Amarok and Songird are considered two best audio players in Linux and here is a short comparison between the two.

Amarok

This is a music player provided with KDE and is a one of the most popular and powerful media players available for Linux and has complete integrity with other applications of KDE.

Songbird

This is a comparatively new player with its first version being released recently.The developers call it the firefox of media players.Lets find out if it lives up to its name.

Starting with some of the basics features :

1.Looks and interface

Amarok has got plain interface of a media player and has a little options for customization of the looks but the the themes for the context window make a lot of difference.

Songbird on he other hand has got superb looks and at the first sight may be confused with iTunes.The themes make it look more fresh and lively.The switching between different themes without even giving a pause to the music is just so great feature.

Songbird wins here.

Screen shots:

amarok

songbird

2.Sound quality

Amarok runs on both Gstreamer and Xine.Xine is much better than gstreamer .I personally felt the quality of sound generated by songbird was better than amarok.No clear winner this time.

3.Scripts available

Amarok has been in market for long and has a lot of fan following so it has got more number of scripts available(click here for a list of cool scripts).Whereas the scripts of songbird are less in number but are more efficient in have better quality specially the themes.Amarok gets an edge here.

4.Integration with applications

Amarok being a product of KDE has the capability of integrating well with all other desktop applications.Also the way its scripts communicate with applications like IM and twitter are great.

Songbird has a long way to go before it comes even near to amarok in this area.

5.Browser integration

Songbird has a complete firefox built in and can be even used to browser the web in a new tab.This is one of the reasons of it being called the firefox of media players.Whereas amarok is can be used only to access the Wikipedia page of the artist and the links in the page.

6.Cover fetcher

The cover fetcher of amarok gets a 10 out of 10 here.It gets the covers from the net with a high efficiency without any constraints of the language of the song.Wheres I was unable to use it with songbird even after installing 2 additional scripts.Amarok wins again

7.Memory Usage

This has been a big issue with Songbird since at times the memory usage jumps to severral times the normal usage.It uses twice as taken by amarok.Moreover the search engine for songs is too sluggish and so is the cover flow.Its the biggest drawback of Songbird.This is expected to be resolved in future(check for updates)Whereas amarok never has any such problem.

Final Verdict

Amarok is the winner by a little margin but is expected to face tough competition from songbird in future.While for those too comfortable with iTunes,songbird is a good option provided they are ready to compromise on some issues.Finally if songbird is the firefox of media players then amarok is opera!!