December 22, 2005 4:00 AM PST
A Firefox for music?
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Lord's new five-person company, the ambitiously named Pioneers of the Inevitable, is building a piece of digital-music software called "Songbird," based on much of the same underlying open-source technology as the Firefox Web browser.
With their first technical preview expected early next year, the programmers want to create music-playing software that will work naturally with the growing number of music sites and services on the Web, instead of being focused on songs on a computer's hard drive. That's where iTunes, which plugs only into Apple's own music store, falls short, Lord argues.
Apple's iTunes is "like Internet Explorer, if Internet Explorer could only browse Microsoft.com," Lord said. "We love Apple, and appreciate and thank them for setting the bar in terms of user experience. But it's inevitable that the market architecture changes as it matures."
An Apple representative declined to comment.
It is undeniable that music software and services are moving increasingly off the hard drive and onto the Web. But if Songbird is to be the "Firefox of MP3" when it's done, it has a long way to go.
Indeed, analysts question whether a world awash in music-playing software from Apple, Microsoft, RealNetworks, Yahoo, Sony and others really needs another digital jukebox.
Among those giants, Microsoft's Media Player accounts for 45 percent of all PC music playing, Apple's iTunes captures 17 percent, and the rest fall off sharply from there, according to U.S. statistics from the NPD Group.
But even with those odds, Lord has enough of a pedigree to make the industry stop and take notice. A co-founder of the Internet Underground Music Archive, an online music site predating the MP3 boom, as well as one of the first employees at Winamp creator Nullsoft, he was most recently a product manager for the launch of Yahoo's music software and subscription service, after his last start-up, Mediacode, was purchased by the portal.
Songbird could have a built-in audience of open-source fans to give it a good start. And don't forget, just a few years ago, who would have counted on the success of the Firefox browser? Since its first full-version release a year ago, the Mozilla Foundation's Firefox has defied skeptics and managed to grab close to 8 percent or 9 percent of the browser market, although estimates vary.
And programmers working with the Mozilla Foundation say the Songbird project has their attention.
"We're excited to see an ecosystem of companies building technology around Mozilla," said Scott MacGregor, technical lead for the Thunderbird project, an open-source e-mail reader. "It's a healthy sign for Mozilla and open source in general."
Under the microscope
Even before the software has been released, Songbird has stirred up a hornet's nest of online critics and boosters on outside blogs and even on the company's own Web site.
Screenshots posted on the company's Web site show a software application clearly modeled closely after iTunes' browsing style. The parallels drew instant ridicule from Apple loyalists, who pointed out that Apple had in fact patented software with three "panes" for browsing through a media collection.
Until the software is released even in a preview stage, it's hard to tell whether that will indeed be a problem. But Lord says that's missing the point.
iTunes does have a good basic interface for browsing a music collection, but Songbird isn't tied to any one look, he said. It's built on technology that allows developers to change the look of the application with the same simple tools they use to write a Web page, and so will be extremely malleable.
That said, the five Pioneers of the Inevitable are a practical bunch, and will change their basic interface if it looks like there is any legal risk, he added.
Songbird's underlying programming technology is called XML User Interface Language, or XUL. Along with letting people create their own look for the software, this will allow music services or developers to write their own plug-ins, letting them add features or tap directly into their own digital-download stores.
That might mean that a listener could create a playlist that draws from his or her own hard drive, a Web-based subscription service like RealNetworks' Rhapsody, and an online music storage locker such as MP3Tunes, for example. The open-source foundation will let the software be easily ported to PC, Macintosh and Linux-based computers.
Lord cautioned that little of this has actually been built yet. The version that will be released early next year will largely be a demonstration of how a media player can be built on top of the Mozilla technology. Most of the advanced features people now expect from modern music software will be added over the course of further development, he said.
"What we've built is a user preview," Lord said. "This is meant to inspire and show the road map--and a glimpse of where we are on that road map."
How does this all make money? It's not yet clear. The company's business model is a work in progress too, Lord said.
One possibility is selling the technology to companies that want to create their own music store, but don't want to build their own software to do it. One analyst pointed to Procter & Gamble's recent release of a music service as an example.
