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Built-in Torrent Client for Songbird
Songbird is attempting to merge the web browsing experience with music, why not build a torrent client program (http://www.tracktrap.com/whatis.php) into Songbird. Torrents are a large part of the online music community. Of course, torrents lead into legality. Does Songbird support the illegal download of music? No, of course not. You cannot control the content your users access on the web.
Torrents have a dark side as all technology, but can prove to be a useful tool. I use my torrent client program to download legal live music, live concert videos, and demos all the time. Recently, Nine Inch Nails released "The Slip" for free in multiple formats. If you chose from the given formats the much larger FLAC or 24/48, the site provided you with a torrent file. If a major band recognizes and promotes the use of torrents, it might be a good prospect to include this function into Songbird.
Torrents have a dark side as all technology, but can prove to be a useful tool. I use my torrent client program to download legal live music, live concert videos, and demos all the time. Recently, Nine Inch Nails released "The Slip" for free in multiple formats. If you chose from the given formats the much larger FLAC or 24/48, the site provided you with a torrent file. If a major band recognizes and promotes the use of torrents, it might be a good prospect to include this function into Songbird.
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Good news, everyone: a third party is currently working on a torrent client add-on for Songbird. We wish them luck and hope to see something soon!
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I'm glad to see a torrent add-on for Songbird, but I believe the ability for Songbird to handle .torrent files is a necessity and should be integrated into the core.
Ultimately I think a lot of people here have the wrong idea as to how downloading by BitTorrent should be used in Songbird.
Let us say that for the more Geeky of users here, BitTorrent downloading is a common activity and for the most part they will download everything under the sun, including legally questionable content. These type of users are far more likely to use a feature rich stand alone client like Vuze or uTorrent. But the use case for BitTorrent in Songbird is different.
Songbird's objective is to bring the media of the web to the desktop via the player and for it to be tightly integrated. One key aspect of Songbird is its ability to discover song files on web pages and to give you a clean easy to use interface to download these song with. If we take for example the website Jamendo, this is the perfect example of a website that Songbird is designed for. Jamendo offers the ability download of the songs on their site as individual file downloads or zipped archive downloads, but they also offer BitTorrent downloads. Songbird should be able to identify this .torrent file, read it and download the songs connected to this .torrent file as seamlessly and easily as it downloads individual song files at the moment.
Another reason it needs BitTorrent support is for Podcast support. Songbird lacks the functionality to support Podcast subscription and management effectively at the moment. But I suspect it is something they want to do as it was one of their questions on a recent survey they conducted. So if they are serious about supporting Podcast subscriptions then they need to have BitTorrent support built into the client. There may be the assumption by some users that Podcasts are only delivered as direct downloads from an RSS feed. In actual fact many smaller amateur Podcast producers may be more likely to distribute their Podcast on a BitTorrent RSS feed so they can avoid expensive hosting and distribution costs.
Looking at the possible 'bloat' that add BitTorrent support to the client would bring. In actual fact it should be very small. If you stay focussed on the idea that you are enabling BitTorrent support to allow the likes of downloading song files from Jamendo or Podcasts, and you are not trying to provide a feature rich BitTottorent client, then your BitTorrent integration should be small. Forget about trying to download large movie ripped files from Pirate Bay or some such, stick to your Vuze or uTorrent for that, and ignore those legal headaches. Focus of BitTorrent support or appropriate BitTorrent sites and services like Jamendo, LegalTorrents and Podcasts. In this focus then you simply have to integrate the libTorrent library into your core and you are done. You don't need any extra user controls or dialogues.
What I am talking about here is something that has already been done before without adding any bloat or legal problems to the software. The Juice podcast receiver supports BitTorrent Podcasts and it has been around since the first inception of RSS. The Miro TV platform also supports BitTorrent feeds and downloads and Miro is not that dissimaler to Songbird in its objective. They have both used the libTorrent library and have remained stable and bloat free. Any instability or bloat you find in either of these clients is certainly not from libTorrent.
Remember not all users of Songbird will be Geeks and they just want it to work and work just as iTunes does because at the end of the day this is what it will be compared to. Early adopters of Songbird that are typically geeks want all the bells and whistles but at the end of the day the user experience for everyone needs to be smooth, transparent and easy.
