If we are music lovers and we have a large music library on our hard drive, one of the programs that can never be missing from our computer is a good player. With it we can play, manage and keep all our favorite music organized. To do this, we can use an application like Songbird , about which we will talk below.
Songbird is an audio player based on Mozill’s XULRunner platform, which is why it is available for Windows as well as macOS and Linux, presenting itself as a clear alternative to Apple‘s iTunes. It is characterized by having a complete integration on the web and being prepared to interact with different Internet music sales portals such as MP3Tunes and BeaPort, some of which allow you to preview the songs in its database.
Another interesting feature is its fantastic media library, with which we can organize our music collection by genre, artists, albums, etc., as well as access podcast pages and radios that broadcast over the Internet, through its integrated browser.
The main proposals of Songbird so that it can become our audio player and manager are:
- Support for the most popular audio files like MP3, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC and Windows Media DRM.
- Apple FairPlay and Windows Media DRM support.
- Customizable, configurable and foldable interface, with built-in mini player mode.
- Audio files stored on web pages are playable.
- Possibility of downloading MP3 files and RSS subscriptions.
- Ability to subscribe to MP3 blogs and playlists.
- Allows you to make and create custom mixes.
- Possibility of scanning our folders in search of audio to add them to the library.
- Integration with the Last.fm service.
- Possibility of adding or obtaining the covers of the songs automatically.
- Ability to create smart playlists.
- Support for MPT and possibility to include ID3 metadata.
Manage your entire music library
Once we run the application we find its main menu, which is in English, and which can be maximized so that it is able to cover the entire visible area of our screen. Unlike other similar programs, this player does not seek to have an appearance similar to that of the Windows player, but rather has sober tones with elements in gray and black.
Interface divided into three parts
The interface is divided into three parts, on the left we see a panel that contains playlists and pre-existing or user-created bookmarks that can lead us directly to our favorite content either on the web or in the folders on our computer where we have it. of all our multimedia content. In the central part it presents all the content organized by titles, duration, album and genre. This panel can be customized using the two buttons at the top. In the right column we can create and save our own playlists.
If we right-click on any song, it will be possible to modify its metadata manually through its editor. We can fill in data such as title, artist, year, album, track number, as well as add a cover for it. In this way we can have our music library organized.
Make different configuration options from the Options menu
Within the tools tab (Tools) we can enter and configure its options. Here we will find some useful functions such as the ability to import and export files from iTunes. We can also add different plugins, configure keyboard shortcuts, allow websites to integrate with Songbird, being able to allow or block websites for media playback, among other functions.
The player has its own integrated web player that, although it is not the fastest and most fluid, can allow us to access all kinds of pages to buy music. By default comes the Soungbird.me page which we have not been able to load so it is likely that it is no longer available.
Conclusions: is Songbird worth betting on?
This music player also allows us to keep our music library organized thanks to the editing of metadata. As an MP3 player it works correctly, although it has some negative points that we must take into account. On the one hand, it lacks updates since 2017, which means that it does not even have full compatibility with Windows 10, so we can find that some of its functions cannot be executed correctly. It is free to download and try, although we will likely find better options on the market.
Songbird free download
SongBird is a music manager and player that we can download for free from this link . It is compatible with Linux, macOS and Windows XP, Vista and 2000 operating systems. It must be said that it can be installed and run from Windows 10 but the same program warns that it is not developed for this platform so some of its functions may not be available.
The latest version of SongBird available is from February 2017 . This means that, despite being a project by Mozilla developers, the truth is that it has not received updates for four years, proof for which it does not even offer full compatibility with Windows 10.
Alternatives to Songbird
If we are looking for a program with which to reproduce and manage our music library, we suggest some alternatives to Songbird that we must take into account:
Foobar2000
It is a versatile audio player, offering a wide range of support for audio formats, with full support for Unicode, allowing you to edit track names and tags. In addition, it incorporates tools to manage music libraries, advanced labeling functions and even the burning of audio CDs. We can download Foobar2000 for free from this link .
Musicbee
It is a free application focused on audio that has functions for managing, searching and playing music files from our computer. It will allow us to improve the organization and management of our music through labels. It includes other functions such as a letter finder, an audio CD ripper, allows synchronization with MP3 players, converts between different formats and allows mixing of stereo sound to 5.1 surround sound. We can download it from here.
MediaMonkey
It is a player and organizer of MP3 files, with which to keep our music library in a complete and organized way. It will allow us to organize our music by genre, year, artist name or album title. In addition, it is compatible with podcasts and audiobooks. Another interesting feature is the ability to share our music on multiple devices and create and control our playlists. You can download MediaMonkey for free from this link .
