Songbird is a highly customizable alternative to traditional desktop media players.  This open source application is powered by Mozilla, and launched today with "dozens of integrated services, hundreds of add-ons, and a growing developer platform."

Although I was just fine using iTunes, I have to admit that Songbird has some interesting features that add a lot more to the functionality of a desktop media player.  The new mashTape service allows you to discover Flickr photos, YouTube videos, last.fm biographies, Google news, and more for the artist currently playing.  It also provides SHOUTcast radio for streaming music, and event listings powered by Songkick  that shows you when your bands are on tour while you listen to them.

The initial layout is very similar to iTunes (at least to me), but with all of the customizable add-ons I could see how this application could become a very personal extension of ones self, much like my Firefox browser.

Although this app certainly has potential, I don't think iTunes has anything to worry about just yet.  Millions of us have iPods/iPhones and use iTunes to update them and move files around, not to mention that there's really not much wrong with iTunes.  It would take a lot of really useful add-ons to get me to completely switch over.  Hopefully the Songbird community is up to the challenge.