So yes to BitTorrent support, but examine why and let this objective guide you. Leave the major BitTorrent downloading to specialised standalone clients like Vuze and uTorrent.
While I am typing this in Songbird, I have listening to 5 songs and in that time Songbird should be just finished downloading some new songs from Jamendo or my next Podcast via integrated BitTorrent support.
I’m concerned
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In case anybody following this hasn't noticed yet, another torrent add-on has been released called BirdTorrent: http://addons.songbirdnest.com/addon/...
I can't wait to see how they progress.
4 people think
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I'm thinking this: there are certain legal issues at stake with torrents, so why not make an add-on for it but don't tie it in to the official build?
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Inappropriate?THANKS I WILL LET MY PEOPLE KNOW -
Inappropriate?Correction to my post. NIN never promoted torrents, but it was one of the options for a way of downloading their new album in the higher quality formats.
1 person thinks
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Inappropriate?I'm thinking this: there are certain legal issues at stake with torrents, so why not make an add-on for it but don't tie it in to the official build?
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I've been thinking about the legal issues associated with torrents. The liability would fall on the torrent site providing the torrent file, not the tool or program used to get it.
I agree that it is easier to develop it as an add-on and avoid the legal issues altogether. -
I've been thinking about the legal issues associated with torrents. The liability would fall on the torrent site providing the torrent file, not the tool or program used to get it.
I agree that it is easier to develop it as an add-on and avoid the legal issues altogether. -
Inappropriate?You guys have definitely hit on the salient issues regarding torrent support. Until we can properly manage the legal responsibilities surrounding torrents, this feature will most likely have to be an externally contributed add-on as Dean points out.
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Inappropriate?maby you van just make firetorrent work for songbird -
Inappropriate?Phew. A good Torrent tool like Azureus needs serious programming and is a quite complicated piece of software. I don't think I would ever use a dumbed down version for downloading torrents.
I vote no, because a good torrent software is just too big to be implemented and not bloat the player.
Tyler out!
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I agree. There is no way that a third party will be able to get any ground on a program like uTorrent or Azureus, both of which have years of development. Maybe we just need a way to integrate an established program.
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Inappropriate?I agree with tylerstyle- I would really like this functionality, but I think it would be better implemented as an addon (maybe with gnutella support too).
I’m undecided
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Inappropriate?Well uTorrent is a very simple, ligthweight torrent app, and yet it is one of the more popular ones out there. Torrent clients do not need to be as feature rich as Azureus to be incredibly powerful and useful and because of that I vote to integrate and upgrade the code for the existing open source torrent clients that already exit out there. But yes - due to legality I would only expect this as an addon. -
Inappropriate?there was an extension for firefox2 called foxtorrent that I'm sure could be ported but the developer is no longer working on it -
Inappropriate?Oh, that is a good idea. I wonder if his source code is up on the web anywhere.
I’m excited
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Inappropriate?There is also another ff extension called firetorrent at http://www.wyzo.com/downloads/ . It still seems to be actively developed.
I’m excited
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Inappropriate?I'd like to see the gnutella network and torrents handled by Songbird. That would make it the ultimate media hub for me and I don't think I'd ever need another application. -
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Inappropriate?Man, just use Torrent in your other application. This is a musik player!
And I think there are quite some legal issues to it.
I really like the implementation of Jamendo and think that this is the right way, not torrent. -
Inappropriate?I agree, the more features you try to implement - the more chance of bugs. But, on the other hand, i'd love to see a Torrent client (maybe an addon) for Songbird! Even more users would turn to SB:)
I’m excited about this feature
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Inappropriate?I'm quirked by the idea, but i'm afraid adding torrenting to will make my already jittery application crash altogether
I’m undecided
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Inappropriate?Good news, everyone: a third party is currently working on a torrent client add-on for Songbird. We wish them luck and hope to see something soon!
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Inappropriate?Hi
AllPeers had already done the job, and in a excellent manner (on Firefox 2 only though, as far as I remember), before the company suddenly collapsed one year ago.
