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Archives For November 30, 1999

Install Nightingale (Songbird Fork) in Ubuntu 15.04 / 14.10

Last updated: November 9, 2014

Nightingale in Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 14.10

Quick tutorial shows you how to install Nightingale, open source fork of Songbird music player for Linux, in Ubuntu 14.10 and Ubuntu 15.04.

Nightingale is a free, open source audio player and web browser based on the Songbird media player source code. As such, Nightingale’s engine is based on the Mozilla XULRunner with libraries such as the GStreamer media framework and libtag providing media tagging and playback support, amongst others. Since official support for Linux was dropped by Songbird in April, 2010, Linux-using members of the Songbird community diverged and created the project. Contrary to Songbird, which is primarily licensed under the GPLv2 but includes artwork that is not freely distributable, Nightingale is free software, licensed under the GPLv2, with portions under the MPL and BSD licenses.

Nightingale in Ubuntu 14.10

Nightingale features:

  • Plugins compatible with Songbird (with one modification to the addon)
  • Multi-platform compatibility with Windows XP, Vista, 7, Linux and Mac OS X v10.5 (x86, x86-64).
  • Ability to play multiple audio formats, such as MP3, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, Apple Lossless and WMA
  • Ability to play Apple FairPlay-encoded audio on Windows and Mac platforms via hooks into QuickTime (authorization takes place in iTunes)
  • Ability to play Windows Media DRM audio on Windows platforms
  • Media files stored on pages viewed in the browser show up as playable files in Nightingale
  • MP3 file download
  • Ability to subscribe to MP3 blogs as playlists
  • Ability to build custom mixes
  • Ability to scan the user’s computer for all audio files and add them to a local library
  • A configurable and collapsible graphical user interface similar to iTunes, and mini-player mode
  • Keyboard shortcuts and media keyboard support
  • Last.fm integration via a plugin, complete with love/hate buttons
  • Microsoft MTP compatible device support
  • Ability to edit and save metadata tags
  • Gapless playback and ReplayGain
  • Watch folders
  • Media import and export (from and to iTunes)

How to Install Nightingale in Ubuntu:

Nightingale Team provides a Launchpad PPA that contains the latest stable binaries for Ubuntu. So far, Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 12.04 and their derivatives are supported.

To add the PPA, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, paste the command below and hit enter to run:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nightingaleteam/nightingale-release

After that, you can install the player via Synaptic Package Manager after checking for updates. Or just run the commands below one by one:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install nightingale

install-nightingale-ppa

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Install Nightingale (Songbird Alternative) in Ubuntu 14.04

Last updated: April 28, 2014

Nightingale ubuntu 14.04

This simple tutorial will show you how to install Nightingale, a good alternative to the discontinued Songbird music player, in Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr.

Nightingale is a completely free, open source audio player and web browser based on the Songbird media player source code.

As such, Nightingale’s engine is based on the Mozilla XULRunner with libraries such as the GStreamer media framework and libtag providing media tagging and playback support, amongst others. Since official support for Linux was dropped by Songbird in April, 2010, Linux-using members of the Songbird community diverged and created the project.

nightingale main window

Nightingale smart playlist

Nightingale smart playlist

Notable features of Nightingale:

  • Plugins compatible with Songbird (with one modification to the addon)
  • Multi-platform compatibility with Windows XP, Vista, 7, Linux and Mac OS X v10.5 (x86, x86-64).
  • Ability to play multiple audio formats, such as MP3, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, Apple Lossless and WMA
  • Ability to play Apple FairPlay-encoded audio on Windows and Mac platforms via hooks into QuickTime (authorization takes place in iTunes)
  • Ability to play Windows Media DRM audio on Windows platforms
  • Media files stored on pages viewed in the browser show up as playable files in Nightingale
  • MP3 file download
  • Ability to subscribe to MP3 blogs as playlists
  • Ability to build custom mixes
  • Ability to scan the user’s computer for all audio files and add them to a local library
  • A configurable and collapsible graphical user interface similar to iTunes, and mini-player mode
  • Keyboard shortcuts and media keyboard support
  • Last.fm integration via a plugin, complete with love/hate buttons
  • Microsoft MTP compatible device support
  • Ability to edit and save metadata tags
  • Gapless playback and ReplayGain
  • Watch folders
  • Media import and export (from and to iTunes)

Install Nightingale in Ubuntu:

The latest build for Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 13.10 Ubuntu 12.10, Ubuntu 12.04 are available in the official PPA repository.

To add the PPA, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open the terminal. When it opens, run the commands below one by one:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nightingaleteam/nightingale-release

sudo apt-get update

After that, install the media player on Ubuntu’s default Unity Desktop:

sudo apt-get install nightingale

For other Desktops (Gnome Shell, Xfce, etc.), run:

sudo apt-get install nightingale-nounity
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How to install Songbird in Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy

Last updated: April 4, 2019

songbird ubuntu 13.10

This quick tutorial is going to show beginners how to install songbird music player in Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy Salamander & Linux Mint 16 Petra.

Songbird for Linux has discontinued, but the v2.0 is still available in GetDeb repository for Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy and its derivatives.

To get started installing this web player, first click the link below to download the DEB:

Download GetDeb package

Then double-click to install the package via pop-up Ubuntu Software Center. It’ll add the get repository to your system.

For Linux Mint 16, there’s an option in ‘Software & Sources -> Additional repositories’ to enable the repository.

After added the repository, use synaptic package manager to install Songbird. Or run below commands in terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T):

sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get install songbird
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Songbird Discontinued, Nightingale is Recommended

Last updated: July 25, 2014

Here I’m going to tell you that the popular Songbird Music Player project has been discontinued. For those who are looking for an alternative, check out Nightingale which is built upon Songbird.

songbird discontinued

Eric Wittman announced on the Songbird blog, “Unfortunately, the company has found ourselves unable to fund further business operations and as of June 28, 2013 all of Songbird’s operations and associated services will be discontinued.”

Songbird is a music player originally released in early 2006 with the stated mission “to incubate Songbird, the first Web player, to catalyze and champion a diverse, open Media Web”. On June 3, 2010, official Linux support for Songbird was dropped.

While thanking the users, investors, partners, developers of Songbird, Eric Wittman openly recommends the open source desktop media player Nightingale as an alternative.

To access the open source for the Songbird Desktop player, you can go here:

http://getsongbird.com/desktop/index.php?download=source (Domain expired)

Nightingale is an open source media player based on Songbird and focused on Linux. It has a beautiful interface with a wide range of supported audio formats, all with multi-platform support!

nightingale in ubuntu

Nightingale is available for downloading at: getnightingale.com/all-versions.php

For Ubuntu 13.04, 12.04, 12.10 and Linux Mint 13, 14, 15 users, run below commands in terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) to install nightingale from PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nightingaleteam/nightingale-release

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install nightingale
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