We've been keeping a close eye on Songbird since its debut, and the open source Mozilla-based music player has proved somewhat of an enigma. Everyone agrees that the concept behind Songbird is really awesome, but so far it has seemed kind of like a rough sketch of a music player. But with Songbird 0.2, which was released on Wednesday, I'm happy to report that Songbird is actually starting to look like a beta, or at least late alpha, of a music player. Now, let's not get ahead of ourselves--Songbird still isn't ready for prime time. For one thing, it's an incredible memory hog, it still has plenty of bug, and some features are missing. But it is usable--if you have lots of memory to spare, that is--and some of that great vision that thrilled us when we first heard about Songbird is starting to shine through. The way Songbird integrates the web into your music experience is phenomenal. I just love surfing to a music blog and seeing all of the MP3s it offers pop up in the bottom pane with the option to listen, download, add to my library, or subscribe to its feed. I was also impressed with how fast it imported my tracks and playlists from iTunes, though our own Amber Rhea had some trouble with this feature in a pre-release version a few weeks back. It also has a Watched Folders feature that makes it automagically import new media as it appears in particular folders, which if I'm not mistaken is a much-beloved feature of Windows Media Player. I'm particularly excited to see that Songbird is now actively supporting extensions a la Firefox add-ons and already has a few under its belt (wing?), including Audioscrobbler (Last.fm), Wikipedia, and Shoutcast extensions.

I almost certainly won't be using Songbird 0.2 as my full-time music player right now, but while my interest in Songbird was waning before this release, it has just made a full recovery and I have a feeling that when Songbird 1.0 makes its appearance, it just might end up staying on my desktop for a good long while. If you want to try it out for yourself, hit Songbird's download page where you can get it for Windows, Mac, or Linux, or check out the release notes. If you just want to take a closer look, take a peek after the jump for a pretty screencast (courtesy of the Songbird web site) and some screenshots of Songbird in action.