True. With the possible strategy being “we can’t officially support drm circumvention or patent violation (e.g., mp3), but we’ll leave hooks so our customers can do it themselves.”

Time will tell just how gutsy this is. For example, could Songbird be held responsible under the Grokster precedent for leaving these hooks in? Could facilitating user modifications be equated with Grokster-style inducement if those modifications were found to violate copyrights/patents? Let’s hope not.

True. With the possible strategy being “we can’t officially support drm circumvention or patent violation (e.g., mp3), but we’ll leave hooks so our customers can do it themselves.”

Time will tell just how gutsy this is. For example, could Songbird be held responsible under the Grokster precedent for leaving these hooks in? Could facilitating user modifications be equated with Grokster-style inducement if those modifications were found to violate copyrights/patents? Let’s hope not.

What will differentiate Songbird from iTunes is its ability to integrate with all of the online music services that seem to be coming out of the woodwork lately. eMusic is just one of many of these (e.g., Rhapsody, Loudeye, AudioLunchbox, myspace and other SNOCAP stores, etc.). Songbird will enable these services to much more effectively compete with the iTunes store and to provide a better user experience than they currently provide.

I think the online services integration is one of the most compelling features for non-geeks. As more and more non-geeks use non iTunes store services, Songbird will become more compelling for them.

David, Songbird may compete with the iTunes player directly, but it is the web that competes with the iTunes store. It is the web that I’m betting on. Songbird simply takes advantage of the web as no other media player does. Perhaps that will remain a geek-only thing forever, I am hardly one to judge.

“Skins” and MySpace also send chills down my spine, but apparently the general population likes them.

– Songbird is competing with iTunes, not the iTunes Store. iTunes is free, so there’s no cost savings that come from using it.

– Songbird looks like something put together by a committee. It seems to have too many features jammed in (as opposed to being simple). Yes, I know that both it and iTunes are based on browser code, but you unnecessarily complicate things for non-geeks when you start browsing web pages inside your media player. (Hint: There are still a LOT of people who don’t understand the difference between a browser and a search engine or a web site. I know people who ask me whether they should use Safari or Yahoo for a particular task.)

– Third, anyone who has seen both Songbird and iTunes realizes immediately that the Songbird UI feels like a ripoff of iTunes. There’s nothing to give a user ANY quick reason for believing that there’s an advantage to Songbird.

– Fourth, it’s hard to deliver a consistent user experience when you allow (and encourage) the kind of garish color combinations that Songbird encourages. (The demo I saw raved that you could change the colors just like MySpace, which should send chills down the spine of anyone who cares about design.)

Overall, there appears to be no compelling reason for a normal (non-geek) person to use Songbird or even try it. Normally, when you have a new product, you have to be able to quickly tell someone why he would want to try it: it’s cheaper or offers an easy-to-understand new feature, etc. Songbird merely appears to be a free ripoff of another product that’s already free. Outside of the geek market, I don’t see this going anywhere.