I’m long time Songbird fan (also got one Songbird T-Shirt). I reviewed Songbird 0.1 and Songbird 0.4 a while ago. This time, Songbird 0.7, the “beta” release, is just out and this is my quick thought.

Good

• The new interface is crisp. It’s still follow iTunes footstep but now has own personality.
• Songbird can read your iTunes Music Library. No cost or harm to try Songbird.
• It seems that the Songbird team stabilize the infrastructure (Web API, Extension API) and now focus on the usability and features.
• Smart playlist, period.
• It can discover album arts!
• It can do CoverFlow! (via Media Flow extension)
• It can do metadata! (via Scrubz extension)
• With the Mozilla engine inside, the extension installation is now seamless. You can install a new extension within Songbird window. No need to open Firefox and download extension again.
• The concept of ‘Media Pages’ (or ‘Views’ of your music library) is intuitive.
• It seems to play DRM musics via QuickTime. I have no DRM songs to try.

Bad

• It’s still a bit slow. Got some lags when clicking on some buttons.
• No Dock only mode (I’m using Mac). Closing the application window via red button means quitting the program.
• Need to restart every time after installing a new extension. That’s mean your music will be interrupted.
• It only import the iTunes music, not the playlists.
• No “Party Shuffle” feature. Anyway, you can do manual shuffling.
• Isn’t uncompressed 164MB size too big for a media player?

This release is not perfect yet but it’s a huge leap from older versions. Songbird is very promising. Not everyone want to be locked in the proprietary iTunes.