Mike Linksvayer points out the release of Songbird 0.2, an early preview of an open source iTunes competitor based on the Mozilla code base. And he predicts that Songbird (or a product like it) will do to Apple what the Web originally did to AOL and other proprietary online services in the 1990s:
Someone mentioned to me today that if the web were like iTunes you could only connect to msn.com, which reminded me of speculation that earlier aggressive intellectual protectionism online could have led to a proprietary cul de sac in online services. In that post I said without explanation that aggressive protectionism is being allowed to kill or stunt online music. People have been noting for awhile that protectionism enabled iTunes’ dominance, or as Techdirt put it “How The Recording Industry’s Obsession On DRM Made Apple So Powerful.”
I’ve downloaded Songbird and played with it a bit, and it is pretty impressive in some ways. However, I don’t think Apple will have any reason to sweat until they implement iPod integration. Songbird has a “devices” menu, so I assume that’s coming. It’s also a little strange that they don’t offer MP3 ripping functionality, given that some of its developers previously worked on WinAmp.
But what they’ve implemented so far is quite impressive. I hope eMusic is talking to them about tighter eMusic/Songbird integration, as this would give eMusic customers a much cleaner way to buy music than the current clunky “download manager.” And of course Songbird would benefit from having a music store as tightly integrated as iTunes is with the iTunes Store.
It appears that some of this functionality is available via extensions, but if they want to put a serious dent in Apple’s market share, they’re going to have to bundle the most important extensions seamlessly with the main product.
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