Sing into Spring: Songbird in Version 1.1
The Songbird music player is now out as version 1.1. Next to some normalization enhancements, the free software includes a watch folders feature and optimized album cover downloads.
Almost a million users have downloaded Songbird so far, according to company claims, and the feedback prompted a few changes, bug fixes and new features in Songbird 1.1, available since last week. Now album cover artwork off the Web is just a mouse-click away, via Last.fm by default, but you can also specify Amazon.com.
The watch folders features allows users to specify which music folder hierarchy to monitor for changes and then automatically import new titles to their libraries. Removed files are also removed from the libraries. The sorting algorithm was also improved with unicode collation and recognition of leading articles such as "the" and "a" in titles. To prevent damage to sensitive eardrums, Songbird adjusts the playback volume if a track's metadata has replay gain, including for iTunes titles.
Overall, Songbird 1.1 should be more stable, use significantly less memory and CPU, and undergo fewer crashes. With large music libraries, the player uses 40% less RAM and playback cuts the CPU usage in half. A very practical feature is that developers can launch Songbird from a URL, such as from a Last.fm stream. One improvement applies to Windows only: better identification of silent spots for a smoother playback. The Windows version also recognizes MTP devices better and can synchronize Windows Media DRM content with them.
Like other open source projects, Songbird wants to make some revenue. Their business model is the 7digital MP3 Store, now in beta, where you can buy high quality MP3s (up to 320 Kbps). Recommendations from 7digital are based on your most recently played track. The music store contributes a part of each purchase to Songbird's development. The U.K. version of the store is now "fully stocked" and the U.S. and European stores, with a few titles still missing, will hopefully soon follow suit.
Download of the bugfix version 1.1.1 of Songbird for Linux is available as a tar.gz here.
Comments
comments powered by DisqusSubscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.

News
-
EU Sovereign Tech Fund Gains Traction
OpenForum Europe recently released a report regarding a sovereign tech fund with backing from several significant entities.
-
FreeBSD Promises a Full Desktop Installer
FreeBSD has lacked an option to include a full desktop environment during installation.
-
Linux Hits an Important Milestone
If you pay attention to the news in the Linux-sphere, you've probably heard that the open source operating system recently crashed through a ceiling no one thought possible.
-
Plasma Bigscreen Returns
A developer discovered that the Plasma Bigscreen feature had been sitting untouched, so he decided to do something about it.
-
CachyOS Now Lets Users Choose Their Shell
Imagine getting the opportunity to select which shell you want during the installation of your favorite Linux distribution. That's now a thing.
-
Wayland 1.24 Released with Fixes and New Features
Wayland continues to move forward, while X11 slowly vanishes into the shadows, and the latest release includes plenty of improvements.
-
Bugs Found in sudo
Two critical flaws allow users to gain access to root privileges.
-
Fedora Continues 32-Bit Support
In a move that should come as a relief to some portions of the Linux community, Fedora will continue supporting 32-bit architecture.
-
Linux Kernel 6.17 Drops bcachefs
After a clash over some late fixes and disagreements between bcachefs's lead developer and Linus Torvalds, bachefs is out.
-
ONLYOFFICE v9 Embraces AI
Like nearly all office suites on the market (except LibreOffice), ONLYOFFICE has decided to go the AI route.
Captain Sarcastic Reporting In
Next to the stunning, well thought out interface, that's gotta be it's best feature.