Archived thread 1001170 from The Cafe. Markdown source: The_Cafe/thread_1001170_So,_here_is_Songbird_1.0_What_do_you_miss.md
Finally songbird 1.0 is here. In my opinion there are some features that I would really like to use that are actually missing. (Status Icon, Equalizer, compatibility with music applet) I'm sure that those are very important features that we'll see implemented soon or later, so I really have great expectations!
So, at the moment I'm going to use it only for transferring files to my iPod.
For other maters. Audacious 1.5.1 rule'z :)
What's your opinion?
anyone?
The new release of Songbird is pretty good. All of my most annoying bugs from the RCs have been fixed but it always fails to copy album art to my iPod so I don't use it for that at the moment. I'm just waiting for all my addons to be update now. An equaliser would be nice too though.
I still have no luck with the one podcast (Drum and Bass Arena) that I listen to. Rythmbox, and pretty much every other music app with podcast support, handle it without issue. In songbird, the podcast shows in the sidebar (after I add the feed URL), but it's empty when I actually click on it. The podcast is comprised of m4a files, which I'm guessing is the problem.
I miss the original layout. I had songbird at the .3 beta release, and having the play, pause etc buttons on the top I think was better than having them on the bottom.
geoken said: The podcast is comprised of m4a files, which I'm guessing is the problem.
According to it's website:
"Songbird supports MP3, FLAC, and Vorbis on all platforms; WMA and WMA DRM on Windows; and AAC and Fairplay on Windows and Mac."
Looks like no support for .m4a under Linux.
For starters, they need to update their ipod plugin. I still cant get it to work just right. The sight said it hasn't been updates in over a year.
Second the keyboard media control button doesnt work for 64-bit systems.
Third an equalizer would be nice.
Other than that just a few bug fixes would be nice. Songbird crashes on me randomly. I really like the songbird project. If they can iron out a couple of these issues, i will probably switch to it from rhythmbox.
The player itself is nothing special - it's the same as others for me exept it embeds a browser and has a radio list.
They're using GStreamer now, which is nice - it's what's being used for audio on Ubuntu too. Except they didn't even bother with packaging into any .debs or .rpms - one would think that if they'd be at least a little bit appreciative and give something back.
magmon said: I miss the original layout. I had songbird at the .3 beta release, and having the play, pause etc buttons on the top I think was better than having them on the bottom.
Agreed. The UI took a step back when it was overhauled in .7
The buttons can be moved! View > Player Controls > Display at top
I wish that I could play my radio station using Songbird, but alas, they use .asx files which aren't supported in Songbird. :(
Exactly. I still always move my mouse to the bottom to start the song xD. They should release a skin that moves the buttons.
Edit- Buttons CAN be moved!? Thank you jesus!
I'm not sure if I "miss" this feature from previous versions of Songbird as I could never persuade it to run long enough to play with it. v1.0 is definitely much more stable, and I am impressed generally with the polish of the interface, even if it does feel a little sluggish. I would very much like to have a little more customization available with regards to altering, deleting, and rearranging my library.
Maverickprowls said: I'm not sure if I "miss" this feature from previous versions of Songbird as I could never persuade it to run long enough to play with it. v1.0 is definitely much more stable, and I am impressed generally with the polish of the interface, even if it does feel a little sluggish.
I would very much like to have a little more customization available with regards to altering, deleting, and rearranging my library.
Agreed. Such as when you get an unknown folder, I know what it is and I wish I could tell songbird lol.
Maverickprowls said: The buttons can be moved!
View > Player Controls > Display at top
It's not really the buttons, but the look that's my main issue. I know you can easily change it with feathers, but it's kind of a let down that they so closely mimicked the iTunes UI, especially considering that they already had a really nice looking, original UI in <.7
[IMG]http://arstechnica.com/news.media/sb1.png[/IMG]
I thought I was the only one who didn't like the new look of 0.7. I really liked the dark feeling the old versions had. Does anyone know were I could get feathers that mimic the older verion?
It's okay. I can't get it to properly download album art that I could get in Amarok. An equalizer would also be nice and maybe some visualizations.
Its become too itunes like, they should make it more unique.
Hmm.. I may see if I can figure out this feathering crap and make an ubuntu feather lol.
Edit- Someone beat me to it! Looks good, too.
Edit- Outdated... Too bad. http://addons.songbirdnest.com/addon/109
Like everyone else has said, I miss the darker theme from the other releases. :/
I still miss the same 5 features i've always missed since i first tried it back with the 0.6 or 0.7 beta (cannae remember): Crossfading Ipod scrobbling (last.fm) Lirc support proper podcastsupport and transfering of metadata-albumart and ratings to and from the ipod
I might agree that crossfading and lirc-support are not mandatory, but they are nice if you use songbird as a party jukebox. The two ipod issues and the messed up podcasts though is something that might make me give up on songbird, mostly because none of those problems seem to be very high up on the agenda of things to fix and implement
I tried songbird back then because I came to hate Itunes for the overbloated, persisting and intrusive piece of software that it is. And it's the only half-decent linux-mediaplayer with a sense of style. Let's hope it finds it way between all those players as the best of both worlds between itunes and the likes of rythmbox and amaroK cheers, hachel
Not a very good review for Songbird 1.0. Needs lots of work to catch up to iTunes, which still is not available for Linux. http://www.osnews.com/story/20607/One_Flew_Over_the_Songbird_s_Nest
Perfect music player to listen to web based radio stations like aol radio without having to use up an extra tab in firefox and closing it by accident.
