Songbird
Songbird is an open-source music player and media library application with an intuitive interface. It supports playing local music files, streaming internet radio, managing playlists, and more. Songbird aims to provide a customizable music experience for power users.
opensource
music-player
media-library
intuitive-interface
local-music
internet-radio
playlists
Songbird: Open-Source Music Player
Songbird is an open-source music player and media library application with an intuitive interface. It supports playing local music files, streaming internet radio, managing playlists, and more. Songbird aims to provide a customizable music experience for power users.
What is Songbird?
Songbird is an open-source, cross-platform music player and media library application originally created by Pioneers of the Inevitable, a company started by former Mozilla developers. It was first released in 2006.
Some key features of Songbird include:
- Support for playing local music files in formats like MP3, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, etc.
- Streaming of internet radio stations
- Intuitive and customizable interface with support for skins and add-ons
- Music library management with metadata extraction, tagging and auto-playlists
- Synchronization of music libraries across devices
- Online music store integration
- Web browser functionality built directly into the application
While development of Songbird stalled for several years, the platform was acquired and open-sourced in 2015 by Pioneers of the Inevitable co-founder Ellen Shapiro. This allowed the devoted Songbird user community to contribute updates and new features.
Some of the downsides of Songbird are that sync functionality is still imperfect, the online services are mostly defunct, and there are occasional stability issues. However, it remains popular among power users for its robust feature set and ability to heavily customize the user experience.
Songbird Features
Features
- Music player
- Media library
- Intuitive interface
- Plays local files
- Streams internet radio
- Manages playlists
- Customizable
- For power users
Pricing
- Open Source
Pros
Open source
Free
Intuitive interface
Plays variety of formats
Good library management
Customizable
Good for power users
Cons
No longer actively developed
Some stability issues
Limited mobile support
Official Links
The Best Songbird Alternatives
Top Audio & Music and Media Players and other similar apps like Songbird
Here are some alternatives to Songbird:
Suggest an alternative ❐
Winamp
Winamp is a highly customizable media player for Windows that has been popular since its initial release in 1997. It supports playback of a wide range of audio and video formats including MP3, AAC, WMA, FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, WAV, MIDI, and many more.Some key features of Winamp include:Customizable interface with...
Windows Media Player
Windows Media Player (WMP) is a media player and media library application developed by Microsoft that is used for playing audio, video and viewing images on personal computers running the Windows operating system. It was first released in 1991 as a simple music player called Media Player, and has been...
MusicBee
MusicBee is a free, advanced music player and media library organizer for Windows. Developed as an alternative to iTunes and Windows Media Player, MusicBee offers powerful tools for managing even extremely large music collections.Key features of MusicBee include:Plays a wide range of audio formats including MP3, FLAC, AAC, Ogg Vorbis,...
MediaMonkey
MediaMonkey is a powerful and customizable digital media player and library manager for Windows. First released in 2001, it has become a popular choice for organizing and playing large collections of audio and video files.Key features of MediaMonkey include:Managing extensive libraries with hundreds of thousands of filesAutomatically organizing files and...
Poweramp
Poweramp is a feature-rich music player application for the Android platform. Originally released in 2010, it has become one of the most popular and highly-rated music apps on Android.Some key features of Poweramp include:Supports a wide range of audio formats including MP3, AAC, FLAC, ALAC, OGG, M4A, and WMA.Completely customizable...
AIMP
AIMP is an audio player application for Windows that supports playback of many audio file formats including MP3, MP4, WMA, FLAC, OGG, AAC, and more. Some key features of AIMP include:Lightweight interface that is customizable with skins and color schemesSupports plugins and extensions for added functionalityIncludes advanced audio options like...
Foobar2000
foobar2000 is a popular free audio player application for the Windows platform. Originally released in 2002, it has earned a reputation for being lightweight, customizable, and supporting a wide range of audio formats.Some key features of foobar2000 include:Supports common formats like MP3, FLAC, WAV, WMA, Ogg Vorbis, and more.Extremely customizable...
Rhythmbox
Rhythmbox is an open-source music player application designed for the Linux operating system. It is the default music player included in many popular Linux distributions such as Ubuntu.Rhythmbox provides a simple and intuitive user interface that allows users to easily manage their local music library. It will automatically scan the...
Audacious
Audacious is an open source audio player application for Linux, Windows, and macOS. It focuses on delivering high audio quality while using minimal system resources.Some key features of Audacious include:Lightweight GTK+ based interfaceSupport for many audio formats including MP3, FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, Musepack, WAV, and moreCustomizable interface with multiple themes...
Clementine
Clementine is a free, open source music player and library organizer. It is available for Windows, Linux, and macOS operating systems. Some key features of Clementine include:Plays music from local files as well as online streaming services like Spotify, Grooveshark, SomaFM, Jamendo, Magnatune, SoundCloud, and Icecast internet radio stationsOrganizes your...
Quod Libet
Quod Libet is a versatile open-source music player for Windows, Linux, and macOS that specializes in managing large music libraries. Some key features include:Powerful search and tagging tools - Quod Libet makes it easy to organize large music collections with support for advanced tagging, regular expression searches, and flexible rename...
DeaDBeeF
DeaDBeeF (also written as deadbeef) is a free and open-source audio player software. It runs on Linux, Windows, and macOS operating systems.Some key features of DeaDBeeF include:Support for many audio formats including MP3, FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, Musepack, WavPack, AAC, etc.Lightweight and low on resource usageCustomizable user interface with support for...
