mateo360's dashboard

Heyo, this is now implemented as a power-users feature. To activate it open your "about:config" and change the key "songbird.commands.enableRescanItem" to true. Presto voila! You're in business.

Enjoy!

Thanks for spamming me. One comment in one place or even this diatribe would have been sufficient. I am a software programmer and the reason software gets bloated isn't because of features, but poor implementation in the User Interface and in code. Plugins are a good way to implement this, but not necessary. When I put a CD in, I want it to play the CD. I want the play “area” to have a rip button. I am an all in one user too. Just like my Office software: Write, Spreadsheet, Presentation. I don' want three different “products” from three different groups. I want a suite. That is what people normally want today.

If Songbird was smart they would create a wrapper around an existing open source program with an exposed API, and use it for ripping and burning. I am sure the other projects would even add new APIs to make it easier. Now ripping and burning for Songbird and I will continue to wait on something else. I can tell you I will never get my kids to use it without these two features. They will assume it is broken software. – Tom, on October 25, 2008 13:32

I've said it before, but the reason I've tried Songbird is that I was looking for a replacement for iTunes or WMP that was better at organizing files, and I heard a bunch of recomendations that Songbird was a great music ORGANIZER. iTunes and WMP both sucked as music organizers, probably about half of the CDs I've ripped and tagged properly have at some point just vanished into the ether (which means my estimate of how many CDs I have left to rip is closer to 500).

To my way of thinking the computers function in music management is analogous to my wall of CD racks. The purpose is to let me find my the music I want quickly and easily. I'm not going to play my music on the computer, because to borrow an argument you used earlier "this is not a core feature" of the computer, and so many other devices can play music much better; either because of better sound quality, or because they allow me to take my music with me.

So it is pretty obvious that I'm not the target demographic for Songbird. I think the only feature I've used since I installed it was the integration with Songkick (which is awesome). So anyone have a suggestion for a good all-in-one music organizer? Key features are ripping, organizing, batch retagging, and have the ability to occasionally burn. If it also had Songkick integration that would be cool, otherwise I'll probably keep Songbirb installed just for that feature. – mlp, on October 25, 2008 13:10

Because large companies like M$, Apple, Sony, BMG, etc... Set the standard of what technologically advanced is for the general public, the non-general-public are years ahead of the masses waiting for everybody else to catch up. I still use CD's to batch rip a ton of CD's every once and a while, but that's about it. The rest of the time I disable the DVD drive in settings to save power and cut down on sound. It's amazing how much longer my computer lasts with it off.

Think about it, Apple and M$ are competing to head off the marked of touch screen tech? That has been around for decades. I have two 19" touch panels next to me I'm using to develop an instructor station to update an early 80's gen Flight Simulator. Since touch screens became the de-facto standard in the late 80's and the airline is likes our price they finally decided to update theirs. It's like the general public is stuck on linear and tech peeps are stuck on exponential. It'll only get worse over time.

I really wish they'd finally release a digital format that doesn't try to vice grip my testes. All I want is studio-quality sound that costs less than CD's and is downloaded (it shouldn't be that hard without packaging and distribution issues).
Is that too much to ask for. Look, people would download SOOOOO much more music if they didn't keep driving up the prices, look at the sizes of people's collections and diversity of taste.

Unfortunately, big companies think that new technology should make them more money and give them more ways to forcefeed us advertisement crap. Look at Adobe Photoshop or MS Office, both had marginal improvement over the past 7 years but both have more that doubled (if not quadrupled) in price. It's all a monopoly racket and all the media companies have been in bed together since CD's became the standard. – HarmonicStyle, on October 25, 2008 06:20

There is one thing I don't understand. Why people who are still using obsolete CDs (I haven't ripped or burned a single CD for months) are looking for a player like Songbird? Songbird is strong in filters, dynamic playlists and music organizing. This only useful for a huge collection of media files stored on harddrive.

If I only play CDs, I don't need any player with music database. Also how difficult is to start ImgBurn, CDBurnerXP, InfraRecorder or other free burning application and burn the CD I want? It is not any harder then using a SB addon would be.

Anyway if someone decides to make an addon, I suggest to use cdrtools. It is a set of multiplatform commandline tools to rip and burn CDs/DVDs/BDs. So all you have to do is create a GUI and integrate it with Songbird. It won't be easy, but the more difficult part is already done.

It's simple, import your existing library using the iTunes library importer. If you want to change the folder setting you can do it under tools->options->main. It isn't under advanced like iTunes because It REALLY is not advanced. If you don't use iTunes, just drag the music to the folder specified in the options and go file-import media. If this is still all rocket science to you, you'll just have to wait till Windows 7 gives you a rude awakening before you get it. – HarmonicStyle, on October 25, 2008 05:41

Ok. To everybody that ripped their first CD in iTunes... People were commonly ripping cd's a long long time before iTunes ever existed. They used programs called... You guessed it, rippers. If you want a ripper go download CDex, it's free, Open Source (so no nagging advertisements), and it works great. Demanding that the devs focus on features that aren't necessary will only increase the time until SB is a completely functional/working application.

