This brand-new download is, and will likely to continue to be, an important development in music player software, and while blogs focusing on technology have mentioned it, it has gone relatively unchecked by music blogs!

Songbird is a cross-platform (Windows, Mac, Linux) 11.7 MB download; an incredibly dynamic open-source music player that was released in a beta stage in February of 2008, with the first stable release on December 2nd. While it does all that good stuff you expect from a media player, i.e supporting multiple audio formats, having a customizable interface, supporting Last.fm scrobbling, and music library/playlist management, there is a high level of community-driven integration present in Songbird that other media players are missing.

All the important stops along your on-line music path are brought together in Songbird, saving you time with fewer clicks. Component mashTape can automatically bring up Flickr photos and a bio for the currently-playing artist. Want to know about concert tickets? Popular concert-tracker Songkick powers the concert listings within the unit based on the artists in your library. There are a bevy of add-ons. Just listening to a song can allow you to pull up lyrics for it and get Last.fm recommendations based on it, again, without having to leave the player. The developers are obviously quite savvy about the face of today’s music industry and how fans get their music; the most curious feature, still in beta, is the ability to subscribe to mp3 blogs as playlists. HypeMachine, Insound, and eMusic are also integrated. Starting to look like a viable alternative?

Being an open-source project, their development team is interested in users helping to better Songbird encouraging code submission, creating and using community-built add-ons, testing of features in beta. Speaking of Beta, they still have some seriously important details to work out: lack of CD ripping/playing, bug tendencies, and some difficulty with album artwork and playing videos from the web.

Despite the general “unfinished-ness” of Songbird, the design of the website and player is quite smart and modern, and the emphasis of their mission is clear: this is a player to be improved upon continually, and undoubtedly with the valuable assistance of community feedback. Should the bugs be ironed out, features expand, and community of users grow, this alternative muic player could become quite a rival to iTunes. This is not only one to try, but one to watch.

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