The (Future) Best Media Player

I love searching the net for great information, and I just happened to stumble upon something like that. Mozilla, who is responsible for the creation of Firefox and Thunderbird, now is putting out a new project - Songbird.

Songbird bears an uncanny resemblance to Apple's iTunes, while proudly bearing the name of the Mozilla family tree. Songbird is currently in a development state, but it is currently available for download Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Why would this program become widely used? People, like me, have a computer with more than one operating system on it. I have Windows and Ubuntu Linux; other people have a Mac with Windows XP or Vista on it. The great thing about cross-platform software is familiarity and friendliness. Songbird, like Firefox and Thunderbird, is about being widely available to all computer users, regardless of operating system. My web browser of choice is Firefox, regardless of what computer or OS I am using. The same most likely could be with Songbird.

Straight out of the box (in Windows) Songbird supports playback 0f Windows Media files and Quicktime files. Upon install, it will automatically download and install the necessary packages based upon the options you choose.

If Mozilla creates this piece of software to be lightweight, fast, bug-free (for the most part), and very useful - which is why people use Firefox - this will be yet another friendly tool that can be used cross-platform.

Perhaps iTunes and Windows Media Player 11 might want to jump on the bandwagon. DRM is already becoming a thing of yesterday, so why not just let all users purchase the music they love anyways? (It would either be that, or the old-fashioned way - Limewire, Frostwire, Bittorrent, or whatever else is out there that people already would use for music.)

Rhythmbox Music Manager

Well, Nic has brought it to my attention of the new capability to install Rhythmbox with PlaysforSure support. Anybody with Ubuntu (not Kubuntu) will already have Rhythmbox installed. It is the default music manager for Ubuntu, and is full of features. The latest version has even more features.

The rest of this post will explain how to install the latest and greatest RB with MTP (PlaysForSure) support and all the other goods.

Here's a quick run-down of the improvements on MTP in Rhythmbox:

• It works. (awesome enough)
• There is not much lag when it is scanning the device (maybe 15 seconds at the longest)
• You can play straight from the device
• You can send/recieve from device

This guide is for Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty).

1) Let's make sure we have the goods needed

sudo aptitude purge rhythmbox

sudo apt-get install build-essential gnome-common subversion libmtp5 libmtp-dev

sudo apt-get build-dep rhythmbox

2) Now we need to get the latest version of Rhythmbox

svn co http://svn.gnome.org/svn/rhythmbox/trunk rhythmbox
cd rhythmbox

3) And now the install

./autogen.sh --with-mtp
sudo make
sudo make install

4) Plugin your player, run your new Rhythmbox for the first time, and make sure you go to Edit > Plugins and enable "Portable Players - MTP"

5) Enjoy.

Linux and PlaysForSure Mp3 Players

Well, I have found myself busy to the core with class, work, church and various other commitments. Just the other day, however, I noticed how much Linux distributions - Ubuntu, my favorite - are welcoming more and more devices that used to require Windows XP.

Namely, PlaysForSure.

If you do not own an iPod, but rather have some other portable music player, odds are it is a PlaysForSure player (regardless of brand).

I happen to own one of those players. I own a Creative Zen Xtra mp3 player that was updated to the PlaysForSure protocol. When I first crossed to Ubuntu, I found myself stuck on the issue regarding music and my mp3 player. I had seen my switch to Ubuntu as a sacrifice that balanced out, even without mp3 player support. This was about a year ago.

One of the many great applications written for Linux - Gnomad - was written as a way to transfer music to and from a Creative Nomad series jukebox (before PlaysForSure). But, as times change, so did the protocol to access the devices. Once again, Linux is very good at welcoming new people with new devices. The application has since been updated to support PlaysForSure (MTP protocol) devices.

Amarok - what I regard to be the greatest music management program in existence - also has support for MTP devices (in addition to the already present iPod and iRiver devices). All you have to do now is plug in your mp3 player, and boom. It works. You don't need Windows XP SP2, Windows Media Player 11, or even iTunes to synchronize your devices. They all work in the same music player.

Although both of these programs support a PlaysForSure device, there is still room for growth. There is no "synchronize" button to send all of your music in your music library/folder to your device, but there is also a new program in development now, called MTPSync.

Written solely for PlaysForSure devices, MTPSync can take various folders that are specified in the program's settings, and analyze what is already on the portable music player, and only add the ones not present on the player.

This (much easier) support has grown only recently from the past year or so. Looking forward, this once shows how fast the open-source community is working to accommodate new users and technology, to catch up to the "standard" and then innovate new standards for all.