Article
Songbird has piqued my interest
Update: I was pretty wrong about a major part of my argument. This post has just become much less interesting.
* * *
Earlier today, I followed a link to Songbird, a cross-platform music player. The UI is an iTunes clone (with a curious black-iPod-like sheen). The app is built on Mozilla’s XULRunner platform, which is very interesting and very over-my-head right now.
Songbird’s leading feature is a “uniquely open approach to Internet digital media network services.” From their site:
Q. What are digital media network services?
Digital media network services, simplistically put, are Web sites that do stuff with digital media. Examples of digital media network services include eMusic’s á la carte MP3 store, Last.fm’s social networking service, Odeo’s podcast service or La Blogothèque, a personal MP3blog.
As near as I can tell, this means Songbird has an embedded web browser.
Which is both really clever… and not so clever at all.
Clever
Did you know that iTunes has an integrated web browser? Yes, ma’am, the iTunes Music Store (and podcast directory) is nothing more than a fancy lookin’ web site that loads in iTunes’ WebKit-powered browser. (Turns out I was wrong about this. iTunes does not use WebKit, and the iTunes Music Store is not HTML. Thanks to johnzeratsky.com commenter “andrew” for this.)
But despite the exciting possibilities, Apple hasn’t done much with this feature.
Songbird’s approach makes sense, because there are a lot of services that deliver audio in the browser, and the browser has never been a very good place for audio. Embedded files, simple downloads and slick “transfer to iTunes” configurations each have problems.
Having a web browser that is seamlessly integrated with your music player could make the process of finding, playing and saving audio on the web much more enjoyable.
Not that clever
Some things — most things, actually — on the web should stay on the web. It’s possible that audio content and services (like Odeo) fall into this category.
The web works for these services because they can tap into other web-based services and take advantage of simple linking. If links, form submits or other interactions need to somehow jump from web browser to Songbird (and vice versa), I don’t think it’s going to work
Of course, it’s possible I am totally misunderstanding what Songbird is
… in which case, I apologize. Please set me straight!
Either way, I’m looking forward to seeing a preview release of some kind. If the buzz is deserved, Songbird could be a breakthrough in the way we find, archive and enjoy audio content. If not, well… let’s just say buzz isn’t always good.