Use Windows Media Player? iTunes? Rhapsody? Think those are the best?

Songbird is a free, open source, multi platform media player and beyond. It is still in it's beta form, but it is very advanced and well made program. It can brows the internet, play music and videos, and download any media on a site. It is based of Mozilla, so it will have a similar feel to songbird.

Good luck, the program is not completely stable!

I don't work for Songbird, the most I've done for them was reporting a bug...

Step 1: Download...

First you have to download songbird. Go to their website, www.songbirdnest.com, and download the link that is provided. If you are a tester like me, you can download a nightly build, which is at http://publicsvn.songbirdnest.com/wiki/Nightly_Builds select you're operating system.

On a mac and pc this is easy to install, just like a normal program, but on linux a guide to install can be found here: http://howtoforge.com/installing_songbird_on_ubuntu_gutsy_gibbon

Although it is for ubuntu and with songbird .3, it should work with all versions of linux and songbird.

Step 2: LAUNCH

On the first launch of Songbird, it will ask to scan your computer for media. Just press ok, and let it work. Don't worry if you have a bunch of songs with no artists, it takes a while to find everything about each song. Also, if you have any wav files on your computer, it can play them but does not show the artist or album or anything.

Step 3: SPEED INTERNET BROWSING ON SONGBIRD UP

Since Songbird is from the same platform as Firefox, both based off Mozilla, you can do many of the same things. If you have not seen my instructable about Firefox you should check it out...

Do this if you have high speed internet, it won't work as well if you are using dial-up.

In the address bar, type in about:config

Once you are there, in the filter bar, type in pipe. You will come out with 3 or 4 results, network.http.pipelining
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests
network.http.proxy.pipelining
network.http.pipelining.ssl
just ignore that last one...

The first and the third should normally be set to false, and the middle one should say 2.

Double click the first and last one to set them to true, and double click the middle one to set it to 20 or 30. Try each out or even different numbers and post your results, because i did not really notice a different between 20 and 30, but then again I have satellite internet.

That 20 means it will make 20 requests at once, now you know why this is only for people with fast internet.

Also, to speed this up you should do this:

Right-click anywhere in the window, select new, then select integer. Name it nglayout.initialpaint.delay and set the value to 0. This is the delay to open a web page.

Step 4: ADDING THEMES

In songbird, themes are referred to as "feathers". To add new ones, because the old one is ugly, click view>all feathers>Get more feathers. You will then be directed to a new link, with lists of themes. To download them click download, and be patient it sometimes takes a little while for Songbird to confirm this. You then may have to restart Songbird. To use that feather, go to all feathers, then select the one you want, full size not mini player.

Step 5: ADDING PLUGINS

Like Firefox, Songbird has plugins. To add them, click tools>addons and there should be a little blue thing that says "get extensions". Click on that, and it will take you to something very much like the feathers page. Just press download to get it.

NOTE: There are some extensions that, last I checked, were not on the extension site. For instance, adblock plus, which you can just search adblock plus for songbird, and you will find a place to install it. Another good plugin is Fasterbird, very much like fasterfox. It may be on the extension site. Here is a list of my favorite tools and feathers:

Adblock Plus: Blocks adds.
Songbird Developer Tools: Let's you make extensions and feathers. Very good extension...
Sidecar: My favorite feather, it is the one in all of my screen shots.
Thats about it, post your favorite extensions and feathers!

Step 6: MORE STUFF

The biggest thing in songbird for me is SkreemR, a music search engine. There should be a bookmark for it in your sidebar. With that, combined with Songbirds ablility to download media from a site, you can download free music. Just do a search, and be patient for a bar on the bottom of the screen to pop up...

Another thing to do is add more search engines. Click manage search engines, and find google, or anything you want.

The movie player does not work too well, as you can see in this picture... it still plays sound though.