Duck & Cover :: Indie rock music writing from Arcade Fire to the Zygotic Minci

They're calling it "the Firefox of media players." Which is catchy. A lot catchier than "what iTunes could have been were it not linked to the evil that is the iTunes Music Store." Although both descriptions have their particular charms. But not as charming as the Songbird mascot, which appears to be a flatulent sparrow. If you want a good description of the features (built-in Last.fm scrobbling, custom add-ons, concert ticket link) then I suggest reading the article on Webmonkey . But if you were the kid who played the game before reading the instructions, then here's the link to the download on the Songbird site . You'll notice that the player is still in beta. This is just geek talk for "we're not done yet." Personally, I enjoy the graphic of the Songbird player (on both Webmonkey and the Songbird website). It displays a library filled with the likes of Fugazi, Fruit Bats, and Gary Numan. What does that mean? It means the developers list...

Chilirec is a new website that records songs off internet radio stations and records them for you so that you can listen to them again later. The beauty of it, though, is that the files aren't stored on your hard disk; they're stored on a virtual server so as not to chew up those precious few gigs of space you have left. Plus, since they're based in Sweden, they can hold on to the MP3s for you and not run the risk of being pestered by trolls from the RIAA. But this isn't just another Songza or Seeqpod ; if you want to listen to a track outside of Chilirec, you can click on it to download it to your desktop. Rock. It's not all utopian goodness, though. You're not able to choose your own radio station to record. While I can't find KEXP, I can find a couple of stations listed as "indie rock", so I'm starting there. What's more is that you can't listen to the station before you begin recording--you have to pick a station, record, and the...