Songbird music player and library [discontinued]

Submit portable freeware that you find here. It helps if you include information like description, extraction instruction, Unicode support, whether it writes to the registry, and so on.
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Checker
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Songbird music player and library [discontinued]

#1 Post by Checker »

From the site:

Songbird is a full-featured digital music library that enables the seamless syncing of all your music, and provides intuitive and powerful music management features. With Songbird, your music is organized and presented exactly as you like. Because your music listening experience is as individual as you, Songbird allows you to customize your player so you get exactly the features important to you. It's packaged as a portable app, so you can take your personal music library wherever you go.

Features:

Songbird is full-featured digital media player with lots of great features including:
Media Importing/Exporting: Add media to Songbird by importing from your file system or iTunes. Export your tracks and playlists back into iTunes.
Library Files Organization: Automatically organize the files contained in your library. Consolidate your media in one location. Customize the structure of the folder and file name based on metadata contained in every track.
Watch Folders: Automatically import media from a defined folder.
Library Management: Browse, organize, sort and search your media.
Smart Playlists: Create dynamic playlists that automatically update based on criteria you set.
Album Artwork: Display the currently playing track's album art and write new artwork back to the file. Automatically fetch missing album art from the web.
Media Playback: Songbird supports MP3, FLAC, and Vorbis on all platforms; WMA and WMA DRM on Windows; and AAC and Fairplay on Windows and Mac.
Gapless Playback & Replay Gain: Skips padding data due to encoding and chains files for gapless playback experience. Adjusts the playback gain appropriately if a track's metadata contains replay gain information.
GStreamer: Songbird uses GStreamer as the main media playback system, across all platforms.
Web Browser: Songbird includes an integrated web browser with features like bookmarking, tabbed browsing, and more.
Multi-language Support: Over 25 completed, community-contributed localizations and growing!
Custom UI: Make Songbird your own by choosing from dozens of different skins feathers.
Developer Support: Songbird is getting better everyday thanks to its open platform and growing developer community.

Download
Last edited by Checker on Wed Aug 19, 2009 1:56 am, edited 3 times in total.

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joby_toss
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Re: Songbird Portable V1.2

#2 Post by joby_toss »

I really can't find a thing I dislike about Songbird!
Really nice!

Later edit: Some problems with the portable version (paths portability) are discussed here.

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gp_hbk
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Re: Songbird Portable V1.2

#3 Post by gp_hbk »

I thought you were gonna let me do PortableApps.com....
Anyway, thanks for the heads up!

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Zach Thibeau
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Re: Songbird Portable V1.2

#4 Post by Zach Thibeau »

he didn't say he was going to stop ;) he just allowed you to post along with him

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gp_hbk
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Re: Songbird Portable V1.2

#5 Post by gp_hbk »

Zach Thibeau wrote:he didn't say he was going to stop ;) he just allowed you to post along with him
I know that's what he mean't. I doubt I'd even be able keep up with a schedule like his....-_-'

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Zach Thibeau
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Re: Songbird Portable V1.2

#6 Post by Zach Thibeau »

some people like me have loads of free time :P me I only work 4 hours a day as a Janitor Image

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Checker
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Re: Songbird Portable V1.2

#7 Post by Checker »

@ juliyaanthony: ... go on :wink:, but aren't you not to busy installing 'portable sinks' everywhere at your new home? :lol:
@ Zach Thibeau: I'm not one of these lucky guys. I have to work more than 4 hours :(
@ gp_hbk: It's presently only 0.76 posts/day :wink:
Go on posting updates at your "PortableApps"-thread (even if they are reposts).
I think it's a good thing to have an overview :!:

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webfork
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Re: Songbird Portable V1.2

#8 Post by webfork »

I can't complain ... its slow but the best iTunes alternative I've found yet.

Formats: Opens 75 different audio file extensions (here's the CAFE/Coffee config file http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/k ... e=Songbird).

Portability: The link that Joby posted isn't working. Here's the short version I got in my testing:
  • 1. Install it to your desktop.
    2. Move it somewhere else.
    3. Where ever you move it, it will try to create a file on your desktop and will re-create any directory structure necessary to do that. For me that was: C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Desktop\PP\SongbirdPortable\Data\profile\db
On other people's machines this is annoying and, on locked down machines, probably not possible.

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joby_toss
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Re: Songbird Portable V1.2

#9 Post by joby_toss »

When you move SongbirdPortable folder you should also delete "prefs.js" file from "Data\profile" folder.

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webfork
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Work around for non-portable directory creation

#10 Post by webfork »

Since we don't know when PortableApps will put out a fix, I think I found a work-around.
  • 1. Simply extract into a working temporary folder like C:\WINDOWS\temp and then moved the files over to my regular temporary directory. Then, no matter what computer you move it to, it will keep using the same TEMP folder to dump files.

    2. Start SongbirdPortable.exe and get the settings the way you like.

    3. Move the base folder C:\WINDOWS\temp\SongbirdPortable anywhere else and it will continue to use the temp folder to save its settings.
Advantages
  • Works better with public terminals (and thus more portable) because even very locked-down system let users at write information to this directory.
  • Many cleaner tools target the TEMP directory to recovery space so the data will eventually be destroyed.
Possible issues

The only problem I can see with this idea is that this is for Windows XP, and temp folders vary across Windows versions (Windows NT was C:\WINNT\temp). I have no clue what it is for Vista or Win7.

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guinness
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Re: Songbird Portable V1.2

#11 Post by guinness »

V1.4.3 is available!

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webfork
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Re: Songbird Portable V1.2

#12 Post by webfork »

The new look is really, really sharp; I really didn't expect this project to beat out iTunes and every other player I've yet seen.

Support for external devices isn't as good as (non-portable) doubleTwist (http://www.doubletwist.com). Hopefully that will change.

Remains a very large file: 60 megs uncompressed.

donald
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Re: Songbird Portable V1.2

#13 Post by donald »

Webfork

Are the problems mentioned with the last version fixed with this release yet?

If so will you be listing it?

Thanks

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Re: Songbird Portable V1.2

#14 Post by webfork »

Edit: I changed my mind about this policy recently. Ignore this post.

> If so will you be listing it?

I know this sounds stupid but I don't post anything. In real life I'm a professional technical writer and right now editing entries is my nobody-asked-me-to-but-it-needs-to-get-done job. I've done a bunch of portable testing in the past but for whatever reason the registry testing tools I've played with really get on my nerves. The transition may happen at some point to actual tester, but right now I just edit. Its fun.

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guinness
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Re: Songbird Portable V1.2

#15 Post by guinness »

TESTED: Portable (Not Stealth)

Saved to HKLM\SOFTWARE\mozilla.org & %TEMP%, plus creates an empty folder in %APPDATA%\Mozilla. Thankfully the launcher does alot of cleaning up!

I would say Add It! because Firefox and Thunderbird are developed by Mozilla (+ PortableaApps) and they are both in the database.

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