Version 0.7 of the Songbird music player hatches

Sweet, sweet music

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22 August 2008 17:14 GMT / By Katie Scott

The open source music player, Songbird, has been rehauled and now looks completely different and offers new features.

Version 0.7 is the first Beta of the player, leading up to the launch of Songbird 1.0.

It is built with Gecko and XUL, which, says Ars Technica, "is the underlying rendering engine and user interface description technology that is used in the Firefox web browser" no less.

Version 0.7 is more "polished" than its predecessor with a more space efficient interface and some of the widgets have been cleaned up as well.

The rehaul also includes integration with Last.fm and also a new tool for expressing your love or hate of a tune.

You also now get a smart playlist option, which includes default options including recently played songs and highest rated songs.

But the coolest new tool is Songkick, which lists upcoming music events for specific regions but also narrows down your list based on the artists you've been listening to.