Songbird – smooth Music Player Android App alternative
by Paul Wilks
May 11, 2012 8:56 AM –
Install
Songbird is a smooth-looking music player alternative for your Android device. Featuring an intuitive user-interface, Facebook and Flickr integration, widget, lockscreen widget and video playback… it’s a nice little music replacement that will feels familiar to users of the desktop software for which Songbird is also known.
Price: Free
Tested on: HTC One X
Content Rating: Everyone
Pros & Cons:
Pros
- Easy music file management!
- Slick and easy-to-use interface!
- Facebook and Flickr integration!
- Syncs with Songbird for Windows while connected to PC!
Cons
- No wireless syncing with desktop…. (but it’s on it’s way!)
- No equalizer.
Features:
Songbird is a neat little music replacement application that’s simple to use and looks great. Songbird is perhaps better known for their desktop app, which is an alternative to software like Windows Media Player. With apps such as Winamp Pro, Google Music (although this is web-based) and DoubleTwist Media Player you can sync your music wirelessly to your device. It seems however, you cannot do that with Songbird. However, following correspondence with the developers, I understand this is in the pipeline. The Songbird app will sync with Songbird for Windows while connected to your PC however, so it’s a good feature if you use Songbird on your computer.
The app features most of the kind of things you would expect from a music player; you can play albums, search by genre, album, artist or song. There is a cool feature that lets you search Flickr for artist-related pictures, which is great for mixing up the view when playing tracks. There is also solid Facebook integration which means you can ‘Like’ songs and have this notification posted to your Facebook wall.
I think one of Songbird’s main strengths is its design and user interface. It’s incredibly easy to use and looks very cool- it has a kind of dark purple feel that looks really slick. I particularly liked the fact the app isn’t overly complicated to use and it’s simple to find your way around. There’s no equalizer with the app, which for many will be a make-or-break feature but music has decent sound quality. It also doesn’t seem to support Beats technology, if you have that on your phone.
Songbird is however, a completely free app to download. It perhaps isn’t quite as feature rich as the likes of Winamp Pro or Google Music, so it doesn’t rival those kind of services. However, if you’re looking for a basic replacement for your native music player, perhaps you have a slightly older device and simple requirements, Songbird is a neat option based on its smooth UI and easy-to-use nature.
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Songbird – Main Menu
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Songbird – Songs
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Songbird – Song options
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Songbird – Playing song
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Songbird – Playing song 2
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Songbird – Playing song 3
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Songbird – Artists list
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Songbird – Artist menu
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Songbird – Genres
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Songbird – Search feature
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Songbird – Various artwork via Flickr
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Songbird – More options
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Songbird – Settings
Usefulness:
Songbird is a nice replacement music player that is great if you need something different to your native player. It’s not the most feature-rich app available but if you’re looking for something free, good looking and easy to use, Songbird is pretty cool. If you use the Windows app the two will sync while your device is connected, so it’s also handy if you can utilise both apps.
Ease of Use:
Songbird is fantastically easy to use and highly intuitive. It’s certainly one of the most user-friendly music applications out there.
Frequently Used:
Music players tend to be quite personal things that people have affection for. Subsequently users tend to adopt a primary music player and stick with it for all purposes. This isn’t therefore like a camera app which takes quirkily-filtered pictures and is something you can use on the odd occasion. Music players are something, if you listen to music on your device, you will use very frequently- perhaps daily. Songbird is reliable and stable enough to be a daily-used app, but whether it has enough features for serious music fans is debatable.
Interface:
The interface, as discussed already, is slick and smooth to use. It’s also easy to understand, responsive and the app also includes a handy widget.