To be frank, I don't understand what Songbird is trying to be. Is it a music player, or is it a browser, or both?
Why would I want a browser that has a music player or a music player that has a browser?
/me is confused
Music played with browser, and the ability to download MP3s it detects within any page. I use that feature for most of my music, lol.
I can't stand the fonts they are too small and lack the font smoothing in Ubuntu. There are some interesting addons - Tag Cloud & the photo collage but they lack configuration to make them useful.
Maybe Songbird 1.5
geoken said: Ioriginal UI in <.7
[IMG]http://arstechnica.com/news.media/sb1.png[/IMG]
Wow the fonts are larger and smoother back then.
Personally I have never been very excited by songbird. Why do we need yet another iTunes clone? Granted, it's gui is looking a lot more polished than Rythmbox or windows' music cube but also... unlike those two, this looks exactly the same as Itunes... I'm really dissapointed by their lack of imagination. If it was Microsoft releasing this copy, everyone would be pointing and laughing at their faces.
I don't really see the need to browse the internet in my music player either. I get my music files from ripping the cds I bought... I can't remember the last time I went to a web site to play an mp3 posted on it. This thing has also been done before by realone player btw.
It was Amarok's uniqueness and that separated it from the bunch and stole my heart away from iTunes. Songbird isn't going to steal it back by copying what I came from.
Metallion said: Personally I have never been very excited by songbird. Why do we need yet another iTunes clone? Granted, it's gui is looking a lot more polished than Rythmbox or windows' music cube but also... unlike those two, this looks exactly the same as Itunes... I'm really dissapointed by their lack of imagination. If it was Microsoft releasing this copy, everyone would be pointing and laughing at their faces.
I don't really see the need to browse the internet in my music player either. I get my music files from ripping the cds I bought... I can't remember the last time I went to a web site to play an mp3 posted on it. This thing has also been done before by realone player btw.
It was Amarok's uniqueness and that separated it from the bunch and stole my heart away from iTunes. Songbird isn't going to steal it back by copying what I came from.
The day Amarok will use GTK then it'll be my default music player for ever...
Metallion said: Personally I have never been very excited by songbird. Why do we need yet another iTunes clone? Granted, it's gui is looking a lot more polished than Rythmbox or windows' music cube but also... unlike those two, this looks exactly the same as Itunes... I'm really dissapointed by their lack of imagination. If it was Microsoft releasing this copy, everyone would be pointing and laughing at their faces.
I don't really see the need to browse the internet in my music player either. I get my music files from ripping the cds I bought... I can't remember the last time I went to a web site to play an mp3 posted on it. This thing has also been done before by realone player btw.
It was Amarok's uniqueness and that separated it from the bunch and stole my heart away from iTunes. Songbird isn't going to steal it back by copying what I came from.
Doesn't everyone likes iTunes ;)
A simple example how useful Songbird is: A friend said to me: "You heard that-and-that song?" I simply enter the name or author of the song in search pane and Songbird finds it for me, I can even download it. There are no other player that can do this, isn't it?
And the browser integration is cool thing. I don't have to open Firefox just to see some YouTube Video anymore.
The only thing I don't like is that it uses resources intensively (over 100 MB of RAM is a little too much I think).
I tray icon should be nice.
Kosimo said: The day Amarok will use GTK then it'll be my default music player for ever...
A little bit off topic, but what about Exaile?
meho_r said: A little bit off topic, but what about Exaile?
Personally I tried exhaile but found it ugly and lacking some of Amarok's nicest features. I tried using it when looking for the perfect player to suit my gnome desktop.
I just wish it could look native on my desktop..I understand there is an addon called 'nativebird' or something, but it doesn't work with the current 1.0 release. The fonts are just gross and it looks really out of place even with other feathers. Also the ubuntu feather doesn't work with the current release either. Sort it out!:KS
A while ago when the Songbird guys were doing a survey, I wrote out a massive list of the things I didn't like and wanted. I honestly don't care to remember all my points because there's really only one which is a deal-breaker for me:
Memory usage.
32-bit 1.0 Songbird routinely goes over 100mb of RAM usage. Sometimes as high as 130mb. IMO, that's just unacceptable.
Speaking to the quenstion of why a music player would need a browser, if your music is primarily compised of ripped CD's 9as some people have mentioned) then I could understand how useless this feature would be.