Part of it has been open-sourced, and is still available there: http://developer.allpeers.com/
2 people think
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Inappropriate?I think this should not be added, because the player would get too complex.
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Inappropriate?I'd support this as an add-on only, but not in the core as I can see it being a bit like the torrent client built into Opera, does the basics, but can't hold a candle to a stand alone application.
Definitely have it as an optional add-on, but I think a lot of people like myself would resent the inclusion of extra unnecessary bloat in a project built on the personalised add-on philosophy.
I’m Wary
1 person thinks
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Inappropriate?That is the strength of add-ons: not bloating the web player.
Yes, it should be done as an add-on, providing bittorrent to build private networks allowing to exchange songs, photos and videos among my friends in a very easy way, for instance. That is what I'm looking for (and that is what Allpeers was all about. RIP).
By the way, is there any news about the third-party extension mentioned by Ali 6 months ago? -
Inappropriate?I can understand why some people might not want to use this, but I think it should still be in the core program. First, since the feature would never be noticeable unless the user actually tried to open a .torrent file in Songbird, it wouldn't "bloat" the player by adding any visual clutter or slow down the program at all(hopefully). At most, it would make the install file a little bigger. What is important about it, even though not everyone would use it, is it would improve Songbird's intractability with the web, which is what Songbird is striving to do. I don't use any estores, the browser, or mashtape in songbird much, but I think it is important to incorporate features like that into the actual program, since they are unobtrusive, but make the program flexible and useful to people who want to have more interaction with the web inside of the program.
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As I understood it what songbird is striving to do is to create a quality media player with the utmost degree of customisation, including features that a high proportion of users won't use that can't be removed is counter-productive to that.
Furthermore, a torrent program is something you might leave on in the background while you do something else, such as gaming, Songbird carries a memory footprint that can exceed 100 or 200MB without including torrents, unless Songbird can get that down to <10mb>s actually going to want to use Songbird to torrent? -
@ freedoms_stain: I totally agree!
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Inappropriate?People who are using torrents already and know how to use it already use some other client which is way more advanced than this songbird client (e.g. uTorrent).
I won't pick an audio player because it can download torrents. For example: Wouldn't this piece of software be more attractive for the web when built in anti virus and anti spyware? And if we are still at it, why don't we add some picture viewer and picture uploader? OR EVEN BETTER?A picture editor? I think a webbrowser maybe already is too much!
I’m confident
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I know what you are saying. Currently, Transmission is the only torrent program I use. However, Firefox was the only browser I used before I got Songbird. I still primarily use Firefox, but Songbird is great for some music websites because it can deal with them better. For example, I instinctually go to the Songbird browser when I want to go to hypemachine, or when I download addons for Songbird because they install straight to the program. Similarly, I think I would get in the habit of going to a site like what.cd in Songbird rather than Firefox if Songbird could open the torrent, download it, and add it to my library properly. It makes more sense than having a picture editor in the program because torrents often involve music, and Songbird deals with music.
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But when you just set your torrent download destination of Transmission to your watch folder. What's the difference then?
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@ Murphy, That's how you want it to work, fine, you download the add-on and let the rest of us choose not to.
The Company have made their stance on add-ons vs core on issues such as this by making most of their web-features add-ons and refusing to include a Now Playing pane in the core. -
I do not really care what's in core and not. I think the core has to be real simple.
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If Songbird was only meant to have media player features in the core of the program, why did they include the web browser, and why does the program recommend that you install addons like mashtape, or the 7digital store? Miro is a video player program that similarly incorporates torrent support because it can deal better with video torrents.
I think that the torrent addon should at least be recommended upon downloading Songbird. That gives you the option to add something useful to the program, something that further incorporates finding and sharing music into it. -
Inappropriate?Can you have watch folders in songbird? I'm pretty sure that's a feature that is not implemented yet. Correct me if I'm wrong..2 Comments Add a comment
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Check out latest nightly build.
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Now it's finally released.
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Inappropriate?A built-in or add-on Torrent client would only add value if, by being in Songbird, you could use it to do things you couldn't do in a separate application (of which there are plenty of good ones of all types from lean and mean on up). Additional useful functionality could be around metadata finding/downloading/editing or album art or ...??.
