Whenever Firefox releases a new update/version, some of the extensions are bound to break. Similarly, in Songbird, when I upgraded to the latest 0.7 version, some of my favorite extensions are no longer working. While we are waiting for the developers to fix them up, here are some of the useful extensions that still work in Songbird 0.7

If you have not try out Songbird, here is a quick and easy way to install Songbird on your Ubuntu machine.

1) iPod device support

Not everyone will find this useful, but if you are an iPod owner, this is the extension that you don’t want to miss. Plug in your iPod and have Songbird play all the songs in your iPod.

2) Media Flow

Ever since Apple released Cover flow technology in the Mac Leopard, this new style of flipping the cover to find the file you want has become very popular in many applications. In Songbird, the Media Flow add-on replicate the cover flipping technology and allows you to browse your music collection by their album art.

3) Lyrics master

Whenever a track is played, the Lyric Master will grab the lyrics from the track meta-data and display it on the sidebar. In the event that the track does not have any lyrics, Lyrcs Master will use the track meta-data to search and retrieve the lyrics from the Web and display it on the sidebar. Whenever a new lyrics is found, you can choose to save it to the database so that next time when the same track is being played, the lyrics will show automatically.

4) MashTape

What mashTape does is to gather information from different sources and mash it up for your viewing. Residing on the bottom pane, mashTape uses Last.fm to retrieves the artist bio, upcoming concert, similar artists and tags applied to the current song, Lyrics Wiki to retrieve the lyrics, Flickr to retrieve the photo of the artist and YouTube to retrieve all videos of the artist. A very good way to get maximum information about the track and artist with minimal effort.

5) Last.fm

This addon publishes your playback history to last.fm so that it can track your playing habit and recommend songs that are of your liking.

What’s your favorite Songbird extensions?

Songbird is an open source media player that allows you to play music, watch video and surf the Web at the same time. Built with codes from Firefox and VLC, Songbird inherits the features of the two most powerful open source applications, thus making it one of the best desktop media player around

The most noticeable advantage of Songbird over other desktop media player is that it supports almost all the media formats and devices (including iPod) and it is fully customizable. With the same add-ons capability as Firefox, you can install extensions in Songbird to improve its functionality and change the themes/skins to your liking. Some of the useful extensions include Media Flow, iPod Device Support, Last.fm and CoverFetcher.

Install Songbird on Ubuntu

Before getdeb.net comes out with the latest version of Songbird deb file, the following is so far the easiest way to get Songbird running on Ubuntu.

1) Go to http://www.getsongbird.com and download Songbird to your home folder.

2) Using the Archive Manager, extract the Songbird folder to your home folder.

3) Open the Songbird folder and double click on the songbird file to execute the application.

That’s it.

If you want to create a shortcut on your Application menu, right-click on the Applications menu and select ‘Edit Menus‘

On the left pane, select Sound & Video.

On the right pane, click on the ‘New Item‘.

Fill in the field with as the same as the images below (remember to change the damien to your own username)

Click on the icon button and navigate to the path /home/yourusername/Songbird/chrome/icons/default. You should see the icon of Songbird. Select it and press OK twice.

You should now see the Songbird entry on your Application -> Sound & Video -> Songbird.

A much easier method of installing Songbird

If you find that the above method is not simple enough and you don’t mind using an older version of Songbird, you can:

Go to http://www.getdeb.net/search.php?keywords=songbird

Download Songbird 0.6.1 to your home folder.

Double click the downloaded .deb file to install the Songbird.

Once installed, you can open Songbird via Applications->Sound & Video -> Songbird.

Some Screenshots

Songbird playlist view

Songbird with MediaFlow extension

installing Songbird extension

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