I tried Songbird back when it was still in beta, it was back in 2007. I remember being pretty excited about having an iTunes like media player for Ubuntu Linux, but as it turned out, it was pretty buggy and the iPod add-on wasn’t very good. I have been watching the roadmap closely ever since and as it seems now, It’s only one release away from being perfect for me. So, I decided to give it another go and went ahead and installed it.

I didn’t know this, but Songbird makes it extremely easy to import your existing iTunes library, simply follow these steps and you will have your iTunes library in Songbird in a matter of minutes.

1. Go to Songbirdnest.com and download the latest release.
2. Run the installer and select the add-ons you want to install.
3. When Songbird launches it will detect and import your iTunes library.
4. In Songbird hit Ctrl+T to open a new tab.
5. Go to the iPod Device Support and MediaFlow add-ons and select install.

That’s it, you now have an exact copy of you iTunes library in Songbird. If you had any podcast subscriptions, you will have to re subscribe to those. Podcasting is not as nicely integrated in Songbird as it is in iTunes, so if you are a big podcast fanatic, you might want to keep iTunes for that.

Songbird = iTunes = Songbird

Don’t worry about using iTunes, Songbird will automagically update the library to mimic any changes you might have made in iTunes. So feel free to keep using both players until you are confident that Songbird will do the job for you.

Compared to back in 2007, Songbird is a different beast now, the interface is completely cleaned up, the library is fast and iPod support is grand. The add-ons available makes using the player a delight, I can sync my iPod, and using the folder sync add-on, I can even sync any playlist to my phone, or any other USB device for that matter.

I’m really pleased with the new Songbird and can’t wait to see what the developers have in store for future releases.

And of course, the bird is twittering away…

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