This is a month belated or so, but here goes: I recently took a position with Pioneers Of The Inevitable, a 40ish-person startup that’s lovingly incubating the smartest media player ever: Songbird.
I’ve signed on to help build the nest — that’s “hack on web related stuff” in non-bird-metaphor-speak. It’s a unique and interesting position, really. The main product is first and foremost a desktop media player, but the critical feature distinguishing it from other desktop media players is its strong integration with the open web. There’s lots of room for building insanely cool and useful stuff here that wouldn’t normally be feasible with a pure web or pure desktop play.
(Before I go further: nothing on this site is affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by POTI / Songbird.)
Here’s a few choice quotes from POTI’s About page that will hopefully give some indication as to why, in addition to just hacking on cool stuff, I’ve been compelled to pick up and adventure 2,484 miles across the country:
Our mission is to incubate Songbird, the first Web player, to catalyze and champion a diverse, open Media Web.
The normal, open web will eventually be your “Music Store”. That much I know for sure. What will it look like? That, I’m not so sure about yet. What Topspin is doing feels like a glimpse; what Yahoo! is doing – a glimpse from another angle. A player that understands these shifts, that might anticipate and even help catalyze them, is a much-needed and missing piece.
Our previous hatchlings include Winamp and the Yahoo! Music Engine.
Winamp!
We support the Mozilla Foundation’s mission to preserve innovation and choice on the Internet.
The player itself is built on top of Mozilla’s XULRunner (the same core platform as Firefox 3.0), the source is available under the GPLv2, and there’s an active community of contributors.
We don’t steal music and you shouldn’t either. We support DigitalConsumer.org’s Bill of Rights as the best means to a burgeoning, diverse and lawful digital media market.
There’s a culture of cluefulness regarding all things web, media, art/creativity, law, and technology around the office. The intersection of these things has always been intensely interesting to me, if only because they’ve evolved into such a giant, incompatible cluster-fuck … and we should fix that.
Quick Note: Alpha
The player is currently alpha quality at 0.6, so there’s breakage and missing pieces and all that. The bird-builders are in striking distance of a first beta, though, and there’s a strong push to ship a solid 1.0 release sooner than later. Official/supported builds are available for Linux, Mac, and Windows but I’d suggest taking a nightly for a spin since there’s a ton of cool stuff landing every day.
Comments
I’m worried for you, Songbird has been a buggy prerelease product for 2.5 years!
I remember when it was first released it didn’t even really play audio with any reliability, much less index it. Then the initial (mostly just anti-iTunes) hype died down, and everyone promptly forgot about it. It seems like songbirdnest has had 20+ employees for at least a year, and they’re still not even close to having something shippable. Hopefully you’ll be able to help them, but Brooks' Law is working against you…
— Fred Blasdel on Wednesday, July 30, 2008 at 01:22 AM #
In contrast to Fred above, I’ve found Songbird to be fairly great, and improving rapidly. It’s great that you’re going to help them out! Congratulations on the job, I hope I will be able to use Songbird as my default media player soon.
— Dirkjan on Wednesday, July 30, 2008 at 01:26 AM #
I do use Songbird as my default media player every day. I’m using it right now. I can only presume that with you on the team things will get even better.
—R
— rjspotter on Wednesday, July 30, 2008 at 08:00 AM #
Call me when Songbird can use DAAP shares from my server and other PC’s.
— Anonymous Coward on Tuesday, August 19, 2008 at 02:37 AM #
I work in an office of mac users who all share over itunes. Nobody is going to use songbird if DAAP isn’t a base function. chop chop. Stop messing about with web stuff and get the core right.
— adey on Sunday, September 21, 2008 at 11:07 AM #
Yeah I have to say, they’ve been taking forever on that one.
I don’t see how they’re going to make money, either, but, you know. Good luck!
— Phill on Wednesday, September 24, 2008 at 03:47 AM #
hope things are going good. I just found songbird and really dig on it. It sure looks good.
— thebusker on Friday, April 03, 2009 at 01:15 PM #
I would have to say Songbird is a great refreshing thing to come to music players in a long time. I have used Songbird since 0.6x and love it!! I would have to agree get the core features working and the website will follow. But keep up the great work!!
— StimpyAW on Tuesday, April 21, 2009 at 02:21 PM #