Last week saw the launch of a new piece of open source software that could be set to give iTunes a run for it’s money. Music player/manager ‘Songbird‘ promises to be highly customisable (it’s from the folks who brought you Winamp), includes a Mozilla tabbed web browser, supports more formats and won’t be badgering you to buy loads of DRM protected mp3s – while keeping all the user friendly elements of the Apple program. It looks pretty identical too:
It’s still early days but Songbird already has some pretty useful plugins available for Last.fm, remote control support and album art finders. Whether it will best it’s well-established rival remains to be seen; but such a non-commercial alternative can only be good news for mp3 hoarders of the world.
Finally got around to checking Songbird out, won’t have CD ripping until April of ’09. Will be waiting until then to switch from iTunes.