Meet Songbird, the Mozilla-made music mashup

Music lovers often don't have everything at their fingertips when it comes to the Web. They have their own libraries, but then there are podcast hubs, social sites like Last.fm, and all those streaming media sites, too. How can you put it all in one place?

Luckily, these days, there always seems to be a Web 2.0-style mashup solution to any such problem. Music fans might be consequently interested in the "test flight" beta of Songbird, a new open-source jukebox-browser-music player built from Mozilla. Like Firefox, it's open to extensions and skins. It's Windows, Mac, and Linux-compatible. And, yes, it claims to integrate everything from podcasts to music blogs to MP3 download Web sites into the same interface as your music library.

Unfortunately, it's going to take a lot more than cute cartoon birds and mashup capabilities for me to consider using a music player that isn't iTunes. But Songbird shows potential. And, with a name like that, it's practically begging to be paired with "social browser" Flock.