The popularity of Apple's iPod range has led to the similar dominance of the software it depends on to function: iTunes. From its beginnings as a humble, Mac-only music player back in 2001, it now sits on millions of computers – PCs and Macs – acting as not only a player, but as an essential syncing tool for every iPod, and the front end for the iTunes Store – far and away the most popular online music outlet.
But when any product asserts its total dominance of the marketplace, you can be assured that a group of programmers, somewhere, are probably working on an open source alternative. We've seen Firefox steal market share from Internet Explorer, we've seen OpenOffice lure users away from Microsoft Office; might Songbird be about to dent the ubiquity of iTunes?
As the vast majority of people who use iTunes are perfectly happy with the way it functions, the answer is "probably not". But for those who slightly resent the iTunes Store, who think that its new "Genius" feature is clunky, and who find the way iTunes stores its library to be inflexible and prone to failing, Songbird represents something of a breakthrough. Its aim is to integrate more solidly with the internet, and to that end you'll find a browser built into the software, complete with search engines for mp3-finding services such as SkreemR. There's integration with last.fm – a better recommendation tool that Apple's Genius will ever be, in my humble opinion – and, crucially, it offers the ability to sync with your iPod. The only time you'd ever have to go back to iTunes is if you were particularly desperate to buy something from the iTunes Store – but, once you'd done so, Songbird allows you to play those FairPlay-protected files without any problem.
Drawbacks? I'm used to the way that iTunes imports and keeps all your files neatly organised into folders; Songbird doesn't yet have that ability. And it's still moving towards its first official 1.0 release, so there are bugs being ironed out. But you can grab a release candidate of 1.0 here, which has additional features to the 0.7 version linked to up the page. Of course, Apple are never going to make it easy for new iPod-owners to get going with Songbird rather than iTunes; it's pretty much always going to be the case that you start with iTunes, and if you're curious enough you might give Songbird a spin. But as good as iTunes is, the possibilities afforded by an open-source music player – addons, extensions, regular updates and fixes – mean that Songbird is definitely going to be worth keeping an eye on.
Related: PC users might be interested in Sharepod, another piece of software that seeks to replace some of the functionality of iTunes.
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If on a Mac, I use iTunes with all superfluous features turned off.
If on a PC, I use the light as a feather Foobar2000.
Posted by: Neil Scott | Monday, 10 November 2008 at 08:40 PM
Perhaps check out the Zune software. Although the Zune player isn't available here the software looks great, has the excellent MixView for recommending songs/albums/artists and access to the impressive Zune Marketplace. It also has an extremely handy way of organising video and podcasts. I've been converted forever!
Posted by: El-Rumi | Wednesday, 12 November 2008 at 11:31 AM
Great article!
Personally, to transfer music to my iPod, I usually use CopyTrans Manager: http://www.copytrans.net/copytransmanager.php
It's a free and light iTunes alternative for iPod management.
Cya
Posted by: Jay | Wednesday, 03 June 2009 at 01:01 PM