Open source media player Songbird 1.4.2 released

Six months after the last stable release – version 1.2 (version 3 never got out of beta) the Songbird developers have announced the availability of version 1.4.2 of their popular open source media player. According to a post on the Songbird Blog, the 1.4.2 release, which appeared one day after Songbird 1.4.1, addresses a "UI glitch" bug in the release that "made mashTape and LyricMaster hard to use". In addition to several bug fixes, the latest stable release of the cross-patform player focuses on improving device and format/codec support.

Songbird 1.4.2 features support for Mass Storage Class (MSC) devices, such as the Nokia N900 or HTC Hero, allowing users to sync tracks and playlists on compatible devices to their phones and other players that support MSC mode. Like Apple's iTunes player and Windows Media Player, Songbird can now also rip CDs and automatically look up metadata using Gracenote, or another third party service, via an add-on. CDs can be ripped to FLAC/OGG or WMA on Windows systems. A new 'Feather' called "Purple Rain", the developers refer to themes as 'Feathers', has also been added.

The developers ask users to provide feedback on the release and report any bugs that they find. Reportedly, the next release will feature Windows 7 support, more UI improvements and introduce video management and playback.

More details about the release, including a list of known issues, can be found in the release notes and the original release announcement. Songibrd 1.4.2 is available to download for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Songbird is released under version 2 of the GNU General Public License (GPLv2).

(crve)