Open-Source iTunes Competitor Songbird Is Released, Poops On Steve Jobs’ Head

Did you know that Steve Jobs used to be a crazy hippy? But then he sold out to The Man and agreed to give away free iTunes downloads if you sign up for the Air Force? True story!

Well, power to the people: the open-source music application Songbird, brought to you by the good folks at the Mozilla Foundation, has finally seen an official release. I think it could steal a serious portion of iTunes's user base, and here's why:

- Songbird is customizable. iTunes's customizability is limited, though there are a number of AppleScripts available, mostly written by a guy named Doug. Songbird founder Rob Lord formally worked on WinAmp, for which plugins and skins abounded, and has brought the same extendibility to Songbird. And since Songbird is open-source, anyone can write an add-on. Already, there exists Last.fm integration, album-art finders, remote control support, and several skins, which these cuties call "feathers."

- Songbird is also a web browser. It's amazing how often this is useful in conjunction with different add-ons. Not only does the program come with a built-in, tabbed Mozilla web browser, but it also integrates playback from the web seamlessly, allows you to archive media, subscribe to music blogs, and search the web for music using a variety of specialized search engines. This video explains it all rather well.

- Songbird is just like iTunes. In spite of its fundamental differences, Songbird still looks and functions very similarly to iTunes. New users, even new users' parents, will have little difficulty making the switch. One can set Songbird to automatically match his or her iTunes library, should he or she so desire. And Songbird features full iPod support, so don't freak out.

- Songbird is open source. Mozilla recently announced their one billionth add-on download, so it looks like this open source thing is for real. Songbird will not try to sell you music or hide your name and email address in your music files (TMT News). Unlike iTunes, it will run lossless formats like FLAC and zany-sounding codecs like Ogg Vorbis. And as methods of distribution continue to transform, the software will evolve to accommodate them.

- iTunes sucks worse than ever. Although iTunes was once marketed with the slogan "Rip. Mix. Burn.," version 8 makes it harder than ever to control the compression and encoding of your files (why not just buy songs from the iTunes Music Store?). This version is also the most invasive yet, indexing your entire music library in order to use its new, unimpressive "Genius" function. It even requires a terminal hack just to remove the links to the iTunes Music store.

Songbird still has a few limitations. Playback support on Apple DRM-protected files is buggy and requires a workaround; artists and albums beginning in the word "the" are infuriatingly alphabetized under "T"; and Songbird is a bit heavier on memory than iTunes. But I have faith that these and other limitations will soon be improved upon. Unlike iTunes, Songbird has no ulterior motive affecting its development. Instead, developers will improve Songbird in response to common needs and user complaints. And maybe, just maybe, it might piss off Paul McCartney a little bit.

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