ExpanDrive

http://www.songbirdnest.com/

I’ve never really liked iTunes. I’ve dealt with it since I switched completely to Mac OS (right about when I joined the Magnetk team), but it’s been tough. My specific problem with iTunes is its poor handling of streaming playlists. I like the Winamp interface, where the playlist is king, and the library is a master of its own domain, but they can communicate pretty easily through drag’n'drop. Not so with iTunes, where the library takes precedence over playlists. There’s no clean way to do what I liked to do with Winamp, which is highlight five songs from a random folder and have them open in a new Winamp playlist to play. Opening songs with iTunes sticks them in the library, where there is no way to reorder them on the fly. M3U playlists are pain to use as well. I have a bunch of those, and the only way I’ve found to work with them is to open iTunes, create a new playlist, drag in the m3u file, then play the first few seconds of each song. Why that last part? iTunes doesn’t query the metadata of the tracks until they play, so I can’t even tell what songs they are. Ugh.

So I’ve been watching Songbird for awhile, mostly because they promised a stable Mac client that is one-third Winamp, one-third iTunes (mostly the music store third), and one-third Mozilla browser. They’ve delivered. It’s not quite as fully-featured as Winamp (yet; Winamp is version 5, after all). But it’s completely open source and uses XUL, the Mozilla “User Interface Language”. Anyone who’s ever written a Firefox extension can try their hand at extending Songbird. There are a bunch of add-ons already available. The first one I grabbed is called “now playing”, and it replicates the Winamp-style playlist.

Some of you may be wondering why there’s a built in web browser. The answer is that it’s not some silly webTV-type tack-on. It’s wholly integral to the way Songbird links to the world. To this end, it adds some wonderful features to the standard Mozilla-style browser. My favorite is the way it scans every page for media content and automatically creates a playlist for you. If you frequent music blogs that post mp3s, this is an awesome feature. The library is very similar to Winamp’s, and there’s even a nice “downloads” tab.

Songbird is everything I’ve wanted in a media player, and it’s open source to boot. I’m very excited to write some extensions. I’ll post them here when I do.

Take some time to check out Aesop Rock, he’s pretty awesome. The new CD, None Shall Pass, dropped on Wednesday and it might very well rock your world. Even cranky pitchfork seems to like it.

You can find a free mp3 of the title track here, it’s hot. I think Magnetk will be taking a company trip to the Middle East to see the show in a few weeks.

OK Computer is now 10 years old. In honor of that Stereogum has put together a great covers album by some fairly notable folks:

“To celebrate the 10th anniversary of Radiohead’s OK Computer we’ve asked some of our favorite musicians to participate in a song-by-song covers compilation. Indicative of the album’s continued importance, each invitee jumped at the chance; the results are personal, intense, tellingly various. Slow down, dig in, enjoy. But note: we did this all legal and everything, so we can’t keep these up forever…get ‘em before someone else does. Ambition makes you look pretty.”

http://www.stereogum.com/okx/

Check out The Black Keys - they rock hard.

Dan is a master of fuzzed out guitar and soul-ridden vocals. Patrick has a minimal drum kit and a lot of hair.

The Big Come Up is easily one of my very favorite CD’s. They put together a great do-it-yourself superfuzzed guitar sound that has songs that are really worth listening to. Best tracks: Heavy Soul, I’ll Be Your Man, Busted, Run Me Down. Great music to work too and has more than enough oompf to go jogging with. See them live - they rock. Check out their MySpace page for some good content. Girl is On my Mind [live] is a good starting place there.

The Gulag Orkestar by Beirut is one of the most fantastic albums I’ve heard in a long time. It might take a bit of time to really get into the operatic indie sound they’re putting together, but if you [like many] enjoy Sufjan Stevens, chances are good you can find a place for these guys. The band is largely driven by a 19 year old highschool dropout that spent a couple years traveling eastern europe. The sound is totally outside the box. No guitars [other than a ukeleilei here and there] and a great horns & percussions section. Like many reviews say — this CD sounds like what you imagine you might hear at a gypsy carnival somewhere in the Balkans. It is fantastic.