This is the initial release of an 'awesome bar' type query mechanism for Songbird.

It is not a final product -and is intended for testing - particularly around query performance.

There are a reasonably large number of options which can be played with. (accessible from the add-ons pane or by clicking on the icon on the searcher pane). I really need feedback on how the various options impact performance - especially when you find it runs slower than you would like or expect. You can post here or (better) email me at songbird.searcher@gmail.com. Please send me the info at the bottom of the query ('callas from 4657-->...' in the screen shot).

With this add-on installed, the URL bar appears on the library tab. A query is performed when more than 3 characters are entered into the URL bar.

Artists, albums, tracks and play lists which contain the word(s) entered are displayed in a drop-down panel.
Preferences control how that output appears, what artwork is displayed and from where it is obtained.

Album Artwork.
An album is a group of tracks with the same album artist or artist. If you have an album with multiple artists and want them to show up as one album, make sure all of the tracks have the same album artist.

Album art is displayed (or not, depending on the searcher preferences setting) based on Songbird's album art settings, (which can be set using the AlbumArtPreferences add-on). The use of local art album art for queries is set in searcher preferences, as is whether or not to search for web album art. In both cases, the album art fetchers used and their order is as set globally for Songbird.
 
If there is no artwork for an album, artist work can be searched for the artist(s) featured in that track or album (i.e. those artist(s) mentioned in the title or common to nearly all of the tracks.)

Artist Artwork
Artist artwork, for artists, composers, albums or tracks, is fetched according to settings in the searcher preferences panel.You can enable searches in the common standard Songbird locations and/or the muzPhoto storage location and set the order in which locations should be searched. If you have artist art stored elsewhere under another folder, you should set the locations, folder search and file search options accordingly.

If no local artist artwork is found, lastFM can be queried. If found, the 1st page of lastFM images (up to 50) are randomly used for that artist for the rest of the Songbird session.

Drill-down
Clicking on the 'show details icon' or the artist or album name, drills down from artist to album, and album or play list to the individual tracks.

There are options to enable the display of common data at higher levels and to suppress the display of data at lower levels (e.g. if a whole album is by one artist or composer, their name is not repeated on each track, similarly if a person's name appears in the title of an album or track, their name is not listed again.)
 
I would appreciate some feedback on how people would like to see genre and rating fields (which I've given up using myself).
    
Names
Multiple names in a name field are separated and treated individually. The dividers between names are currently :
/ ; and arr. with
 
Artist, album artist and composer names can be displayed as they are stored or, you can choose to have names displayed in 'first last' or 'last, first' order.

This takes account of the most common English titles, particles and pedigrees. I find this is correct for almost all my tracks, and I don't have to edit metadata much at all. If you wish to use this functionality, and need to force a name to appear a particular way make sure it has a comma at the end (in which case it will be left as is) or store it in 'last, first' order e.g. Denis Browne, William.
 
The current titles recognised are:
 dame,doctor,dr,lord,master,miss,mrs,ms,professor,sir
 
The current particles recognised are:
 d',di,de,de la,du,of,te,ten,van,von
 
The current pedigrees recognised are the roman numerals up to 10 and:
junior, jnr, jr, senior,snr,sr
 
I will make these available in preferences in the next version, if anyone wants.

Dates are removed from names (because they annoy me!) Happy to make this an option if it causes problem for people.

To do:
This is by no means a finished product. There is a lot to do, especially around the query output and a proper playback mechanism both of which are currently rudimentary, at best. (I do intend to feed the NowPlaying add-on, as a priority, but want to work on this alternative queuing mechanism, too.)

I'm now NOT intending to do anything more on this.