Why Songbird will succeed where MM fails

[Sebastian78]

Do you hate me now? This is me trying my hardest to be constructive here, so try and keep this civilized you MonkeyBoys! I've used MM for a long time now and I like it. But from my previous post you can see I have a few gripes with it. I'll summarize everything in at the bottom.

Statement : MediaMonkey will remain a tool for music/computer nerds with a small market share and Songbird will become the defacto standard for normal users to rival or beat iTunes for Win users.

Why is Songbird becoming a good mp3 player?

• Songbird actually looks like it was made after 2003 (This is why everything Apple sells like crazy)
• It's clean look with small borders/sliders and buttons that let the music collection take up more screen space
• The Mashtape functionallity gives listening to music a whole new experience
• It's genius way of enabling you to easily search Genre/Artist/Album AND easily return back to view all songs
• It's brilliant way of adding add-ons and managing them
• It's integrated web browser which enables you to view videos, pictures or text of artist you are listening to (Hypemachine etc.)
• People making ad-ons/themes for Firefox/Thunderbird will have no problem porting these to Songbird
• It's possibility to integrate a purchase function for several online stores (iTunes/Amazon etc.)
• Perfectly integrated LastFM support
• It's free!
• It's open source!!
  
  What is wrong with Songbird?
• The friggin bird is farting!!!
• It's annoying that when the song changes, it's not possible to automatically switch to this song in the library view
• Doesn't yet minimize to tray
• It uses 146.000+ k while MM3 uses 32.500+ k (this is crazy...)
• Can't see the song played on the taskbar
• It didn't import/read song rating from my library done with MM3 (why is this??)
• For some straaaange reason it play better music selection than MM3 (this is rubbish offcourse, but it feels like it....)
  
  
  Why is MM3 a good player?
• It's been out there for a "long" time so it has few bugs
• Uses far less memory
• Has functionality coming coming out of every orifice!
• The best tag editor in ANY player!
• It's fast
  
  What is wrong with MM3?
• It's ugly...well not excactly, but it looks outdated and it has for a long time (beauty is in the eye of the.....)
• The library doesn't get the space it should because sliders/bars/scrollers and whatnot takes up too much space!
• It's supposed to to everything for everyone
• It's too complicated for new users (it took a long time for me to be comfortable with it)
• Too much functionallity is in your face, when you don't actually need it or use it that often
• The actual player takes up too much space and is difficult to resize (you just need a start/stop button really....and next and previous, everything else is just crowing it)
• It's annoying as H when you start it up and EVERY program running hangs for 5-6 sec
  
  What does MM need?
• GET THE ALBUM ART WINDOW TO AUTOMATICALLY ADJUST WHEN YOU RE SIZE IT!! (lock aspect ratio)
• Tabs!!!!!!!!!! Get rid of that complicated three!!! (and it looks like Win 3.11)
• A way to have too versions in one ie. have a "standard" and "advanced" view function, stripping away functions you don't need for everyday playing and the way it is/looks now for when you are actually working on you music. This could be a tab?
• Better development community for add on's and themes
• Continous development...(I know this is done, but you need to be cutting edge, MM3.5 isn't that new anymore!
• Admit that iTunes and Songbird is doing something right and it's not bad copying or imitating something that works!

So I love MM, but I hate it....it's not sleek enough, it doesn't look great, but it works. So basically, it has everything running for it, but the others are "catching" up when it comes to functionallity. Since this is what MM has going for it, it needs to catch up to the others when it comes to look and feel and then develop new functionality. Make it easier to use, or at least let the user decide with a "standard" and "advanced" view/window, make it look better, get rid of the "old look and feel" buttons etc.....

Mediamonkey is developed by geeks for geeks, normal user won't even grasp 50% of it's functionallity. It's like the planning software Safran. It has amazing functionallity, but it's developed by people why think like geeks, therefor you have to be a geek to figure out how it works.

