Introduction

Songbird™ is a desktop Web-player, digital jukebox and Web browser mash-up. Like Winamp, it supports extensions and skins feathers. Like Firefox®, it is built on Mozilla®'s XUL-framework which is also cross-platform and open source.

Songbird 1.0, the first stable release of Songbird, was notable for providing numerous user-friendly ways to find music and the ease of downloading it. Songbird was part of Ubuntu and will probably be soon a part again. It can be installed by downloading one of the packages listed below or by voting here to speed up the repackaging by Ubuntu.

Songbird Singing a New Tune

They sadly report that their Linux versions will not receive the active developments that their Windows and Mac versions will get. They hope this might change in the future. Nightingale (which is a fork from Songbird) is an active fork of Songbird that supports Linux. The repackaging for Debian and Ubuntu is the fastest way to once again have more support and ease of installation for Songbird.

Download SongBird

Songbird might be available from these sites

https://wiki.songbirdnest.com/Developer/Articles/Builds/Contributed_Builds#Linux = stable version

http://developer.songbirdnest.com/builds/trunk/latest/ = latest development release

http://timeline.songbirdnest.com/client/browser/

Installing Songbird with a .deb

GetDeb.net have created Songbird installers for Ubuntu. Just find which release you have (10.04 "Lucid Lynx", 10.10 "Maverick Meercat" or whichever), download the relevant ".deb" and double click on it when the download is finished. http://www.getdeb.net/app/Songbird.

For Songbird version 1.7.3 and 1.8.0

Only for Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, "Lucid Lynx", and more recent versions of Ubuntu. Download from http://www.getdeb.net/app/Songbird. After installing one of the .deb files, go to Applications - Sound and Video - Songbird to launch the program. As of 5/12 there are currently no builds for 11.10 or 12.04.

For Songbird version 1.4.3

Again visit GetDeb to get the relevant ".deb" for your system. This is the one to get if your Ubuntu is before the 10.04 release.

Installing Songbird with a Script

You can install Songbird using the script below. These instructions will help you run the installation script.

Getting the script

Open your favorite text editor (Gedit, Kate, Mousepad). You should get a blank document.

In that blank document, paste the following code:

#Downloads Songbird and Installs in /home/<yourusername>/Songbird wget http://download.songbirdnest.com/installer/linux/i686/Songbird_1.9.3-1959_linux-i686.tar.gz tar -zxvf Songbird_1.9.3-1959_linux-i686.tar.gz # only delete GStreamer libs on 32-bit architectures case $(uname -i) in i?86) (cd Songbird && rm lib/libgst*.so) ;; *) ;; esac echo "Songbird has been installed in the /home/<yourusername>/songbird directory."

Then save the file on your home folder as the filename installsong.sh

Making the script executable

Paste these commands in the terminal:

chmod +x installsong.sh

Running the script

Paste this command in the terminal:

./installsong.sh

Once the script runs, you can locate /home/<yourusername>/Songbird and use it!

Using Songbird without Installing It

If you don't want full integration of Songbird (hidden in a universally accessible place, launcher icon, etc.), you can just download the latest Songbird to your /home/username folder, double-click it (or single-click in Kubuntu), extract the .tar.gz file, enter the new songbird folder in your home directory and double-click (or single-click in Kubuntu) the Songbird file inside.

http://getsongbird.com/ = The official website, sadly lacking the linux versions

https://wiki.songbirdnest.com/Developer/Articles/Builds/Contributed_Builds#Linux

http://developer.songbirdnest.com/builds/trunk/latest/

http://www.getdeb.net/app/Songbird = the deb version tailored for Debian family including Ubuntu and Mint

http://getsatisfaction.com/songbird/ = SongBird forums

http://getnightingale.com/ = A community fork of SongBird

http://buildbot.songbirdnest.com/ = SongBird's linux build-bot

http://publicsvn.songbirdnest.com/ = Source Code

CategoryAudio CategoryInternet