Labs

Ask a bunch of people about their most commonly used applications, and you'll probably find a music player up near the top of the list along with a web browser. With music production and distribution increasingly reliant on the Internet community, Songbird's cunning plan of combining a browser and a digital

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jukebox makes perfect sense.

On launching Songbird, you're confronted with what resembles the result of a night of heated passion between Firefox and Apple iTunes. As well as browsing the web in a typically straightforward manner, Songbird enables you to import your iTunes library. In a piece of one-upmanship over Apple's application, Songbird also provides system-wide shortcuts and the ability to play any MP3 files found on any web page, which are automatically added to a handy on-the-fly playlist. Any track can also be added to sidebar-based playlists, mingling with your local files, and subscriptions enable you to add new tracks to a collection automatically.

Songbird's main failing is that it's very rough around the edges-iTunes remains a better music player, and Firefox is a better browser. Still, Songbird's only in beta at the moment, and has the potential to go far.