Why am I writing this if I "hate" MM and don't immediately move over to Songbird? Because I actually like MM and sometimes you have to tell it like it is to makes things better

[rovingcowboy]

one question first then my reply next.

what is

The Mashtape functionallity gives listening to music a whole new experience

if you are talking about the same songbird i just seen then you are mistaken cause the skin i seen on it was not anything different and did not show any brand new look as a matter of fact it looked like they copyied one of morten's skins for mediamonkey.
if you don't like mediamonkeys look.
you can change the skins. you don't like songbirds look you can change the skins.
the only thing that is different is that songbirds skins all looked the same the last time i scanned their skin page.
i can do with out that look,

here there are different skin styles to fit what you want, 15 of them i did.
so i know there are that many different styles.
and i know there are several skins that are copy cats of other players including song bird,

where you think media monkey is made for geeks your wrong. its made for people that like good record keeping
and have tons of geeks using it to make scripts for people to keep a style of record keeping they are use to or like
and here at mediamonkey you can do tons of things with large librarys.
not so in other players. they might get to that point some time from now but they are large bloated programs compaired to mediamonkey, which media monkey is really an ape (a program of enjoyment) of a program but is so slim (small limited resources user) he looks like a monkey.

so those are the reasons mediamonkey will be the one mostly used, except by those on other operating systems that can't get mediamonkey to work on them. but some here will be trying to get him on those also its just taking time since mediamonkey is growing with new features. until monkey gets on all those other systems i can see the need for songbird but once monkey gets on the other operation systems other then windows, then monkey will be the best one out there, of course i don't like songbirds ways in handling the forum or the places that write up articles for songbird. because they don't allow guest posting, but we do here at mediamonkey's forum, so i see that showing mediamonkey as a more friendly software company. not like songbird that locks out users of other programs that want to make commets on their forum about other software. unless you join songbirds forum or the places that write the bias news articles for songbird.

Do you hate me now?

no we are not like that here, you been here long enough you should know that.

[nohitter151]

IMHO you're wrong about the interface. Through skinning (and especially with the new 3.1 release) you could probably make MM look and feel exactly like songbird.

In fact, see the Songbird and iTunes skins.

[Lowlander]

It seems this is mostly a complaint about the lack of skings available for MediaMonkey:

Songbird actually looks like it was made after 2003 (This is why everything Apple sells like crazy)
It's clean look with small borders/sliders and buttons that let the music collection take up more screen space
It's ugly...well not excactly, but it looks outdated and it has for a long time (beauty is in the eye of the.....)
The library doesn't get the space it should because sliders/bars/scrollers and whatnot takes up too much space!
The actual player takes up too much space and is difficult to resize (you just need a start/stop button really....and next and previous, everything else is just crowing it)

It's annoying as H when you start it up and EVERY program running hangs for 5-6 sec

Haven't seen that issue on my machines and I have a slow old machine

It's supposed to to everything for everyone

Nothing wrong with that if it's implemented well. I actually feel that the advanced stuff is nice out of the way.

Too much functionallity is in your face, when you don't actually need it or use it that often
A way to have 2 versions in one ie. have a "standard" and "advanced" view function, stripping away functions you don't need for everyday playing and the way it is/looks now for when you are actually working on you music. This could be a tab?

Customizable toolbars solve part of this issue (although as noted above I feel this isn't the case).

It's too complicated for new users (it took a long time for me to be comfortable with it)

Which is a logical result of

The best tag editor in ANY player!
It's supposed to to everything for everyone

As MediaMonkey has so many features it will take a while to learn the ins-and-outs. An issue you could have is the lack of books, step-by-step guides that can help the user.

Continous development...(I know this is done, but you need to be cutting edge, MM3.5 isn't that new anymore!
Admit that iTunes and Songbird is doing something right and it's not bad copying or imitating something that works!

I really don't see how you can come to that conclusion. MediaMonkey is continually developed and certainly good ideas from other software are taken (mostly wishlist driven by the MediaMonkey community).

It's integrated web browser which enables you to view videos, pictures or text of artist you are listening to (Hypemachine etc.)

MediaMonkey also has a webbrowser (I know it's IE, but still) which scripts use to give all the additional information you need (check out MonkeyRok for example).

