Songbird
I’m one of those bastards who loved (still do) Amarok 1.4, but just hates Amarok 2 (sorry Amarokers!). It’s just not the same thing. The same thing also applies for me when it comes to KDE 3 vs. KDE 4 (to give you a clue where that ended up, I’m now a happy GNOME (Ubuntu) user)…
Anyhow, since Amarok 1.4 is not going to be left in Ubuntu Jaunty (9.04), I knew I had to look for new alternatives. I tried Exaile a while ago, but missed some features and decided to wait and see what happened. Back then (some months ago), Songbird even refused to start on my computer…
A few days ago, I got fed up waiting, seeing very little development on Exaile, and somehow decided to try out Songbird again. It fired up just fine this time, and I tried out its features and a few add-ons. Right now, after spending the day porting my G15-simple Amarok script to Songbird (with next to no previous experience in XUL extension development), I’m at the position when Songbird is “good enough” to replace Amarok. I’m still missing a few features, most notably queueing support when using smart playlists (and playing in random mode). The Now Playing List add-on helps a little, but in the current version, it’s not possible to rearrange its items when using smart playlists, which is what I use the most. I guess I can wait for that to be implemented, since the latest version was released just two days ago… :)
All in all, Songbird is quite good. I mean, how many other media players can you check your mail in? ;)
