Murphy's dashboard

That mockup looks really good; however, whenever people talk about incorporating video features into Songbird, I always feel that audio and video are different enough that there should be separate programs to deal with them respectively. You should check out the open-source program Miro, because it is made to work wonders with web video sites like YouTube.

I hope that one day, Songbird and Miro should form an alliance and work together to push forward media on the web.

I understand that we wouldn't want to enable people to unintentionally break the law, but with all products that have both legal and illegal uses, it is the responsibility of people who use them to know the laws where they live and not break them. After all, a digital audio player like Songbird is probably being used by the majority of users to play some illegally-obtained copyrighted music in the first place, but it shouldn't be Songbird's responsibility that the program can be used in this way.

If we are worried that not enough people are familiar with their country's copyright laws and might unintentionally break them, the best solution would be to prompt users with a message the first time they share or stream music. It could just let them know that it is illegal in some countries to share or stream music that is copyrighted, and that they should be aware of what they are doing. Instant messaging and email clients don't even bother showing a message like this when you are sending files, even ones that are clearly digital audio and video files, so I think it would be a good gesture.

As far as actually getting in trouble for unknowingly sharing a copyrighted files through direct transfer, it is extremely unlikely that it would happen. Programs like these make encrypted file transfers from one person to another, which means the only other party that could even know that the transfer took place would be your ISP, and they might not even be able to see what file was actually transferred. I don't believe anyone has ever been sued for sharing copyrighted files directly through an instant messaging client. People, such as those getting disconnected in the UK, generally get in trouble by using public P2P programs like bittorrent clients or Limewire, since it is easy for anybody to see what files you are publicly sharing.

Yet if torrent support is added to Songbird, it will probably present even less of an opportunity for someone to unknowingly get caught committing a crime. To download illegal files through the bittorrent protocol, the user would have to seek out a torrent file in the first place from sites that are clearly not shining examples of legal music distribution. Those who plan on using the torrent features for legal uses would know to get files from the musician's own websites or websites that share public domain work and most likely don't feature advertisements for adult friend finder =P. – Murphy, on August 17, 2009 22:04

I posted a feature request on Bugzilla for native-looking default feathers in Songbird: http://bugzilla.songbirdnest.com/show...

Hopefully some of these ideas will help if the team ever redesigns the interface.

I posted a feature request on Bugzilla for native-looking default feathers in Songbird: http://bugzilla.songbirdnest.com/show...

I posted a feature request on Bugzilla for native-looking default feathers in Songbird: http://bugzilla.songbirdnest.com/show...

Hopefully it will get some official support and there will be a real Aero feather one day.

The first mockup is the original one that I made, and the second mockup was an evolution of ideas that led to removing the text from the title bar. I think the first design would be a more practical because it is now most programs are still designed, but I have come to like the second design a lot as well since the title bar text - the currently playing song's information - is already displayed in the control panel.

In either case, I think that Songbird should try to have a more-native appearance to separate itself from iTunes. These mockups were based on mockups of future versions of Firefox, and I think Songbird would benefit from an interface redesign as well. – Murphy, on August 17, 2009 04:55

One idea that could help sharing songs, making collaborative playlists, listening parties - anything that requires multiple people to somehow have access to the same songs - would be the ability to have songs in your library that link to files on the web rather than local files. It was suggested in this thread a while ago: http://getsatisfaction.com/songbird/t...

When you go to a website with audio files on it and Songbird shows them in the bottom service pane, in addition to the "Download" button, it could have a button that says "Add stream to library".

Basically, it would show up in your library just like any other song, but when you double click it, it would be streamed instead of played off of your hard drive. When you have the "source" column showing in your song list, it would have a URL for the audio file of the song instead of a location on your hard drive. It could always have a little download button next to it in your library in case you ever decide that you want to store it locally.

Linking to tracks stored in the cloud would help people play their libraries on netbooks with small hard drives, and also make it easier for people to collaborate and share songs, because they could both work with files stored externally.

Ooh, I didn't know a topic like this existed. I made a few mockups in this topic showing what Songbird could look like all glassy.

Here are two different mockups, just showing different versions of what title bars could look like.

Who's that suspicious-looking bird giving a presentation on a listening history page mockup...

=D – Murphy, on August 16, 2009 17:37

That's a great idea. A site called Muxtape used to be a really cool place where you could make public mixtapes, but I think they shut down because it didn't have rights to stream the songs that it hosted. Here is a screenshot of what it used to look like: http://www.subdrivemedia.com/muxtape.png

And I just found this demo of a site in progress that is very similar: http://opentape.fm/mixtape/ – Murphy, on August 16, 2009 17:35

* sharing playlists amoung friends would definitely be ace, but what about publically? There could be a central bank of playlists, tagged by users which you could search through by tag, track, artist, genre etc etc in order to find a good selection. Then maybe an option to provide spotify links to tracks which you don't have locally. Option to build playlists colaboratively with people you've given access to.

That is one nice looking CD collection! How many years has it been brewing? I do sometimes enjoy playing around with physical music formats; I have even gotten a few of my favorite albums on vinyl in my life to spend some quality time with them.