It's brilliant way of adding add-ons and managing them
Better development community for add on's and themes

Although MediaMonkey 3 did include some welcome improvements I think this is something that needs to be addressed. Especially as the whole scripting thing can be too much for less computer experienced users. This is not a discredit to the scripters as they form a lively community, but the publishing mechanism could use improvements.

People making ad-ons/themes for Firefox/Thunderbird will have no problem porting these to Songbird

The same goes for WinAmp to MediaMonkey plugins and this might be more desirable as WinAmp plugins are music plugins whereas Firefox plugins mostly have no relationship to music.

[Nebbin]

• It's genius way of enabling you to easily search Genre/Artist/Album AND easily return back to view all songs

I haven't used Songbird too much, so maybe I'm missing something? Is this not exactly the same as MM3's "Track Browser"?

• It's too complicated for new users (it took a long time for me to be comfortable with it)
• Too much functionallity is in your face, when you don't actually need it or use it that often
• The actual player takes up too much space and is difficult to resize (you just need a start/stop button really....and next and previous, everything else is just crowing it)

I agree in part with this... out of the box it may look very complicated to new users. Maybe the standard format needs to have less features / toolbars etc turned on by default. Also, yes - the default skin may have a little too much room put aside at the bottom for the "display" section. I use it on a hi-res, 4:3 aspect desktop display, but I can imagine this could be more troublesome on a widescreen aspect display.

• GET THE ALBUM ART WINDOW TO AUTOMATICALLY ADJUST WHEN YOU RE SIZE IT!! (lock aspect ratio)
• Tabs!!!!!!!!!! Get rid of that complicated three!!! (and it looks like Win 3.11)

I'd LOVE to have the album art window keep it's aspect ration upon window re-sizing, and tabs would be extremely useful for list comparison or without having to always re-run time consuming searches. I don't understand your criticism of the tree though... as even SongBird and iTunes use it too - albeit much less flexible versions. Possibly some minor visual upgrade could be made here (eg. more blank space always helps with readability), and reducing automatic node expansion would make it look a lot less "busy" (complicated).

The addon and skin management does look fantastic in Songbird, and is a stumbling block with MM3.

The skinning side probably does need more work - but I'd hoped this would come from the userbase (like firefox, or the wincustomize group). I don't skin (I'm graphically challenged ), so I'm not sure if the skinning engine makes it hard or inflexible, therefore providing no incentive for these groups to put the effort in...

Songbird is still a long way behind in a number of features which I'd find very difficult to be without (even the simple multi-column sort order is frustratingly missing).

[MM3 monkey]

Great post, Sebastian.

[Shamefully edited]

[nohitter151]

I don't know why people bother replying with guff like "I think you're wrong about the interface". Yes, we know most people here are going to say that. Humans follow along; it needs leaders to come up with new ideas.

Well, mainly because that is what I think. We are all entitled to our own opinions, aren't we? Should I have said something else?

I really don't understand what you're getting into regarding Trixmoto and RovingCowboy, but considering all they do for the MM community (and all for free), I don't see how criticizing what anyone does here is constructive at all.

I think we can all agree that MM has plenty of room for improvement, but calling MediaMonkey "hideously ugly" is quite frankly offensive to me and to anyone else that has contributed in some way to MediaMonkey.

Your post, Sebastian, is like going into a church and criticizing Christianity. You can never win.

There's a name for that on the internet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(Internet)

It seems this thing is being developed for the benefit of about 15 people.

All the more impressive that MM is the second most downloaded Media app then, I guess

... and there is almost no effort to make getting to know it user friendly.

I have to disagree here as well. Just check the bug tracking system.. there are plenty of examples where changes are being made to improve user-friendliness. Don't forget too that theres a fine line between user-friendly and totally useless. Sure, iTunes and Songbird might be extremely user friendly and streamlined - but they're memory hogs and they don't have even close to all the functionality that MM provides.

[MM3 monkey]

I shouldn't have used Christianity, or any religion - I just meant any situation where it's impossible to criticize. I nearly said a different religion; it doesn't make any difference. I was just trying to mention something that was too deeply rooted in our beliefs to be able to be criticized.

Everything you say is very coherent and sensible, nohitter. I was too lazy to express myself properly. I want to make it clear that yours is probably my favorite skin and I am humbled by and very grateful to you and everyone else from whose work I benefit.