On the other hand, if you spend a lot of time on various mp3 blogs it can become very useful. I frequent a lot of sites that post links to new dj sets at various intervals. With Songbird, I can bookmark the site then treat it as if it was just another playlist. Songbird will scour the page for any mp3, then display those mp3's (along with their metadata) in a view that looks identical to your local music (with the one exception that these songs will have a 'download' button beside them).
What do I miss?
Well it looks ugly and doesn't play nice with compiz fusion.
That alone is a deal breaker for me.
For the rest is a standard audio player.
I could care less about the add ons.
The font issue is some what fixed by setting a minimum default font size.
IS there an installer for this so it appears in my menus etc.. or is it just a case of downloading and running the shell script from the extracted folder? Or is there another way of running v1.0?
You can use the package that.. Someone, I forgot who, made. Or, you can right click on the applications bar and select edit menus, then go into whatever menu you want and drag it in.
Where can I get the package that someone made?
Surely it's not that difficult to create a launcher?
If you haven't done it before, just copy something from /usr/share/applications/ to ~/.local/share/applications/, open the launcher up in a text editor and point it towards the folder where you keep songbird.
I miss the old songbird layout.
Amarok FTW.... for now
Metallion said: Personally I have never been very excited by songbird. Why do we need yet another iTunes clone? Granted, it's gui is looking a lot more polished than Rythmbox or windows' music cube but also... unlike those two, this looks exactly the same as Itunes... I'm really dissapointed by their lack of imagination. If it was Microsoft releasing this copy, everyone would be pointing and laughing at their faces.
I don't really see the need to browse the internet in my music player either. I get my music files from ripping the cds I bought... I can't remember the last time I went to a web site to play an mp3 posted on it. This thing has also been done before by realone player btw.
It was Amarok's uniqueness and that separated it from the bunch and stole my heart away from iTunes. Songbird isn't going to steal it back by copying what I came from.
Amen. Amarok is the best. No player has nearly as sophisticated podcast management either.
Come to think of it, I quite miss Amarok. Just wish the 1.4x branch were ported to Qt4 and dropped the KDE deps.
hey will u get songbird in .deb packages,i tried and din't find any of those......
etnlIcarus said: Surely it's not that difficult to create a launcher?
If you haven't done it before, just copy something from /usr/share/applications/ to ~/.local/share/applications/, open the launcher up in a text editor and point it towards the folder where you keep songbird.
will u perform copying actions in filesystem,it dosen't support,tell the procedure of how to copy into ~/.local/share/applications/
It's fairly impressive.... but it can't really compete with Banshee or Rhythmbox on the Linux desktop, imo. For Windows users though, it's definitely a boon because it's a superior alternative to iTunes.
I guess I'll substitute Songbird for the new banshee until they fixed at least podcasts. i never got the hang of amarok, and the new banshee does about almost everything I ask for
songbird doesn't even run on my computer, crashes on startup =)
Songbirds main problem is the fact that it's based on firefox. It's like firefox with more bloat and still with the memory leak issues. Performance wise it takes longer to start than it should and hogs too much memory. Other simlar media players seem to suffer the same problems though (winamp etc). Amarok also seems to take a long time to start on most computers.
Another problem I have is that it doesnt play/burn cd's. That's a standard feature in media players. Why isn't it there?
Video? No
Songbird has been in development for a few years now and lacks basic functionality. The only thing I find it useful for is playing shoutcast stations which I can do in bmpx and for skreemr which seems to have alot of less than legal content.
Johnsie said: Amarok also seems to take a long time to start on most computers.
I think that mostly depends on your DE. I'm using intrepid gnome on the same laptop that used to run hardy KDE. On KDE it started up instantly and on gnome it takes quite a while. Quite logical since it still needs to load all its libs. Of course I don't know how your situation is. :)
I'm still waiting for this feature:
Watch folders
Automatically importing media from defined folders It's strange that there aren't much media players that have this.
I'm still waiting for one of the players to come up with an AmazonMP3 downloader plugin. I'd like to shop amazon for mp3s right from my player.
bvanaerde said: I'm still waiting for this feature: Watch folders
Automatically importing media from defined folders It's strange that there aren't much media players that have this. The strange thing it's that Songbird USED to have it, back in the 0.2 days. I have no idea why it went away, since it worked quite well, but that feature is what's keeping me from trying Songbird again and one of the reasons I like Rhythmbox so much.
I just installed Songbird 1.0. I'm about to uninstall it. Still no mass storage device support for Linux (or Mac for that matter).
Johnsie said: Songbirds main problem is the fact that it's based on firefox. It's like firefox with more bloat (I'd say equal amounts) and still with the memory leak issues (none at my end; memory usage may go up but it comes down again). Performance wise it takes longer to start than it should (cannot for the life of me understand why this bugs people so much) and hogs too much memory (this, I agree with. System requirements where 512mb of RAM is a minimum is a joke).
Figured it was easier to edit the above quote, than chop it up.
vgrisham said: I just installed Songbird 1.0. I'm about to uninstall it. Still no mass storage device support for Linux (or Mac for that matter).
...generic mass storage devices? They're a godsend in that they *don't* require a media manager.