Replace your iTunes with Songbird!

So last night I was reading about Songbird which is a program powered by Mozilla (Makers of the popular Firefox browser).  Songbird is an open source music management program to compete with iTunes. In fact it looks just like it, brushed metal and all. 

But here’s the kicker, you can not only browse the internet within the program, but you can have all these add-ons just like Firefox.  An add-on can enhance your experience while using the program.  It is very simple to figure out how to get the add-ons.  Install the program, and on the left side where you would see your iTunes library there is a Songbird – add-ons playlist.  Below are my favorite add-ons:

SeeqPod – This is by far my favorite, you just search for your favorite artist/album/song and it populates a list, and then you can right click on it and  play the song, or download it.  What this add-on does is search around the internet where someone has posted the full song, if it doesn’t show up right away give it a little time because it is crawling the internet for your request.

Skreemr – This plugin uses the popular skreemr.com website for its search.  The reason I love using SeeqPod and Skreemr within Songbird is because typically if you download a song from this site you need to save it to your music folder, then go into iTunes and add it to your library manually.  This gives you a way to download it and have it show up immediately in your library. 

SHOUTcast – This is pretty cool for internet radio, you can choose the station, and the bit rate (quality), unfortunately you are at the mercy of what they are playing.

Last.fm – An add-on that I haven’t quite figured out exactly what it does, but I have been using the browser within Songbird to use the last.fm radio. 

Media Flow – This is to mimic the cover flow from Apple.

Lyric Master – if you ever wanted to know exactly what Juvenile was staying in any of his songs, feel free to find out now.  Beware, he’s not exactly the most creative artist out there. 

Themes – There are ton’s you can make it look exactly like iTunes if that's your preference.  I’m using Yabs; its a black theme.  It is by far my favorite.

And to answer the most important question YES it works with your iPod!  Clearly they are trying to make it work with the masses.