Concept
Songbird is a discontinued music player originally released in early 2006 with the stated mission "to incubate Songbird, the first Web player, to catalyze and champion a diverse, open Media Web". Songbird utilizes the cross-platform frameworks Mozilla XULRunner and GStreamer media framework. Songbird runs on Windows and macOS. In 2012, an Android version and an iOS version were released. Songbird at one point also supported Solaris and Linux, but this support was dropped. As a result, users forked Songbird and created a Windows, Mac, and Linux compatible derivative under the name Nightingale. Songbird announced on 14 June 2013 that it would stop all operations and shut down by 28 June. The company was unable to fund further business operations and as a result, all operations and associated services were discontinued. Multi-platform compatibility with Windows XP, Vista and Mac OS X v10.5 (x86, x86-64). Ability to play multiple audio formats, such as MP3, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, Apple Lossless and WMA Ability to play Apple FairPlay-encoded audio on Windows and Mac platforms via hooks into QuickTime (authorization takes place in iTunes) Ability to play Windows Media DRM audio on Windows platforms A skinnable interface, with skins called "feathers" Media files stored on pages viewed in the browser show up as playable files in Songbird MP3 file download Ability to subscribe to MP3 blogs as playlists Ability to build custom mixes Ability to scan the user's computer for all audio files and add them to a local library A configurable and collapsible graphical user interface similar to iTunes, and mini-player mode Keyboard shortcuts and media keyboard support Automatic updates Last.fm integration via a plugin, complete with love/hate buttons Insound.com and HypeMachine integration Microsoft MTP compatible device support Ability to edit and save metadata tags Gapless Playback & ReplayGain Watch Folders Media Importing / Exportings (from and to iTunes) Automatic Library Files Organization Users can add features and change functionality in Songbird by installing extensions.