Sebastian's criticism is constructive - that's all I'll say in this my edited comment.

[I've removed my ill-judged and too personal comments. They weren't meant as they seemed but are better off deleted. All the best everyone ... forgot my manners. ]

[Lowlander]

This is a forum that is meant to be used for discussion. It would be one-sided if only criticism would be allowed and no feedback from users who disagree with that criticism. That's actually the beauty of this. One users offers his opinion others support or don't support the opinion and the developers get a better inside into what MediaMonkey users would like. As long as it doesn't run into personal attacks it's just the discussion of opinions/ideas which is of benefit to all.

Look at other fora where negative product comments get delete, plenty of example around. Here on the other hand they're freely discussed (sometimes maybe a little heated though).

[Sebastian78]

I tried to be constructive and not just go in with my guns blazing into the sunset. I think there are people here who would die protecting the grrrreatness of MM haha.

Seriously, I hate the way MM looks and the first-user hurdle is too great............the webpage looks a lot cleaner and sleeker then MM3.

Songbird may be far far far behind MM in most aspects, but once I installed 1.0 and started playing with it, all I had in my head was "this is it".

Most of us hate iTunes even MORE (this we can agree on, no?) but it's THE most used mp3 player in the world. So don't use the fact that MM is the most dowloaded mediaplayer as a confirmation of it's greatness.....perhaps they just think the alternatives are worse?

[paulmt]

Songbird may be far far far behind MM in most aspects, but once I installed 1.0 and started playing with it, all I had in my head was "this is it".

Sebastian78, that is exactly how I felt. I have tried Songbird many times before over the years and had only thought of it as an interesting project. I always returned to MM because it handled my music collection better than any other programme could.
I don't like the look of MM3 but have made the best of it by tweaking and adding scripts but it still does look very dated in my opinion.

Songbird looks "up to the minute", it isn't slow as some have said and most of the functionality is now in place although with some noticeable exceptions which I think won't be to far away.

I have spent the last couple of days looking at MM3.1 Beta and don't see to much in the way of UI improvement other than a few new native features.

For me it is about functionality first but form a close second. I still recommend MM to others and for the time being stay with it, but more and more now I switch over to Songbird and feel that little jolt of disappointment when I return to MM3 I really hope that the MM developers can make the crossover from what we have now to something that really meets the modern world front on.

[Lowlander]

I don't know, I really don't see the big difference between MediaMonkey, SongBird and iTunes. They basically look the same (differences seem to be skin design differences).

[Nebbin]

I agree - removing all the visible toolbars, and turning on the track browser gives MM a remarkably similar interface to iTunes and SongBird - the main differences are the expansion of the tree nodes for MM, and Songbird's inbuilt mediaflow and tabbed interface (which is great... IF you want to use your media player as an internet browser...???. I want searches or playlists to be able to use separate tabs, not the internet).

I did try MM3 on a lower resolution laptop screen yesterday, and I have to admit that the lower display area does seem unreasonably large, although I still like the styling of it.

[trixmoto]

I tend to have all of the toolbars switched off and mostly only display the player at the bottom, the tree on the left and the tracklist on the right. I like this view and find it very clean and easy to work with. I'm not saying there's not room for improvement both from the developers in terms of improving the skinning engine, and the community in terms of producing more skins, but the work that has already been done is fantastic in my opinion.

Once the extensions functionality is fully in place with the auto-update and options screens, I really think that will be a massive improvement as this will bring scripts and skins to "non-geek" users in a sleek way.

I tend to only do one thing at once within MM (what can I say, I'm a man!) so tabs is not something I'm looking for myself, but it's a popular request and I do understand why people want it. Should this also appear in a future version then I'm sure this would be popular, but I'd hate for it to happen at the expense of the current speed and performance of the program. Anyone thought that maybe the memory problems these other programs have are at least partially due to the fact that you have multiple tabs running at once?

[Lowlander]

They should implement it like the Google Chrome browser which runs them as separated processes, kinda liked that in Chrome. Of course the same could be done for all background processes.