Install Songbird Music Player in Ubuntu
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Install songbird in Ubuntu System
First thing is you need to Download songbird form here
Once you download the songbird you can see this file Songbird_0_2_1_linux-i686.tar.gz now you can move this to /opt directory using the following command
sudo mv Songbird_0_2_1_linux-i686.tar.gz /opt
Go to the /opt directory and now you need to extract this file using the following command
tar xzvf Songbird_0_2_1_linux-i686.tar.gz
Now you should see Songbird directory
Now you need to change owner permissions on sonbird directory using the following command if you want to run as perticular user
sudo chown -R ruchi:ruchi Songbird
You can replace the ruchi with the name of the user you want to run.
Now go in to the songbird directory and run songbird using the following command
cd Songbird
Now you are in /opt/Songbird directory run the following command to run songbird
./Songbird
This will open songbird application.
Download Songbird Icon
If you want to create application menu you need to have songbird icon for this you can download from here under buttons section in this example i have downloaded the button_pickup.png and now you need to rename this icon as songbird using the following command
mv button_pickup.png songbird.png
Now we need to place this icon in correct place i.e /usr/share/pixmaps using the following command
sudo cp songbird.png /usr/share/pixmaps
Creating Application Menu For Sonbird
Now we need to create a Application Menu for this Right click on Applications at the top of your desktop and select “Edit Menus“ option you can see this in the following screen
This will open Alacarte Menu Editor Once you open this you should see the following screen
On left side of the Alacarte Menu Editor select "Sound&Audio" and on the right side you need to click on "New Item" button
Once you click on new item button you should see the following screen here you need to select songbird icon, name, Comment and command options
First thing is click on "no icon" tab to upload songbird icon you should see the following screen here you need to select the icon image location as /usr/share/pixmaps/songbird.png and click on ok
Next You need to Name as Songbird and in comment field enter musicplayer or you can leave blank.In command option you need to select /opt/Songbird/Songbird and click on ok
After entering all the details you should see the following screen and click ok
Now you should see the songbird icon under show item and click on close
Now we need to open songbird from application menu for this go to Applications--->Sound&Video--->Songbird
First time you should see the songbird license screen and tick the box next to i agree and click on I Agree
Songbird welcome,optional extensions,privacy screen and click on ok
Songbird Music Player in Action
Songbird Music Player version details
That's it your songbird music player is ready to play for music and it is really worth to install and try to play your music.I am sure you would love it.
Songbird Extensions
If you want to install Songbird Extensions check here
Great! And how do I uninstall Songbird?
you need to remove /opt/Songbird directory and application menu
Great tips, thanks!
Does Songbird handle aggregation (automatic podcast retrieval) well? I’m interested in something a bit less cumbersome than Amarok to use as a “podcatcher”.
Whats the difference between Songbird and Democracy TV?
Note…
Song bird does not play with desktop composition (beryl, compiz/xgl….). It works, but does not wobble.
can songbird access network files and locations
For some reason, I cannot get the program to install; I get a bash error on ./Songbird – cannot execute binary file ; ;
Same here. At first I thought it was a dependency issue, so I verified that I had all of the packages and libraries listed at http://www.songbirdnest.com/support/#2 but still no joy.
Thanks for the how to!!! Worked great!!
hey,
i tried installing i cant go ahead the first step
sudo mv Songbird_0_3_20070217_linux-i686.tar.gz /opt
its not working
to Garoth:
Quote: “Song bird does not play with desktop composition (beryl, compiz/xgl….). It works, but does not wobble.”
That is a beryl/xgl setting that you need to change. Beryl will make whatever type of window you want to wobble, but since Songbird doesn’t run inside a standard window, you need to set Beryl to wobble whatever type of window that is. It can be done as it is running on my machine.
Cheers
For those of you getting the “Cannot Execute Binary File” Download the other Binary. The smaller of the two worked for me while the other gave me the error.
Chris
Hi, I have managed to install Songbird and set it all up, but when I go to run it I need to create a profile. I do this fine but when I try to use the profile I just created i get an error saying that it is already in use and I need to close the other instance of Songbird. However there is no other version running!
Thanks for any help
Thx for this HowTo!
I can ear my music with songbird now!
Awesome! thanks!
I am having a problem with the binary too. First off what do you mean by second binary? Where would i get it and what would i do with it?
Linux noob here working on a Dell Laptop. When I get to tar xzvf Songbird_0.3_linux-i686.tar.gz it says there is no such file or directory as Songbird. As you can tell I am trying with the newest version of Songbird.
@levi
try to download .deb package from here http://www.getdeb.net/app.php?name=songbird install .deb package using the following command
sudo dpkg -i *.deb
if you have any error run the following command
sudo apt-get -f install
Hey man, thanks so much for your help. This is very useful.
for this how to to work, the downloaded file must be in the Home directory.
Great work man!
worked well for me.
thx
Hey,thank you so much. This works great. One thing though and I don’t know if this has been mentioned before in one of the comments — I had to prefix “sudo” for the tar command up there. I think it was because it needed permission to modify the /opt directory.
Thanks boss, I’m linking to you and incorporating a lot of what you said into my blog. drknoxy.blogspot.com
I gave you credit, so I hope that is close enough. It should be posted in a day or two.
Yep, this works. Thanks.
Its not clear to me where I can find the songbird .png icon file for creating a menu item. The sentence explaining this is a but of a run on.
“If you want to create application menu you need to have songbird icon for this you can download from here under buttons section in this example i have downloaded the button_pickup.png and now you need to rename this icon as songbird using the following command”
The link just brings me to the download page and I don’t know what or how to get tho the buttons section.
thanks
Yep the instructions are somewhat error ridden – its curious why admin has not updated the instructions re: chown “you may want to change the username…” is just plain wrong.
the sudo chown should be
sudo chown -R $USER:$USER Songbird
the $USER will be expanded to your username by the bash shell.
Why $USER:$USER ?
you are setting the owner and group.
the file to run is songbird not Songbird
the tar command must be prefixed with sudo
most newbies don’t set the download folder in their browser, so the file downloads by default to the desktop, not the home dir. (newbies: you will want to change that in the browser)
The Desktop is just another directory so you can cd to it.
cd ~/Desktop
will put on your home desktop where you can then sudo mv the file
you don’t need to download the songbird.png it is in /opt/Songbird
so:
cd /opt/Songbird
sudo cp songbird.png /usr/share/pixmaps/.
and voila it will now show in the menu.
So admin please dust off the keyboard and fix the errors.
–Tim
I wrote about this here.
Great post.
Excellent – very helpful. Some differences / updates: I needed to use sudo to run the tar command. Also, the songbird.png icon file was a part of the tarball.
Thanks a lot!