Pioneers of the Inevitable - (Open Source)
Songbird offers a free solution for playing music or movies, having also searching for audio content across websites included.
Songbird is a free media player based on VLC and Mozilla engine, coupled with a drive internet radio streaming (Shoutcast).
It can search for audio content across a wide range of websites offering this type of content and read through a variety of MP3 players (iPod, etc.).
In addition to playlists, upload and library, Songbird offers complete player with add-ons: album art, sync with digital music player (or Apple MTP), playback of protected music (Windows Media playback), alert concerts of favorite artist, last.fm, etc.
Songbird has a simplified interface with navigation tabs and bookmarks and a module subscription music blogs.
Encoding videos and synchronization with smartphones are some new interesting features that Songbird is equipped with.
The following Major Bugs were fixed since 0.3 RC2 release:
* [Mac] Command-V Paste not working in URL text box (4926)
* [iPod] Should query user Songbird closed while performing an iPod operation. (5149)
* [Linux] recommended add-ons are not all visible in firstrun dialog (5186)
* Thread Leak on playlist element load (views aren't deleted/culled) (5197)
* Songbird should load a different home page URL on firstrun (5198)
* Webpage API notification hat missing buttons (5202)
* Combine media item and playlist into one preference / notification type (5205)
* songbird.hasAccess categories need documentation (5221)
* Added documentation for security related events (5222)
* Library items all blank (5242)
* [iPod] iPod storage capacity and usage not shown (5269)
* servicepane playlist node breaks context menu after first use (5288)
* Protect from null mRealSelection in sbLocalDatabaseTreeView (5292)
* [iPod] Crash when installing iPod extension from first run. (5294)
* [Win] Installed text files (gpl.txt, README.txt, etc) have wrong line endings (5298)
* Reading Metadata files is very very slow (from folders with extended chars?) (5300)
* iTunes Library importer does not import rating (5339)
* [Linux] Crash on shutdown @ IPodDeviceSys::ProbeAllDevs (5343)
* Blank items (media lists) in web media history (5368)
* songbird.play() can't resume playback from playURL when no webplaylist present (5369)
* Security modal dialog no longer shows (5381)
* Column titles in Libraries/Playlists don't reload in new language when language changes (5388)
* Medialist not taking UI sort into account(5398)
* Enable property to show dialog when add-on upates are avaible (5401)
* Software update dialog has link that does not open in Songbird and should. (5402)