure you have gone to store where you purchased your DRM tracks from to learn how to authorize your computer to play that those tracks. Songbird will be able to play those tracks as soon as your machine has been authorized. The following are not yet supported by Songbird (will be planned for future releases):

• Video Import/Playback
• Podcast Import/Playback
• CD Rip/Burn
• iPod Touch/iPhone

All Platforms

• Dialogs text cropped when OS is using big fonts
• Window min/max sizing does not respect DPI
• [iPod] Album Artwork switched to wrong music
• [metadata-writing] Unable to write metadata to .m4a files
• [ipod] 1st Gen iPod shuffle not mounting in Songbird
• Intermittent. Paused tracks inconsistently increase play count
• [gstreamer] Restarting MP3 by dragging progress slider to the start outputs silence for a while
• 7digital Music Store
  • Library track contextual menu UI incorrect after 7digital download
  • Users in Australia are directed to the US store

Windows Specific

• [mtp] Cannot playback media items on MTP device from within Songbird app
• Some songs display as 0:00
• [mtp] [dups] Same files can be added twice to a device if 2 PCs are used

Linux Specific

• [linux] Mini mode position is not remembered when switched back from Full Player
• Maximized state is not remembered between feather changes
• [podcast][mac][linux] Play stopped on change of feather
• [mac][linux] Songbird does not play MIDI files
• [linux] Cannot D&D import files from directory with spaces it path name
• [linux] Files from SMB shares cannot be played
• Songbird won’t play music under Fedora 10/Songbird does not work on Fedora 10
• [watchfolders][linux] Watch remote folder on Linux

MacOSX Specific

• [mac][ipod] iTunes can interfere with mount of iPod in Songbird
• [podcast][mac][linux] Play stopped on change of feather
• [mac][linux] Songbird does not play MIDI files
• [mac] Mini-player doesn’t show up in Spaces (intermittent)
• [key][mac] Keyboard shortcuts for Play/Pause, Next/previous track not shown in Control menu

Songbird 1.0 screenshot, click on the image for a larger version.