"I can imagine Songbird as a Web interface for a brand like that," said GartnerG2 analyst Mike McGuire. "There would be interesting value there."
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Also check out Amarok which is free/GNU for Linux and Window$.
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Now Open Source/free music that would better.
Microsoft, but isn't available.
Geeks love the premise (and articles), but the real world is using
existing, very well designed software that gets updated pretty
regularly. Well Apple does at least. And offers more content to
boot.
I predict this project goes nowhere.
Music search is great and I welcome another iTMS-like source for any kind of aud/vid content. May they find their place next to each other. May they also be able to interoperate.
I'm convinced that the broadcasting model is fundamentally going through all the lashing out and sueing their customers, accusing them of criminal behavior, trying to arrest them and bankrupt them and getting laws passed to protect their business model, because they are all dying a quick but painful death.
Podcasting and podcatching are the overwhelming winners of the digital age.
And that changes the fundamental economics from one of scarsety, the one where supply-siders make all the money, to one of plenty, the one where the demand-siders make enough money to make it worth staying in the game.
Taking the product out of the hands of the supply-side broadcasters and their hangers-on reveals a couple of things:
1) They're greedy.
2) They're bullies.
That's not to say that there aren't greedy bullies on the internet, however we can route our way around them.
Say goodbye to the media as we knew it and hello to the cacophony to come.
Bad point: iTunes is NOT like Internet Explorer. iTunes is good
software; IE is, well, not.
Good point: The digital jukebox industry needs to open up. A
user can only buy songs from one music store to play on the
company's proprietary jukebox (Rhapsody, iTunes, etc.). That's
clearly an example of companies trying to keep the business
under their controlling little finger. They seem to be afraid that if
they open up and give consumers options, then they'll lose
ground.
As a Mac user, it annoys me that I don't have many options other
than iTunes and iPod to buy and play music. And until a jukebox
(the obiviously iTunes-modeled Songbird or other) breaks away
from that mold and becomes successful, then big companies will
simply play by their own rules.
Not ot mention, I couldn't imagine anyone wanting to live under
a digital music monopoly - like the PC monopoly that Microsoft
held for so long. It's simply a bad idea!
In that way, competition is usually good.
I, like others, don't really see this software being more than another music player unless they can find away to bring it all together in an organized and easy to use way.
I like iTunes myself. I like the idea of downloading and storing my music and if one day I decide to never buy another song, well I don't loose my collection. I also like the idea of having either no DRM or at least a uniform one that allows me to choose the software and media player I like, but be able to buy music from any online music retailer. I think it will be a long time before that happens.
experience! The iPod hardware - iTunes software - iTunes
Music Store. All 3 parts make to work together seemlessly
and simply.
Even though it is sometimes a bit buggy, I try to use Winamp to listen to web radio, real audio, mp3, WMA and etc. and this solves my need for one player for all these things (Real comes close but not quite). I also like the idea that the user community can extend Winamp to support all kinds of neat features. I don't use many of the plugins, but a few (like the add on sleep timer / wakeup alarm or some of the input and output plugins) are of real value. It also creates a real community of users when they share these things.
If there were a Winamp clone that included the integration of music purchasing and supported all formats, I would definitely be for it. I don't really care where I buy from, as long as they have what I want, but I resent having to have 4 different players to play music from four different "stores."
it will be good to see if someone can improve upon a novel idea.
playing, Apple's iTunes captures 17 percent, and the rest fall off
sharply from there, according to U.S. statistics from the NPD
Group."
Looks like WMP isn't exactly carrying it's share of the PC user load.
Could it be that people are finding MS stuff to not be the best????
They're just trying to raise cash now - let's see what actually gets built.
Apple is to music what Microsoft is (was) to browsers: monopolistic and scary. I'm happy to see anyone attempt to bust the monopoly.
If a music label (Sony, for example) insisted that you buy only its technology to hear the music, the Apple fanatics would be the first to complain. Now, what happens five years down the road when Sony or another mega-corp buys Apple? Hmmm ...
I use FF, OOo, Gimp, and a lot of other open source software - when it makes sense. But I still pick the best software for the job - commercial or otherwise.