P.S. I really enjoy cookies and milk as well. – Murphy, on August 16, 2009 17:26

I don't know too much about the legality of these types of things, but I think that, considering existing technologies, people couldn't get on Songbird too much for allowing file transfers and streaming. There are excellent legal uses for both features, and they aren't anything you can't already do with existing, common software. iTunes lets you stream music with other people over a wireless network, and if you use the public wifi in a city or college dorm building, that basically gives you access to listen to dozens of people's libraries for free. You can transfer any types of files with any email or instant messaging clients, so people can already easily send an entire copyrighted album to someone if they want to. I'm sure people would still be unhappy about how easily intellectual property could be distributed, but they were when iPods came out too, but I think people have gotten used to it. However, I think intellectual property is silly anyway, so I might be too lax about it =P.

I forgot to mention it in my previous post, but I think that torrent support would be one of the most essential - albeit also opening the potential for illegal use - social features in a web-music program. Torrents make up 27-55% of all internet traffic, which shows how important it is to providing bandwidth for people to distribute files. As an increasing number of artists use alternative methods of distributing music, I think torrents will also become the most important legal method. Nine Inch Nails had torrent links when they released their album The Slip for free, and Radiohead (most likely) recently released a new track via bittorent. Songbird's half-brother, Miro, is a web-video player, and one of its most important features is torrent support, as there are many legal ways to acquire videos from torrents. It would also work wonderfully in Songbird. After a torrent finishes in Songbird and you are done seeding it, you could just click a button that says "add to library", and the downloaded music could automatically be organized and added to your library. I think we are just handicapping the convenient, legal uses of software if we try to avoid any illegal uses that are made possible in the process.

I definitely agree about having less-invasive progress bars. There has been good discussion about it in the non-modal interface thread.

This post is so gigantic. I'm deeply sorry.

Sharing and recommending music with friends

One of the main things that the web makes possible is sharing files and information with friends. In Songbird, this could come in the form of sharing your music files with people or by recommending music to them. I mentioned some of these ideas in an old topic. You and your friends could all have Songbird accounts (part of a spiffy Songbird social network that is), and they could show up in the service pane. I think the Social Streaming add-on mockups show it perfectly.

To share something with a friend, you would select whatever you wanted to share, be it an artist, album, song, playlist, or website. Then you could either right click it and go to "send to" or "share", or you could just drag it to a name in your friends list, and a prompt could ask you how you want to share it: it would give you the option to send the files (if your friends were currently online to accept a file transfer), or just recommend the music, and whenever your friend receives the recommendation, he or she would be able to stream it from some online service or store. You could select multiple friends you want to send it to and attach a message with it.



In this mockup, friends could be dragged or typed in the "send to" field.

To send websites like a music blog or a band myspace to your friends, you could drag a website's favicon or url onto a friend's name, or likewise, right click it and go to "send to". When someone is sent something, they could receive some sort of notification, either as a pop-up window, a non-modal pop-up, or just a notifying icon somewhere that says how many shared items are in your queue.

Collaboration

When I was reading an article about Spotify one day, I was most intrigued reading that it allows you to share and collaborate on playlists with friends. Working collaboratively with friends is a great way to be social on the web. Apart from just sending a playlist to a friend like making them a mixtape, you could set them as a collaborator to the playlists just like on a Google Doc, and then you could both add songs to it together. This could be a great way for people to make a mix together or plan out a playlist for a gathering. If either person is missing a song, it could either be retrieved from his or her friend or streamed from the web.

The collaborative idea that I am most excited about would be having listening parties with friends in Songbird. It is easy to listen to the same music with people when they are in the same room as you, but when you are far away from each other, it can be difficult to listen to music in sync without having to perform frequent count downs. People might not go through the trouble of listening to music in sync with each other manually, but if Songbird could do it automatically, I think there could be a sort of magical feeling knowing that you and a friend or several friends are listening to the same song at the exact same point. This would also be a great way for members of music fan sites to get together every once in a while and listen to an album or artist with a group of people. You could just right click on a friend's name or have an option in a menu that says "Invite users to a listening party". The person who makes it could choose if they are the "leader" - able to choose the music and pause/play it at will - or if every person will have control over the playback.

The trickiest part of this functionality would be a way for people on different computers and with potentially different audio files to listen to it in sync. Perhaps they could stream the music from a website or from one user so that Songbird could be sure they are listening to identical files, or it could just make sure that everyone's songs are the same length. While you are having a listening party, you could discuss the music with your friends in Songbird in a sort of irc-like interface, and it could show you the playlist that the group is listening to.

Songbird social pages

Finally, when someone creates a Songbird account, it would also create a profile page, accessible by clicking on friend's names, or from a web address. As has been suggested, it could be a customizable page that primarily displays your listening history, and could also feature a small blog where you could post about new artists or music websites that you have discovered. All of your play counts, song ratings, and last.fm-style tags could be stored on the Songbird server with your profile, and the best part about this would be that you could easily keep your library information synced in the cloud. This means that if you have Songbird installed on multiple computers and want to keep their playcounts, tags, and ratings synced, or if you ever lose your library database file, you could easily retrieve all of your important library information.

Maybe one day, if Songbird and Spotify or a similar streaming service teamed up, you could even load your library information into Songbird on a computer (such as a netbook) that has no music files on it, and you could stream any track from your library that is available on Spotify. Any of your artists, albums, or songs that it doesn't have could just be grayed out so that you know that they are not available.