Without something extra, there would be no point in bothering to provide torrent client in Songbird!
I’m indifferent
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Inappropriate?In case anybody hasn't noticed yet, GeekShadow ported FireTorrent over to Songbird: http://addons.songbirdnest.com/addon/...
I’m glad it's possible at last
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Inappropriate?any chance that third party is vuze, that ultra cool local company from san jose? -
Inappropriate?In case anybody following this hasn't noticed yet, another torrent add-on has been released called BirdTorrent: http://addons.songbirdnest.com/addon/...
I can't wait to see how they progress.
4 people think
this is one of the best points
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Inappropriate?I'm glad to see a torrent add-on for Songbird, but I believe the ability for Songbird to handle .torrent files is a necessity and should be integrated into the core.
Ultimately I think a lot of people here have the wrong idea as to how downloading by BitTorrent should be used in Songbird.
Let us say that for the more Geeky of users here, BitTorrent downloading is a common activity and for the most part they will download everything under the sun, including legally questionable content. These type of users are far more likely to use a feature rich stand alone client like Vuze or uTorrent. But the use case for BitTorrent in Songbird is different.
Songbird's objective is to bring the media of the web to the desktop via the player and for it to be tightly integrated. One key aspect of Songbird is its ability to discover song files on web pages and to give you a clean easy to use interface to download these song with. If we take for example the website Jamendo, this is the perfect example of a website that Songbird is designed for. Jamendo offers the ability download of the songs on their site as individual file downloads or zipped archive downloads, but they also offer BitTorrent downloads. Songbird should be able to identify this .torrent file, read it and download the songs connected to this .torrent file as seamlessly and easily as it downloads individual song files at the moment.
Another reason it needs BitTorrent support is for Podcast support. Songbird lacks the functionality to support Podcast subscription and management effectively at the moment. But I suspect it is something they want to do as it was one of their questions on a recent survey they conducted. So if they are serious about supporting Podcast subscriptions then they need to have BitTorrent support built into the client. There may be the assumption by some users that Podcasts are only delivered as direct downloads from an RSS feed. In actual fact many smaller amateur Podcast producers may be more likely to distribute their Podcast on a BitTorrent RSS feed so they can avoid expensive hosting and distribution costs.
Looking at the possible 'bloat' that add BitTorrent support to the client would bring. In actual fact it should be very small. If you stay focussed on the idea that you are enabling BitTorrent support to allow the likes of downloading song files from Jamendo or Podcasts, and you are not trying to provide a feature rich BitTottorent client, then your BitTorrent integration should be small. Forget about trying to download large movie ripped files from Pirate Bay or some such, stick to your Vuze or uTorrent for that, and ignore those legal headaches. Focus of BitTorrent support or appropriate BitTorrent sites and services like Jamendo, LegalTorrents and Podcasts. In this focus then you simply have to integrate the libTorrent library into your core and you are done. You don't need any extra user controls or dialogues.
What I am talking about here is something that has already been done before without adding any bloat or legal problems to the software. The Juice podcast receiver supports BitTorrent Podcasts and it has been around since the first inception of RSS. The Miro TV platform also supports BitTorrent feeds and downloads and Miro is not that dissimaler to Songbird in its objective. They have both used the libTorrent library and have remained stable and bloat free. Any instability or bloat you find in either of these clients is certainly not from libTorrent.
Remember not all users of Songbird will be Geeks and they just want it to work and work just as iTunes does because at the end of the day this is what it will be compared to. Early adopters of Songbird that are typically geeks want all the bells and whistles but at the end of the day the user experience for everyone needs to be smooth, transparent and easy.
So yes to BitTorrent support, but examine why and let this objective guide you. Leave the major BitTorrent downloading to specialised standalone clients like Vuze and uTorrent.
While I am typing this in Songbird, I have listening to 5 songs and in that time Songbird should be just finished downloading some new songs from Jamendo or my next Podcast via integrated BitTorrent support.
I’m concerned
4 people think
this is one of the best points
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Inappropriate?I'm glad this is going to be added as a plugin instead of as a default Songbird feature.
I’m happy
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