FoxyTunes Blog

You spoke, we have listened and delivered. We are happy to announce that FoxyTunes for Firefox now supports Songbird. This has been in the works for a while because we wanted to give you the best experience possible between the two products. Songbird is a great music player and management tool with a suite of impressive features that any music fan is sure to enjoy.

You can now control Songbird from FoxyTunes in Firefox on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux!

To get started make sure you have the latest version of FoxyTunes for Firefox and Songbird. Then select Songbird from the player or Quick Switch menu in FoxyTunes and follow the on-screen instructions. So easy and fun!

We hope you enjoy rocking out with this new feature. As always, we love to hear your feedback. Please check it out and let us know what you think.

On a side note, you might be wondering why support for Songbird differs from other players that work with FoxyTunes. Well, short answer is that Songbird is still evaluating their public control API and we didn’t want to wait until it was ready. We think that Songbird is a great player and we’ve definitely heard from you, our users, that Songbird support is highly desired. While we wait for an official Songbird Control API we’ve created this add-on that allows us to talk directly to Songbird and give you the control you desire.

If you’d like further support and greater compatibility with Songbird, please let our friends know how much you enjoy this feature.

download FoxyTunes for Firefox

Would you like to work on one of the largest music destinations on the Web and help us build new and innovative music services for millions of users all over the world? Yahoo! Music is looking for rock-star engineers for its Front End Web Development team in Santa Monica, California. If you’re really good with PHP, HTML, JavaScript, CSS, have great design and engineering skills and are exited by working with a talented team on killer user experiences please consider applying!

More info about this position and how to apply can be found here.

Do you have an incredible passion for music and spend most of your time online? Yahoo! Music is also looking for a talented, initiative-oriented, creative, music programmer for daily video/radio programming and site publishing. The position would be responsible for programming and maintaining new and catalog music/videos, securing exclusive content, increasing user engagement by helping to conceptualize and publish amazing music experiences and communicating regularly with record labels and various content partners.

More info about this position and how to apply can be found here.

We’re looking forward to hearing from you!

[cross posted from here]

The latest update for FoxyTunes adds YouTube to the growing list of supported web players. This addition lets you not only control a single video, but also lets you navigate playlists full of videos. Do all this from the convenience of your FoxyTunes toolbar while you are surfing in other tabs.

Install the latest version and try it out with this Country YouTube playlist. Currently this feature only supports videos on YouTube.com, but we’re looking at ways to support embedded videos as well.

We know that you love your music and that YouTube is becoming a great source for music videos. We hope you enjoy this feature as much as we do.

As always, check it out and let us know what you think!

p.s. We’ve heard your feedback on the new version and the requests for Songbird and are already hard at work on the next update. More news to come shortly.

Following our FoxyTunes for Firefox beta release, we are very happy to announce the latest beta of FoxyTunes for IE!

Get FoxyTunes for Internet Explorer v2.5 Beta

As with the latest FoxyTunes for Firefox beta version we’ve added a slew of new improvements. This version includes many of the enhancements we introduced in the latest FoxyTunes for Firefox. Here’s a list of additions we’ve made just for the IE version:

• Added support for Aimp2 player
• Added support for the KMPlayer player
• Added support for the VLC player
• Support for the latest JRiver player
• Updated the skins, including the “classic” skin

To summarize, this latest version is smarter, simpler and more user friendly - all with the goal of making your music listening in IE even more streamlined and enjoyable!

Hopefully you’re as excited about these enhancements as we are. Check it out and let us know what you think!

Hey everyone, today we’re very happy to announce the beta release of FoxyTunes for Firefox v3.5.

Get FoxyTunes for Firefox v3.5 Beta.

We added a ton of improvements to this next release - we’ve made the controls smarter, updated the default skin and improved the menus so that you can do what you want faster and easier. Even though monitors are getting bigger and cheaper we wanted to ensure that FoxyTunes remains compact and useful.

