Sick of iTunes Determining Gapless Playback? iTunes Replacement – Songbird

15 Jun

Posted by i.nconspicuo.us as Entertainment, Tech/Web

So ever since iTunes started hassling me with its “determining gapless playback information” garbage, I have been looking for a media player that would replace iTunes, but still support the iPod and other devices, while still giving me complete control over my music collection. That’s how I came across Songbird (www.songbirdnest.com)

Songbird is built on the Mozilla/Firefox platform and allows you to play music from your computer library, or it will let you play web-based streaming files as if they’re on your computer. It allows you to open up webpages within the media player and it displays a list of all media files below that you can click on to play and/or drag them to your computer to save them.

Songbird is very customizable like Firefox, they allow you to feather it (skin), plus there are numerous extensions and plugins that can be applied.

“And oy, there it is.” – listen for that line if you watch the screencast.

8 Responses

iTunes - Determining Gapless Playback Information | i.nconspicuo.us

June 15th, 2007 at 4:41 pm
1

[...] – Processing Album ArtworkSick of iTunes Determining Gapless Playback? iTunes Replacement – SongbirdApple iTunes Windows Vista Compatability Problems/Issues – Repair Tool – Trying to Steal Thunder [...]
Brian Kincaid

June 19th, 2007 at 11:42 pm
2

One word: Proprietary (ipod database).

Crazy case of deja vu right now.
Seleste

June 23rd, 2007 at 1:58 am
3

Very nice!

I was fed up with iTunes as the only Intel OS X player to the point I was considering dabbling in Cocoa and ObjC to throw together something of my own. Hopefully I’ll be spared the trouble. :3
cath

September 27th, 2007 at 11:55 am
4

i have downloaded songbrid and all music in a flash, but how do i synch with my ipod?
i.nconspicuo.us

September 27th, 2007 at 12:16 pm
5

You’ll have to get the iPod plugin for Songbird:
http://addons.songbirdnest.com/extensions/detail/12

Let us know how it works for you!
Sam

November 8th, 2008 at 5:32 am
6

I am having all the same frustrating problems with itunes and have decided to give up. I have a dell with my music on a network drive. I saw that in another place you have recommended mediamonkey. Which is better?
Slevin

September 16th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
7

I found that WinAMP works just fine with adding and removing music from your iPod. It even transcodes most video, but is not very versatile on where you can put it on your iPod . I will have to give songbird a try. I am not having any issues so far with iTunes… But I always try alternatives
dennis lewis

September 23rd, 2009 at 9:42 pm
8

My library has about 40,000 songs on my external hard drive I down loaded the new version of iTunes 9 …… iTunes started hassling me with its “determining gapless playback …I seems to want to search my whole music library if I let I run it freezes my iTunes and my hard drive… How can I get rid of it …….pressing x don’t help it start right back up again help!!!!!!!!!!