Songbird will be releasing a Philips-branded version of its software with a few key differences, most important of which will be the application’s native support for each GoGear device. While Songbird offers support for some portable music devices (they recently upgraded their support last week), the experience for users isn’t always as seamless as they typically get from the ubiquitous iPod/iTunes combo. The Philips-branded version of Songbird will be custom tailored for the GoGear devices, which means it will recognize exactly which device you plug in and which features that device supports (the same way iTunes knows if you plug in a Nano vs an iPhone). The application can be used for song purchases and playlist management, as well as firmware updates.

The Songbird software will come as a self-extracting install with some devices (you plug the device into your computer and it will install onto your Windows machine automatically). For other products it will ship on a disk, or users will be directed to download the software from a website. The Philips-branded software is only available on Windows for now, but Macintosh support is in the works. The Philips devices should still be usable using the standard Songbird application on the Mac, but you won’t be able to install firmware updates.

This is a big win for Songbird. The company had a very rough 2009, which included the departure of the company’s founding CEO Rob Lord and a struggle to raise new funding to remain afloat (though it eventually did complete a round at a significantly lowered valuation). Songbird’s core product, which offers song management alongside a deeper integration with web services than iTunes does, remains the same, but it’s now targeting a broader audience than it was before.

The partnership with Philips is Songbird’s first major step in this area. And we’ll likely see more deals like this as Songbird tries to to appeal to electronics manufacturers as a content manager that isn’t owned by Apple.

Songbird isn’t alone in this space though — another impressive product looking to offer an alternative to iTunes is doubleTwist.

To be clear, Songbird has actually offered some MSC support before now, but CEO Jerrell Jimerson says that oftentimes devices don’t work as well as they should using generic support. Songbird has been working with manufacturers to try to make the syncing process as seamless as possible. They’ve inked a deal with Nokia, and are also engaged in less formal partnerships with a number of other manufacturers.

It’s been a rough year for Songbird. As we reported back in September, Songbird’s founding CEO Rob Lord left the company after burning through $8 million from Sequoia Capital and Atlas Ventures. The company brought on board Jimerson earlier this year to replace him, who managed to help raise a new round of funding (though it washed out prior investors and Sequoia didn’t participate). But there’s an opportunity for Songbird to serve as a music platform for Apple’s competitors, and it looks like that’s exactly what they’re doing.

Jimerson says that Songbird’s core functionality, which serves as a media player for both content saved locally to your computer and music that’s streamed from the web, remains fully intact. But the company is also looking to make the product more appealing to a broader userbase. And that includes forming more partnerships.

We’ve previously heard that Songbird has a deal with Phillips to install the software in 5 million music players, which would be a big win for the company. Jimerson wouldn’t comment on that, but it seems like it would fit with Songbird’s new strategy.

Songbird’s increasing support for media sync makes it a more direct competitor to DoubleTwist, another powerful iTunes alternative that supports many devices and that also has a brilliant marketing team.

The company has struggled through, facing what all startups face when they run out of money – shut down or raise new money at unfavorable terms if they can get it. New CEO Jerrell Jimerson has managed to scrape together a new round of financing, we’ve confirmed. Atlas Ventures is participating, but Sequoia Capital has backed out. The new round also recapitalizes the company – it will wash out old investors and drop the valuation substantially. That means Lord, who remains a board member, will lose most of his equity in the company.

Songbird may have new legs, though. Another source tells us the company has a deal with Phillips to have Songbird included in 5 million Phillips music players. There’s a chance for Songbird to become a platform for Apple competitors to work from, much like Android provides Apple competitors an easy way to compete in the phone market.

Will it work? Investors seem to be interested enough to put more money behind the effort. And the company now, at least, has a game plan.

Songbird, the open-source, media focused web browser, has launched its 1.0 milestone release to the public. The browser, which we’ve covered extensively since it was first announced back in 2005, offers a number of features that make it an appealing alternative to music players like iTunes, including a feature called mashTape will automatically cull the internet for relevant content for each song you play, using sources like YouTube and Flickr. The app also includes integrated support for Last.fm, concert ticket purchases, and add-ons to further enhance the browser.

In practice the browser works well (not much of the interface seems to have changed since the .7 release that I covered in August). Since .7, most of the changes have been under the hood, enhancing music playback and performance along with a few minor tweaks (for example, users can now use keyboard shortcuts).

The experience may seem odd for first time users, as it presents a strange fusion of iTunes with Firefox (the two browsers share the same Mozilla engine). But after a few minutes the foreignness wears off and the benefits become clear, though I suspect that some people will never get over the hybrid nature of the feature-set.

The app does have some acknowledged shortcomings – you can’t rip albums using Songbird, and there’s no way to sync an iPhone to the app. These pitfalls would probably be enough to put off most casual users, but Songbird appeals to a more hardcore listening demographic that is more willing to embrace emerging software (90% of the app’s users are on Firefox, and 80% have music libraries over 10 gigs in size).

Later this evening Songbird, the open source web-integrated media player, will the unveil the .7 beta release of its software that introduces scrobbling to Last.fm, speedier track importing, and a more polished interface among a number of other features. The resulting application is a marked improvement over the last release we covered, but still has a few rough edges that continue to make it ideal for early adopters in the music scene rather than the general consumer.

Songbird is looking to provide users an alternative to the closed, DRM-laden music stores offered by Apple and a number of other companies. The software behaves like a mix between iTunes (it now features nearly identical icons) and Mozilla’s Firefox (it uses the same engine as the web browser). The software also supports plugins for portable devices like the iPod, and even slightly modified Firefox extensions. The result may be a bit confusing at first, but the interface is familiar enough that it only takes a few moments to adjust to combination.

