Prepare to be blown away. Everyone knows that the one-two punch of iTunes and (a distant second) Windows Media Player has dominated the desktop media player market for years now.

And since iTunes added podcast subscription and a directory in June 2005 it has been the defacto app for finding and subscribing to podcasts. That could change with Songbird.

Songbird is a cross-platform desktop based media player and manager. Songbird creates playlists on your desktop but it also acts as a browser, allowing you to surf to your favorite media sites on the web. Once you’re on a media rich site (like a podcast home page or a directory) Songbird will automatically create playlists of the media in the podcast feed on the site. You can then stream the media right in the Songbird browser.

This type of functionality is a huge step forward for desktop based media players. I particularly like the integration with the open web and the seamless experience with respect to podcast enabled rss feeds.

So what makes this better than iTunes or Windows Media Player? My biggest beef with iTunes is the fact that the system is closed. You only gets what’s in Apple’s box on a server somewhere. With Songbird you can surf and play the entire web. There’s plenty of support for iTunes included with Songbird though. So you can still subscribe and enjoy paid content through iTunes. But you can play and manage everything with Songbird.

Windows Media Player doesn’t even come close to SongBird. Windows Media files are supported so fans of WMA or WMV are not left out in the cold.

Like any good open source app Songbird has a good variety of add-ons that extend capabilities and meet the most important needs that are not included in the core player.

You might be able to tell that I’m very excited about this app. I’m in the honeymoon period right now so if I find any major issues later I’ll be sure to report them. If Songbird stays on track though I think it can be one of those game changing apps that helps accelerate the growth of podcasting and rich media on the web.

[tags]Social Media, Songbird, Media Player, iTunes, Windows Media Player, Open Source[/tags]