Songbird.

[axenzoku]

So, Mozilla made an awesome media player that is open source, customizable, with addons, skins, etc! It's gonna be awesome on Pandora *evil grin* but yeah, it's a real sweet media player with integrated web-browser... it could even replace firefox, since it has all the same functionality.

 

[dflemstr]

So, Mozilla made an awesome media player that is open source, customizable, with addons, skins, etc! It's gonna be awesome on Pandora *evil grin* but yeah, it's a real sweet media player with integrated web-browser... it could even replace firefox, since it has all the same functionality.

Pros/cons, Fennec vs Songbird?
Fennec: Lightweight, optimized for touchscreen...
Songbird: Media oriented...

We'll all be able to chose by ourselves of course.

 

[plupp]

AFAIK Songbird is more a competitor to Itunes than to Firefox/Fennec.

I wonder how well the songbird interface would work on the relatively small resolution of the pandora.

Perhaps it would need to be modified in some way to make it work better with the pandora.

A full-screen 3d cover-flow interface would be awesome.

 

[lulzfish]

I don't see the point of using a full web browser to play music.
And I tried it once, and it looked like iTunes.
It had a weird non-native interface, and... it looked like iTunes.

I still have nightmares of Songbird, looking like iTunes. And not using my media hotkeys.
I haven't had a media player use them reliably since Amarok 1.x.

If anybody has any suggestions for an open music player with decent hotkey support, I'm looking for one.. sort of.

 

[atomicthumbs]

Songbird is bloated. I don't need a web browser in my MP3 player. It sounds like something Xhibit would put in a car.




I prefer Amarok.

 

[lulzfish]

SO U CAN BROWSE WHILE
Agreed.

But I can't get Amarok to run without crashing all the time as of Kubuntu 9.04. And I'm too lazy to keep up with a bug report, so I've just kinda let it slide.

 

[dflemstr]

OK, I'm currently at my Kubuntu machine, and even if I don't like the KDE in Kubuntu in general, I must say that Amarok 2.1.1 on KDE 4.3 RC 1 is very stable and reliable, and the global KDE hotkey options also apply to media buttons so it's quite easy to set up a solution that works. Unfortunately I don't have a music collection on this PC so I can't really test a whole bunch, but Internet streams work flawlessly. I can't wait until KDE 4.3 is released for Fedora; then I'll finally be able to leave this horrible platform that lacks proper PackageKit and PolicyKit integration and go back to a system that just... works.

I would really prefer to have Amarok on the Pandora if the only alternative would be Songbird; partly because Amarok is optimized for touchscreen displays (It is, believe it or not ), partly because it has some applets that are really handy sometimes (You can even browse the web in Amarok if you really want to!). Of course ,there might be other media players even more suitable for Pandora than the two.

 

[lulzfish]

The media buttons seem to sort of work, except that the Play button restarts the song instead of playing/pausing it.
Sadly, this is very important to me. Hopefully a Pandora port will fix this.

I'm using the stock 2.0.2, though, on KDE 4.2, so I guess it was only "release stable" and not "release-candidate stable".
Silly developers.

 

[dflemstr]

The media buttons seem to sort of work, except that the Play button restarts the song instead of playing/pausing it.
Sadly, this is very important to me. Hopefully a Pandora port will fix this.

I'm using the stock 2.0.2, though, on KDE 4.2, so I guess it was only "release stable" and not "release-candidate stable".
Silly developers.

Slightly OT:


This is my setup; I don't know if this is possible in KDE 4.2
It works for me anyways, and two presses on the play/pause button does not restart the current track.

 

[greendots]

Songbird is very bloated. The pandora is more suited to run something like mpd and if needed some type of gui. Lukily there are a lot of options for mpd guis for console and x11. Just think how poor your battery life would be if you ran you music through songbird on the pandora.

 

[mindlord]

MPD will simply win. Two configurations:

1) Lid open, press "Pandora" button, see usual Pandora menu options, plus playlist and media controls. Configure some hot-keys, like maybe FN+Z, FN+X, FN+C, FN+V, FN+B for Previous Track, Seek Back, Play/Pause, Seek Forward, Next Track, respectively. Nice.

2) Lid Closed, or maybe open as well if you're not gaming. Double tap Right/Left shoulder = Next/Previous Track, Double Tap and hold Right/Left Shoulder = Seek Forward/Backward, Left+Right Shoulder = Play/Pause. Easy.

Who needs, fancy shmacy GUIs and album art anyways. It's AUDIO.

 

[whiskthecat]

My setup, not usefull for pandora or even linux, but a good alternative for windows users.



Don't know bout hotkeys support but the global hotkeys work quite nicely.

 

[musicalwoods]

My setup, not usefull for pandora or even linux, but a good alternative for windows users.



Don't know bout hotkeys support but the global hotkeys work quite nicely.

The closest mediaplayer to foobar2000 that I've used is Audacious. There is probably one closer, but I found the one I like.

 

[Fishbong]

My setup, not usefull for pandora or even linux, but a good alternative for windows users.



Don't know bout hotkeys support but the global hotkeys work quite nicely.

foobar is the most overrated mediaplayer ever. It might not be bloated, but that is hardly an excuse for the cumbersome gui, missing features and horrible look.

 

[dflemstr]

My setup, not usefull for pandora or even linux, but a good alternative for windows users.



Don't know bout hotkeys support but the global hotkeys work quite nicely.

foobar is the most overrated mediaplayer ever. It might not be bloated, but that is hardly an excuse for the cumbersome gui, missing features and horrible look.

+1, Foobar is something that I would do in MS C# in 1 hour

 

[Olexxy]

foobar is the most overrated mediaplayer ever. It might not be bloated, but that is hardly an excuse for the cumbersome gui, missing features and horrible look.

+1, Foobar is something that I would do in MS C# in 1 hour

Well Foobar is not about looks but all about the engine under the hood, and this is what makes it so much better than others. So no it's definitely not a 1h job for audiophiles enthusiasts.
Btw the default gui can be extensively modified if wanted to look like itune or ipod or anything, although it's not convenient to do...

 

[musicalwoods]

foobar is the most overrated mediaplayer ever. It might not be bloated, but that is hardly an excuse for the cumbersome gui, missing features and horrible look.

Cumbersome GUI? Yeah, just like notepad is the cumbersome version of MS Word.

/sarcasm

Some people want something that just plays music without utilizing unnecessarily large amounts of RAM. Plus, I found the file utilities quite helpful when I meticulously organized my music.

 

[Nation.A.List]

If anybody has any suggestions for an open music player with decent hotkey support, I'm looking for one.. sort of.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElPeP6lanI0

http://openbossa.indt.org/canola/

 

[PokeParadox]

Hmm songbird while definitely bloated... I'm warming to it, I think thanks to the extension support. (I'd never tried it until now.)
foobar2000 is made of win... I just wish wine handled it without it crashing on me(could be all the plugins I like to use)
I used to have some scripting setup so that any Kanji song titles would be romanised when the track was playing via some custom tags... I still haven't found a player that customisable in linux... if someone could kindly point one out I'd be happy.
I found the RhythmBox player to be alright for just playing MP3/OGG/M4A ... but I don't think it handles replaygain correctly... and it doesn't handle some of the emulated formats I occasionally listen to (USF/DSP/GSF/PSF etc)

 

[musicalwoods]

If anybody has any suggestions for an open music player with decent hotkey support, I'm looking for one.. sort of.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElPeP6lanI0

http://openbossa.indt.org/canola/

Wow, that's definitely something I want to see on the Pandora for when I just want a media player.


When I'm multitasking with internet / office software I'd probably use something else.