Songbird allows web developers to integrate a very professional music store on their sites by tapping into the application’s API. After browsing to a supported site, Songbird will display a list of available songs at the bottom of the application in a manner that is strongly reminiscent of iTunes. While we’ve seen other interfaces that look equally professional, replicating the iTunes UI which users are already familiar with is likely to help boost sales.

Mixwit makes it easy to create embeddable mixtapes (otherwise known as custom playlists). We touched upon the company a couple weeks ago as part of our Y Combinator demo day roundup but never gave it our full treatment.

A similarly-named service called Mixaloo serves up label-sanctioned tracks and requires users to buy them to hear more than 30-second previews. Mixwit differs by drawing its songs from Seeqpod, an MP3 search engine that indexes full-length tracks from mainstream artists but charges nothing for them. Granted, not all of the audio files found by Seeqpod have decent quality (many simply don’t work at all) but that’s the price of free.

Both companies facilitate the spread of mixtapes across the net, but the costlessness of Mixwit really gives it an edge (despite Mixaloo’s promise to split sales revenues with mix creators). Mixwit also provides more extensive tools for customizing the look and feel of the mixtapes themselves, lending itself to greater ranges of self-expression. Users can pick from a collection of nice-looking skins, upload their own images, and tweak several other settings such as shadow and gloss effects.

So the creation and sharing of mixtapes with Mixwit is easy and effective. But what I find particularly interesting are Mixwit’s plans to expand its offering into a more complete online media solution. The founders like to describe their company as a cross between Slide and iTunes because they plan to release an in-browser media player that will leverage the APIs of various web services to collect content found across the web. In addition to Seeqpod, they plan to include support for Flickr, YouTube, and Skreemr as well. The idea is that you’ll be able mash up different types of media (music, photos, videos, etc), bookmark them, compile them into playlists, and share with friends via widgets and the player itself.

This product has yet to make it off the drawing board (the second screenshot above is just a mockup). But the idea is promising and could be a big hit with social network junkies. It would also be a browser-based cousin of Songbird, a Mozilla-based desktop app that also strives to be the web’s media player.

Update: We’ve removed the widget once embedded here for fear of driving up someone’s hosting bill. Go here to see it.

What do you get when you cross iTunes with a web browser? You get Songbird, an application built on top of Mozilla Firefox’s core technology that serves as a platform for media websites that want to integrate tightly with a desktop media player.

We last wrote about Songbird over a year and a half ago when version 0.1 was released. Tonight, Songbird releases version 0.3, which the company considers its equivalent to Firefox 1.0.

Perhaps the best way to explain Songbird is to compare it what Apple has done with iTunes. While iTunes is a traditional desktop application that must be downloaded and installed, the iTunes Store within iTunes is actually a website that meshes so seamlessly (and exclusively) with iTunes that you don’t really realize that you are browsing a website when looking for music to buy. Click to purchase some music and the iTunes Store website communicates with the iTunes desktop client to trigger certain functionality, like a user prompt and then a file download. Apple is able to contain the entire shopping experience within its media player, making the consumption of new music very convenient.

Now suppose you’re a media company that wants to set up shop within users’ media players the way Apple has set up shop within iTunes. You could try to hack together a plugin for iTunes, but you won’t get the same results and you’ll be subject to the whims of proprietary software. With Songbird, you have access not only to a fully-equipped desktop media player but also a set of open APIs with which you can easily mesh your existing website with Songbird (see developer center). For the most part, developers just need to program their websites to take advantage of a Songbird DOM object in JavaScript. You can also build themes and plugins for Songbird as you might for Firefox, since the application’s architecture is fundamentally the same.

Songbird turned to Mozilla technology for its product because it wanted operating system agnosticism. Also, other possible web-to-desktop platforms, like AIR, were not created with an open source philosophy nor designed well enough for large-scale projects. Songbird envisions its platform being used not only for track download services, but for services based around any type of media such as video.

The Hype Machine, Insound, and SkreemR have programmed their websites for Songbird and are packaged with the latest release. A screenshot of the player I saw on their website also suggests that an iLike integration is in the works.

Songbird closed $8 million in funding from Sequoia Capital and Atlas Venture in December 2006. The software has been downloaded around one million times so far. And the company’s developers previously worked on Winamp and the Yahoo Music Engine.

Exclusive screen shots are below.

Since songbird is a web browser in addition to a media player, user will be able to browse web sites. If audio files are embedded in the site, they will be displayed separately and can be played, downloaded, included in playlists, etc.

Songbird plays the Web. Songbird may view Web pages as playlists of MP3s. Soon, Web page authors may publish playlists and transfer MP3s into Songbird in support of digital music stores like eMusic, music subscription services like Yahoo! Music Unlimited, virtual jamming services like Ninjam, playlist sharing services like WebJay and more

Because Songbird is built on the Mozilla platform it will be fully extensible by third parties with minimal developer skills – XML, CSS and Javascript. Extensions will work across all platforms – windows, mac and linux. Songbird is also open source and developers may modify the source code.

Initially supported formats include MP3, AAC, WMA, OGG, FLAC and others.

I am alpha testing Songbird now and am very impressed, even though they say it is only 30% done (as of November 18). They have asked me not to blog about non public information yet, and I won’t. One thing to clear up is that Songbird is not an online application – it is (among other things) a next generation media player. And it is absolutely turning my head around in the way I think about certain things.

They’ll be pushing a preview release in December.

Whatever it is (client? Web app?), it looks like a music/podcast player of some sort and it’s certainly visually appealing. More (perhaps) on this later. You can sign up for Songbird announcements here.