If you haven’t heard of Songbird, its a great new open-source product that has recently received much deserved venture funding. Think of Songbird, as the Mozilla of iTunes - a desktop media player built on the same foundation as applications such as Firefox and Thunderbird. It is a great drop in replacement for iTunes, except for the fact that it doesn’t support the restricted and encrypted files you may have purchased from Apple. That’s where Cruxy comes in…

We are working to build an interface to Cruxy that you will be able to access directly from within Songbird. The experience will be similar to that provided by Microsoft or Apple today through their various online download stores, but of course, we will only provide you media in open, unrestricted formats. The combination of Cruxy and Songbird will enable a complete browse, purchase, download, and play experience through one application. Songbird even supports syncing to many portable media devices, so once you purchase media you’ll easily be able to take it on the go.

Here’s a screenshot of what we’ve been able to do so far:

We’d love to hear your thoughts on how we might approach this integration or improve the experiences offered by Apple and Microsoft today. What features would you like to see for Cruxy to be your favorite Songbird-compatible service? If you’re a XUL developer or have experience with Songbird extensions, any tips or advice you might have would be greatly appreciated.

Okay, I’m off to dive into some XUL…