I understand that people still use CDs (I still rip them all the time too) but CDs are on the way out. I know it sounds like crazy talk but what happens when you have a music player that has built in support to handle a technology that is obsolete? You point your finger and laugh.

Why am I so against this feature? Because I really really like being to get on Skreemr to search up a favorite artist and have a full playlist of good music to stream online (No library needed). It's like Rhapsody (BTW Rhapsody spells shody-rap which sounds like shoddy crap, coincidence... I think not) without the subscription fees or annoying advertisements. Not to mention that, I can also hook into the web interface of my remote FTP server (running on a NSLU2 thin client NAS) that holds my music collection and stream my own library on demand from anywhere.

IMHO, making the music playing and browsing experience the best it could be, while trimming all the excess is the most important thing. Once this thing hits 1.0, go ahead and create a 'lil ripper to bring all the automatons over from the 'bad neighborhood' but, until then... I want to see this thing have unbreakable stability, better perf, and the full functionality. The rest is just window dressing and neon signs that attract the people who like pretty things (like butterflies, ahhh).

You wouldn't open iTunes or WMP to rip DVD's now would you? nuff said...

Remember, CDex to rip CD's and InfraRecorder to burn (they're both Open Source so no adverts or spyware). They you all can happily uninstall iTunes and WMP without having to worry about losing rip/burn support.

For Mac use Max
http://sbooth.org/Max/

For Linux
If you don't already know then how can you honestly call yourself a respectable 'nix user... Really...

Who knows, maybe a few will just get what OSS is all about in the process. "I knows them skulls are thick but I got meeself a pretty big mallot."

AAC is as much proprietary as MP3. Both are ISO standards from MPEG. MP3 is MPEG-1, AAC is MPEG-4. Apple has nothing to do with AAC except that they use it in iPod and iTunes. But they didn't develop AAC, they only screwed up MP4 with DRM. There is an opensource AAC+ decoder called ffad2 and even a free (fro home use) encoder from Nero, which works in Windows and Linux.

The problem with both MP3 and AAC is that they're patented. In some countries you have to pay if you want to distribute a SW or HW which supports MP3 and AAC. The only patent-free solution is Ogg Vorbis. – JeCh, on October 25, 2008 05:14

CDex or EAC both rip CDs.

Note: Media player, not schizophrenic feature bloated media thing-a-ma-jiggy. – HarmonicStyle, on October 25, 2008 04:44

Media Monkey is not Open Source Software. I remember the days when RealPlayer was freeware too (IE no spam, spyware, obnoxious adverts, nags)... All freeware starts out that way (Free as in beer not freedom to use the app without restrictions or forced marketing). – HarmonicStyle, on October 25, 2008 04:40

Rip them using CDex or EAC. Burn using InfraRecorder. Making Songbird burn and rip is like trying to be just like those robots in Redmond ::pun:: and no one REALLY likes cloning sheep anyway::/pun:: baa.... – HarmonicStyle, on October 25, 2008 04:33

You're probably off using CDex or EAC. If you're encoding in AAC it's a format proprietary to Apple and therefore isn't as portable across systems. Plus the way iTunes lays out the folders and files is absurd. – HarmonicStyle, on October 25, 2008 04:29

In CDex I just finished ripping 30, I don't burn any because they are a waste of space and I have an iPod to dump a collection on, or another mp3 player that plays SD cards. It's nice not to have to generate so much waste, and not be limited by the 700mb cap.

In my media player I rip... None... Because media players aren't made to rip the same quality as CDex or EAC so I don't ever install the plug-ins for it. BTW, I never used iTunes for ripping because the way they store them in the files is just absurd and their database scheme is a little too control hungry, that's probably why so many people don't know how to get by without it. – HarmonicStyle, on October 25, 2008 04:21

The probably don't want to implement it because this is a media player not a media ripper/encoder. Use CDex or EAC instead. OSS software principle #1, Create lots of apps that do one thing really well not one app that does everything poorly. I know it's a different paradigm but it leads to much better software (quality and performance). – HarmonicStyle, on October 25, 2008 04:16

Remove WMP and pass by CDex or EAC instead. – HarmonicStyle, on October 25, 2008 04:13

Use CDex or EAC, you need a ripping app not a media player with an identity crisis – HarmonicStyle, on October 25, 2008 04:13

Use CdEx or EAC. It doesn't need to be a part of the media player. – HarmonicStyle, on October 25, 2008 04:10

You have just discovered the #1 reason why people like me don't use macs. If you aren't part of the main-stream, you're usually screwed.

Fortunately I found an alternative you could use online. http://sbooth.org/Max/.

Also, if you wan't to avoid proprietary issues, don't use AAC (it's proprietary to Apple), use MP3 or OGG. – HarmonicStyle, on October 25, 2008 03:59