Songbird 0.6pre Build = happiness

[ufugu]

I am one of those people who bounce around music players and not been satisfied: Rhythmbox, Banshee, Exaile, Quod Libet, Amarok (yes, even Amarok is not perfect), BMPx, Audacious, XMMS etc etc, but have never quite found one that does everything I want in the way I want it too.

I've been trying Songbird off and on since version .2, and thought it had potential both as a player and with the web integration stuff, but there was always something buggy or broken with it that made it frustrating to use. My experience with the latest "blessed" nightly has been much better though:

1) It is no longer choking on my 18,000+ library. After an initial 10 minute build of the database on the first run, it is super smooth and FAST.

2) It edits metadata and writes it back to the file. Yes!

3) It recognizes my 5.5G iPod instantly, reads and writes to it, including transferring playlists.

4) Etc: Addons like mashTape are working. The window looks right. My Flash installation is detected correctly. My multimedia keys are recognized. Album art working right. No smart playlists right now for some reason, but I can live with that.

Sorry if this sounds like an ad, but this is making me really happy.

The blessed 0.6pre Build and iPod extension are here.

ufugu

[itsjustarumour]

+1 for being very impressed with the latest Songbird 0.6 build!

Like you I've been keeping an eye on development, and I'd say this is the first version that actually seemed "usable". A few problems with Java detection and plugins, but apart from that I haven't found anything yet that DOESN'T work.

Give it a little while, and I reckon Songbird will become to Itunes what Firefox is to Internet Explorer - well worth checking out for those who haven't seen it yet

[amazeing]

At the risk of sounding noobish, where is that ipod add on link that is compatible with .6?

[ufugu]

The iPod extension is on that same page of nightly builds. Here's how to load it:

First install Songbird, and then navigate to the builds page from within Songbird itself. Then click on the iPod extension link. It installs itself as an extension (a la Firefox). Also like Firefox, you then need to restart Songbird to load it. Then just plug in your iPod and Songbird should see it.

Glad I'm not the only one enjoying this.

[itsjustarumour]

Glad I'm not the only one enjoying this.

Me too, and I'm surprised that Songbird hasn't been getting more coverage on these forums. I'm sure that will change though!

[Killa Frog]

I was beta testing this in *REALLY* early development, and it's clunkiness eventually led me away from using it (far too difficult for daily life, even for the purposes of fixing bugs and whatnot), so I'm glad to hear it seems to be turning out well. It was one of my most anticipated software releases last year, so I'll definitely be picking up the new build, thanks for letting me know it was getting up to snuff!