In total we made over 20 improvements, additions, and tweaks to this version of FoxyTunes (click here for a full list), here are just a few examples:

Better player switching

In order to make using multiple players more seamless we’ve added a quick switch menu that lets you jump to other players, pauses your previous player, and shows you which player you’re currently listening to. We’ve also combined the show/hide buttons into the quick switch button so that easy access is just a toggle away.

Player support updates

We’ve added support for Firefox version 3.1, the latest version of VLC, and the latest version of the foobar2000 player. FoxyTunes is also being smart about the players we show in the “Select Player” menu by only showing ones you’ve installed. The full list of supported players is still accessible under the “more” menu.

Smart + Simple = Better

The big themes of this release are smarter and simpler. We’ve put a lot of hard work and thought into how to improve buttons, menus, how players are controlled, and how we can blend the power of FoxyTunes with a streamlined design.

We’re very excited about this release and wanted to share it with you a little early. Check it out here and let us know what you think!

Update: We’ve fixed a few things relating to Wordpress and Signatunes. Have a look and let us know what else you find.

Today we’re releasing a few updates - a new version of FoxyTunes for Firefox and several enhancements to FoxyTunes Planet.

Following our mission to support any media players you might be using, the latest FoxyTunes for Firefox now supports AIMP2 and The KMPlayer media players. Stay tuned for more popular players being supported in the near future

We are also launching several enhancements on the FoxyTunes Planet website – first, there’s a whole new Yahoo! Music Videos widget, so now you have a choice between YouTube and Yahoo! Music video catalogs. The Rhapsody widget has been enhanced to play the top artist tracks right there on the page using the FoxyPlayer. We also tweaked the page layout a bit, and while we had to disable the Yahoo! Image Search and Hype Machine widgets for now, we’re definitely planning to add tons of cool new stuff to the pages in the near future. Finally, you no longer need to create an account and login to persist your widget layout and settings – so if you want to tweak anything in the new layout, feel free to do it without logging in.

Hope you like the new Foxy stuff, let us know what you think!

FoxyTunes 3.0 for Firefox is finally here!

This version adds a very cool new functionality – it can turn any webpage into a playlist you can play right there on that page – without needing to launch any external media players or programs. How is this possible? With the new Yahoo! Media Player.

What’s Yahoo! Media Player?

Yahoo! Media Player is a really cool music player that lives on the web and can play music found on web pages as a playlist. The player floats ‘above’ the page content, so even if you scroll up and down the page, the player stays at the same position right in front of you.

Up until now, in order to add this player to a web page, you had to be the owner of that page. But what about sites that still haven’t added this to their pages? FoxyTunes to the resque!

Yahoo! Media Player + FoxyTunes = Play any page

The latest version of FoxyTunes enhances any page that has music on it by automatically adding the Yahoo! Media Player to that page. Then, you can conveniently play any track on that page or even the whole page as one big playlist!

Here’s an example – a few songs for you to enjoy:

• Negativland - Richard Nixon Died Today
• Tilly and The Wall - Pot Kettle Black
• Less Than Jake - Does The Lion City Still Roar?

If you have the latest FoxyTunes for Firefox installed, you’ll see a tiny ‘play’ buttons next to each song – just push them and see what happens

Also, you can already see the Yahoo! Media Player in action on many great music sites, such as Aurgasm, Soul Sides and List of the Day on Yahoo! Music Blogs.

By the way, if you would prefer that FoxyTunes didn’t add the player to webpages, you can always disable this functionality in FoxyTunes ‘configuration’ menu.

Auto Player Switching – Look Ma, No Hands!

The best thing is that once you start playing a webpage with the new Yahoo! Media Player you can instantly control it with FoxyTunes, even while surfing in other tabs or browser windows – just make sure to leave the page that’s currently playing somewhere in the background. And, if you close that page, your FoxyTunes will automatically switch back to your regular media player – be it iTunes, Windows Media Player, Winamp etc.

