The Linux Experiment

Ready to rock out with KDE’s premier music management application? Let’s rediscover our music with Amarok.

Amarok

I have to start by first admitting that I’ve actually run Amarok once or twice in the past, but sadly could never really figure it out. This always bothered me because people who can figure it out seem to love it. So I made it my mission this time around to really dig into the application to see what all the noise was about (poor pun intended).

Rediscover Your Music

Starting with the navigation pane on the left hand side of the screen I drilled down into my Local Music collection. For the purposes of testing I just threw two albums in my Music folder.

The navigation panel

Double clicking Local Music opens up a view into your Music folder that lets you play songs or search through your artists and albums.

Local media list

When you play a song the main portion in the center of the application changes to give you a ton of information about that track.

Automatically pulls lyrics and other information from the web

This is actually a pretty neat feature but also has the downside that its not always correct. For instance when I started playing the above song by the 90s band Fuel I ended up getting shown the following Wikipedia page about fuel (i.e. an energy source) and not the correct page about the band.

I don’t think that’s right…

Placing a CD in the computer caused it to appear under Local Media (although under a different section). Importing tracks was very straight forward; simply right-click on the CD and choose Copy to Collection -> Local Collection. You then get to pick your encoding options (which you can deeply customize to fit your needs).

Pick your encoding format and go

For Internet media Amarok comes loaded with a number of sources including a number of streaming radio stations, Jamendo, Last.fm, Librivox.org, Magnatune.com, Amazon’s MP3 store and a podcast directory. Like most other media, Amarok also tries to display relevant information about what you’re listening to.

Internet Radio on Amarok

There are loads of other features in Amarok, from its excellent playlist support to loads of expandable plugins, but writing about all of them would take all day. Instead I will wrap up here with a few final thoughts.

Is Amarok the best media manager ever made? To some maybe, but I still find its interface a bit too clunky for my liking. I also noticed that it tended to take up quite a bit of RAM (~220MB currently) which puts it on the beefier side of the media manager resource usage spectrum. The amount of information that it presents about what you’re currently listening to is impressive, but often times when I’m listening to music I’m doing so as a background activity. I don’t foresee a situation where I would be actively watching Amarok in order to benefit from its full potential as a way to ‘rediscover my music’. Still, for at least its deep integration within the KDE desktop, I say give it a try and see if it works for you.

More in this series

• The apps of KDE 4.10 Part I: Rekonq
• The apps of KDE 4.10 Part II: Kontact
• The apps of KDE 4.10 Part III: KTorrent

Five new Listener Feedback podcast episodes have been released in case you missed them:

• Episode 11: Chasing Eidolon – Chasing Eidolon (Pop Punk)
• Episode 12: Christopher Squier – Beneath the Ashes (Indie Rock, Bar Rock)
• Episode 13: Drop-Zone – Drop-Zone’s The Red Album MixTape CA V1 (Rap, Hip-hop, Mixtape)
• Episode 14: Tenpenny Joke – Ambush On All Sides (Rock, Punk)
• Episode 15: Trick Seventeen – Spot On (Pop Punk)

And as always you can grab the MP3 or Ogg version of this Creative Commons podcast.

A new episode of the Listener Feedback podcast has been released. This episode features the folk rock artist Bill Borman with his Creative Commons album In Our Dreams We’re Flying. Download it here.

A new episode of the Listener Feedback podcast has been released. This episode features the German rock band DirtyOldSpice with their Creative Commons album Follow The Traveler. Download it here.

A new episode of the Listener Feedback podcast has been released. This episode features the Internet nerdcore gangster rap super group Futuristic Sex Robotz with their album Hotel Coral Essex. Download it here.

A new episode of the Listener Feedback podcast has been released. This episode features the industrial group Fresh Body Shop with their album Doctor X. Download it here.

A new episode of the Listener Feedback podcast has been released. This episode features the extremely talented acoustic rock artist Josh Woodward with his album Dirty Wings. Download it here.

A new episode of the Listener Feedback podcast has been released. This episode features the extremely talented one-man rock band Slim with his album Interstate Medicine. Download it here.

A new episode of the Listener Feedback podcast has been released. On this episode it is the international internet supergroup Tryad with their album Listen. Check it out here.

A new episode of the Listener Feedback podcast has been released. On this episode it is the French band Drunksouls with their album On verra plus tard. Check it out here.