In our coverage of the world of high resolution audio, we took a look at music player and discovery engine, Songbird. The player supported nearly every audio file format and was a champion of high quality audio delivery. Unfortunately, it appears Songbird has met its end.
During an interview with Digital Trends, Songbird CEO Eric Wittman was forthcoming about Songbird’s support for high resolution audio and how it hoped to offer support for the FLAC file format on mobile devices sometime this spring. During our conversation, Wittman also discussed the crowded world of streaming audio services and how new players such as Daisy, Apple’s iRadio, Google, and Twitter, were going to affect the market.
Songbird informed us this afternoon that it would be ceasing business operations on June 29, 2013. A plan to sell the company fell through at the last moment and this is the result. In a statement, Wittman said, “As our friend Kenny Rogers would say, you gotta know when to hold ’em and fold ’em.”
Wittman goes on to thank the millions of users who supported Songbird since its launch in 2007, then announces its end: “Unfortunately, the company has found ourselves unable to fund further business operations and as of June 29, 2013 all of Songbird’s operations and associated services will be discontinued.”
In Songbird’s absence, Wittman recommends an alternative open source desktop media player, Nightingale, which is built upon Songbird.
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