We are very excited about this new version of FoxyTunes, and hope you’ll be as excited as we are!

So, check it out here and let us know what you think!

-Alex

We are very happy to announce that the beta of FoxyTunes for IE v2.0 - our next major version is finally here.

Get FoxyTunes for IE v2.0 Beta

Here’s an overview of what’s new in FoxyTunes for IE v2.0:

Skins

You can now change the appearance of your FoxyTunes by installing a custom skin. There are already more than 11 skins available here, and we’re planning to publish a guide that will describe how anyone can easily create a custom skin for FoxyTunes.

FoxyTunes Mini

Similarly to its Firefox counterpart, FoxyTunes Mini for IE is a universal desktop widget that allows you to control any media player even when you’re not inside a browser. Similarly to its bigger brother, the Mini is customizable, collapsible and skinnable. You can launch the Mini from the FoxyTunes main menu.

Alarm clock and Sleep timer

You can now use your FoxyTunes for IE as an alarm clock - just set your media player to your favorite song, pause it, and tell FoxyTunes at what time to start playing the music. Also, you can use the sleep timer to instruct FoxyTunes to stop the playback after a specified amount of time.

Translations

FoxyTunes for IE now speaks more than 30 languages! FoxyTunes for IE shares most of the translations with FoxyTunes for Firefox - thanks to all the translators for helping localize FoxyTunes to so many languages.

So, check out this version and let us know what you think.

As you might know, Firefox 3 is just around the corner, and we did some work on FoxyTunes to make sure it’s compatible. So, check out the latest version here, and let us know if you see any issues or quirks with the latest beta of Firefox 3.

Also, the latest TwittyTunes is also compatible.

We are very excited to announce that FoxyTunes has been acquired by Yahoo!

So, what does this mean for you, our loyal user? Basically, it means that if you liked what we’ve done with FoxyTunes in the past, you’ll love what we’ll now be able to achieve being a part of Yahoo!. Read on for more details, and I hope you’ll be as excited as we are!
Why did Yahoo! acquire FoxyTunes?
We’ve been talking to the Yahoo! Music team about deepening our cooperation, and we quickly discovered that not only do they understand and appreciate what we’ve done with FoxyTunes, but they also share our vision of Universality and Openness, and are really prepared to take this vision forward and implement it on the largest scale possible! So, it was clear for everyone that an acquisition made sense, because it would allow us to really join forces and work together on our common vision.

What’s going to happen to FoxyTunes?
The FoxyTunes team will become a part of Yahoo! Music and will continue working on FoxyTunes, adding many great things to our products - you’ll see support for additional media players, integration with many additional music sites and services and much more! Our product roadmap and wishlist are quite long and very exciting, and being a part of Yahoo! will really allow us to make many of the things we’ve been planning a reality. Most importantly, Yahoo! are as committed as we are to preserving the Open spirit of FoxyTunes and embracing all the great music products and services out there.

Will this affect user privacy?
As always, your privacy is very important to us and we’ll never do anything to jeopardize it. You can see our privacy policy here.

What does this mean for FoxyTunes users and partners?
If you’re a FoxyTunes user you’ll still get the same unobtrusive but at the same time rich and universal experience you’ve come to expect from FoxyTunes. If you’re our partner, either existing or potential, rest assured that our philosophy of being open hasn’t changed - if you have a media player, music site or service, or in general if your stuff is of interest to music lovers - we’d be happy to work together! We’re planning to release more info on all the various ways of integrating and working with FoxyTunes in the near future.

We’d like to thank everyone who helped and supported us over the years - our passionate users, great partners, investors and friends - we really couldn’t make it without you. A special thanks goes to Yossi Vardi for his amazing support and for believing in us from the very beginning.

Also, check out Yahoo!’s announcement on Yahoo! Music Blog.

We are very excited to be joining the Yahoo! family and can’t wait to show you all the cool things we’re working on.

Stay Tuned!