1. Introduction to Songbird
Table of contents
- 1.1. What is Songbird?
- 1.2. Why should I use Songbird?
- 1.2.1.1. It's free!
- 1.2.1.2. It's cross-platform!
- 1.2.1.3. It's customizable!
- 1.3. Our Vision
- 2.
What is Songbird?
Songbird is a desktop media player, specifically designed with the future in mind. While most media players are still focusing on local music only, Songbird is currently looking to the constantly-changing landscape of the web for guidance. What does this mean? Simply put, Songbird allows you to 'play' the web. Instead of needing separate applications to search for and listen to music, Songbird allows you to do it all from one simple program, with an astounding level of integration between the web and your music.
Why should I use Songbird?
It's free!
Of course, many of the most popular media players, such as iTunes on Mac and Windows, and Winamp and Windows Media Player on Windows, are available free of charge. But there's more to Songbird's freedom than its lack of a price tag: Songbird is open-source, which means that it is community-driven and powered by you. You can truly make it your own and modify it to your heart's content with add-ons. Also, rather than just implementing the features that are most likely to bring in revenue, Songbird's development team can implement features that they think are cutting-edge, useful, or just plain cool.
It's cross-platform!
Have you ever tried to play music on another operating system, only to find that you are unfamiliar with the media player? That's not a problem with Songbird, since it runs on the 'big three' of operating systems (Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X), which means that you'll have a consistent experience between operating systems.
It's customizable!
Songbird is probably the most customizable media player on the planet. Want to change the way it looks, add support for a web service, or add something new to the way the media library works? There's probably an add-on for it, and they are easy to install.
Our Vision
Current media players such as iTunes, Windows Media Player and Zune are proprietary, single‐vendor, vertically‐integrated silos, excluding any competitive services and devices. If Web browsers had been designed like current media players, Internet Explorer would surf only Microsoft.com and run only on the Xbox.
In contrast, Songbird is a media player that is as open as a Web browser. We’re building the open source, open standards, open Web user‐agent for digital media.
Our vision comes from Tim Berners‐Lee’s original vision of the Web:
“Keeping the medium and the content separate is a good rule in most media. When I turn on the television, I don't expect it to deliberately jump to a particular channel... I expect my television to be an impartial box. I also expect the same neutrality of software…”
We believe that Songbird dramatically lowers the barriers to entry for new services and devices, and will foretell a vast, diverse and innovative Media Web. We aspire to make Songbird as ubiquitous as the Web browser, television set, or home stereo.
Play the Web!
- Tag page
- What links here
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