Quite frankly, I like the entire iTunes package. The songs in the store are of decent quality, the drm is at least reasonable, and the player is quite versatile (I even use it to catalog my pdfs).
I wish this group well. If they can produce a product as superior to iTunes as FF is to IE, then I'll definitely be giving them a look. But it will have to work with my AAC files, purchased and ripped, and it will have to have full iPod functionality.
With a similar issue generated by different music and media vendors, the music business need a killer application that is able to gather them all.Although not wil all teh same features as is spected, we'd love to get iTunes songs or AOL music or Real at any time they offer better prices or we can't find some artists. We need an application to do just this.
From teh client point of view, It will encourage me to even get more music than I do now.
Songbird is a blending of XULRunner with sqlite and media playback plugins already published as moz plugins (right now we prefer vlc, but they're swappable).
The database drives the media library. The browser renders our UI, runs the scripts that control the app, and renders remote webpages. The media plugins should play just about any piece of media you can come up with -- after you download a "greyware" bundle (from someone else) containing all the codecs that are illegal for us to just give you directly.
The Purpose (for Users):
Having a web-enabled media experience is actually useful. This position, however, is hard to defend from just words and screenshots, I'm well aware.
As but one minor example, what if you context click on a track in your playlist and select "lyrics through google" from the popup menu that shows up, and have google pop with all the different places that have lyrics for that song? You click one of those, read the lyrics, sing along happily, and then hit the back button twice (or the tab) to get back to your playlist. Why would you want to copy and paste into firefox for that?
I'm sure anybody with half an imagination can come up with a bazillion more use cases for why a web browser in a media player (under the complete control of the user, unlike most browsers in other media players) is a good good good thing.
And it's hardly "bloat" since it's built in for free.
The Purpose (for Companies):
Sony, Yahoo, AOL, Amazon, eMusic, CDBaby, etc etc etc etc. All have plenty of content they want to sell into the marketplace. And great web dev teams. And they pretty much can't write desktop software very well at all.
Sony, Creative, iRiver, Archos, etc etc etc etc. All have plenty of portable hardware they want to sell into the market place. And great hardware engineering teams. And they pretty much can't write user facing desktop software very well at all, either.
iTunes is winning the digital music marketplace lion's share (90+%?) because it comes to the table with all three pieces: Content + Software + Hardware. And the way they're trying to keep their share is by ensuring that their three don't work with ANYTHING else. You get iTunes the way Apple has decided you get iTunes.
"Plugins" and "Dev Community" and "Interoperability" are anathema to Mr Jobs.
He's the epitome of the Cathedral. We're putting down the chalk lines to mark the edges of our Bazaar.
Now, I couldn't build an iPod from scratch to save my life. And I wouldn't dream that anybody would want to pay for what I comically attempt to believe is my singing voice.
Even without content or hardware, however, I could build a media player with my eyes closed by now.
What happens if the software I build invites all the content people and all the hardware people to come party with us?
What happens if the media player I build just happens to be a web browser? Such that integration of their company's services into a media player winds up requiring HTML/XUL/JS instead of C++ and they don't have to use a dreaded compiler any longer?
Nor do they have to further splinter a "media player" space that already has WAY too many products that are each tied to only one company.
So, then, if your media player had FIVE major digital music stores installed into it, all of them competing for your dollar, do you still think you'd have to pay that whole dollar for just one song?
Level the playing field.
Everybody (except the current 800lb gorilla in Cupertino) wins.
mig
while iTunes is 17%. So who does the guy go after in his tirade?
iTunes? I don't get it.
-An open usable Media Player, that will
-support various online shops
-different music formats
-different portable players.
-and improve current designs
I, for one, likes itunes, but there
i things i dislike abt it as well.
And I will never buy an ipod,
becos steve locks up everything
to apple.
- Another Example of Patent Flaw
-
by rslc
December 23, 2005 12:29 AM PST
- another example of patent law flaws.
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See all 58 Comments >>Why dun Microsoft patent the IE Browser
side panel design,
or the its Office designs.
How about patenting
popup menus, pulldown menus, bubble help,
or the 2/3-button mouse design?
Then only Windows will have these.