Open Source iTunes Competitor Songbird Officially Released

Songbird is like an open source version of iTunes that handles just about everything that program does, while swapping out the iTunes store interface in favor of the world's music blogs.

You can stream music from those sources directly within the program (try that with iTunes' browser), purchasing whatever music you encounter there that strikes your fancy from multiple sources: Amazon, Amie St., eMusic or iTunes. Or, if a blog or other site offers songs as free downloads, those are gathered neatly at the bottom of the screen as well (see screenshot to the right).

At its core, though, Songbird is a solid music playback program -- albeit one that can be customized with add-ons from Songbird and other developers, a strategy we've seen before from Songbird founder Matt Lord, formerly of Winamp, which itself had a wide variety of plug-ins.

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