Songbird

Songbird is a media player much like iTunes at the base - user-friendly, playlists on the left all in the same style as iTunes, good sorting capabilities etc.

But after only a moderate amount of use on my part, I'm finding it to have better functions and layout than any other media player I've tried.

What first struck me as a very unique feature was that there is a browser built into Songbird. You can visit any website without any problem, and it even works smooth and fast. While I would never choose it for my main browser because of it being too small as it's inside another program, it is useful for quick look-ups or buying music from websites like Amazon. I think it's a very nice touch.

My second favorite thing about Songbird is perhaps not something that is unusual for all media players but is something that iTunes cannot do - it plays more types of music files such as .flac and .ogg. Having several of these music files that I am forced to use VLC for, being able to have all my music in one place including these files is a huge advantage. Unfortunately, it cannot seem to play .wma files - but then, neither can iTunes, so I don't consider this a large problem.

My only main issue with Songbird that could keep me from switching to it entirely is that the previous, pause/play and forward keys on my keyboard have no functionality at all with my music, compared to these keys working in both iTunes and VLC.

But disregarding that, I like Songbird quite a lot as a program. It has a great and easy to use drag-and-drop playlist creator, it flawlessly imported my iTunes library and seems like a stable program overall. With more use I'll be able to tell whether or not its many positive features outweigh the one major flaw for my workflow, I recommend giving it a try.