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05 January 2010, 10:50

Report: Songbird to be bundled with Philips MP3 players - Update

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According to a report on Techcrunch, Philips is to bundle the open source media player Songbird with its portable MP3 players. Reportedly the deal will be be officially announced at CES in Las Vegas this week. A Philips-branded version of Songbird will be used with native support for the Philip's range of GoGear music players, including the ability to recognise specific models of GoGear players. The Songbird software will also be available on some of the GoGear devices so that users can plug the player in and have Songbird automatically installed to their PCs.

One facility specific to the Philips version of Songbird will be support for installing firmware updates onto the GoGear players. Initially, the Philips-branded version of Songbird will only support Windows. It is reported that there are plans for Mac support, but no mention of Linux support. The regular unbranded releases of Songbird should work with the GoGear players, but will not support firmware updating.

The most recent release of the GPLv2 licensed Songbird is version 1.4.2, released in December 2009, which included CD ripping support, a new look and feel and, probably as a prelude to the Philips deal, Windows only support for MSC (Mass Storage Class) devices.

Update- The deal was officially confirmed by Songbird on Friday the 8th, with an apology from the company for not being able to talk openly and sooner about the new relationship. The developers say though that "There's no resting on this week's milestone achievement, we're working fast and furiously on the next release, which will hit early this year".

(djwm)

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