Monday, December 26th, 2005, 1:23 pm
Songbird and AmaroK
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Songbird teasers: pre-release screenshots
ONGBIRD is a new media-type Open Source project. It is intended to clone, at least in some sense, the popular iTunes from Apple. Songbird will offer users the ability to buy music from a variety of sources on-line. To me, this seems like amaroK with an option to spend money.
I already have amaroK (see image at the bottom) and rarely do I feel tempted to switch. I get music by running wget recursively, so I needn’t purchase anything, no matter the cost. amaroK does everything I could possibly wish for. It even comes pre-installed with KDE-oriented distributions like SuSE. GNOME users can use Rhythmbox instead, but it is poorer in terms of looks and functionality.
I have recently been told that amaroK 2.0 will be based on QT4, so with the arrival of KDE 4 (around the third quarter of 2005) expect a Windows version too. Open Source music managers could truly take off in a broad market, rather than just a niche. In fact, both amaroK and Songbird have the potential to have impact that is on par with that of Mozilla Firefox.
Related item: amaroK’s recent open review in the KDE News site
amaroK in action
