Overview
Songbird is an open source music player, highly customizable, featuring last.fm scrobbling and many interesting add-ons. 

Review
My favorite free audio player is Quintessential Player, and it has been so for years. I liked it because it’s simple and reliable, but now I felt that it was time for a change. I decided to test Songbird, and the main reason that pushed me to it was the fact that it’s an open source program. I feel that open source software have a better chance of developing into outstanding programs because of the commnunity support.

Tha first thing that I liked about Songbird is the variety of add-ons that you can install. I guess that Firefox add-ons addicts will be very happy with Songbird. While browsing through the various add-ons I had the same feeling that I had years ago when I first installed Firefox. First things first, I installed a lyrics add-on

Songbird Screenshot 1

I have to say that I was impressed right from the first song. I have the lyrics thanks to the add-on, I have the artist bio, discography, reviews, news, photos, even videos from YouTube and other sources. Hmmm, this could turn to be quite addictive.

Songbird Screenshot 2

In such a customizable program I guess it’s obvious that skins are changeable too. In Songbird skins are not called skins, but feathers And there are many nice ones available to install.

Songbird Screenshot 3

Songbird is more than an audio player, you can manage your library, it has an integrated web browser, it plays the most common audio files formats and they say that the future versions will include a video playing module and a CD ripping feature. Cool!

Version Tested

1.0.0 Build 860

Author

getsongbird.com

Operating System

Windows All, Linux, Mac OS X

Download link

Summary

 Open source and multi platform.

 Highly customizable and with many great features.

 Can be a little too much sometimes for a low spec PC.

Rating

Verdict

Songbird is quietly becoming one of my favorite open source programs. I found myself using it for hours and hours, first for testing purposes, now just because it’s addictive.

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If you have any trouble with this software just leave a comment, I’ll help you out! If you know better free programs in the same category, please let me know!