Songbird, a browser-integrated media player, received $8M last year

Although we reported in October 2006 that Songbird had taken $1 million from Atlas Ventures and Sequoia Capital, it apparently only took another two months for the company to land another $8 million.

The funding in December 2006 came from the same two funds, according to TechCrunch. It remained unreported, until now.

Songbird works within Mozilla Firefox as an open platform that developers can use to integrate a customized media player into their own website. By working within Firefox, the company adroitly avoids the need for consumers to download and install applications, which people tend to avoid.

The player’s main value to other companies seems to be in providing developers with an easier way to build music-focused websites than coding their own platform. We’re not so sure how the company plans on making money, although there may be some options for revenue sharing with online music stores.