Feb

15

2007
Amarok-main-jamc-01.jpg

For people that have never used Linux, they may not be familiar with the quality of applications that are freely available on the Linux platform. If you fall into that category, you are actually missing out on some of the best applications available anywhere. One of the best of the best is Amarok. The program is similar to Apple’s iTunes, except Amarok can actually do some things a lot better. Recently the Amarok team has released version 1.4.5 of Amarok. This version will be the last in the 1.x series and the next release will be known as Amarok 2.0 and built specifically for KDE 4.0. Lunapark6 recently got a chance to talk with Mark Kretschmann, one of the main developers on the Amarok team and the person that actually started the project. To see what Amarok 1.4.5 has to offer and read some of Mark Kretschmann’s thoughts on Amarok…click the read the rest of this entry link.

The new features I found most appealing would be the added usability features like the new keyboard navigation. Being able to start or pause a track by hitting the spacebar is a feature that is appreciated by me and the ability to seek through songs by hitting the left or right key was nice as well. The added eye candy of having the slider appear in an OSD window was cool, as was the ability to have album art shown in the Collection view. Screenshots of the fancy graphical volume slider and the ability to view album art in the Collection window are shown below.

Amarok-Collection-01.jpg

Amarok-Playlist-Albumartcamera.jpg

Amarok-Collection-03.jpg

Amarok-Themes.jpg

Amarok-VolumeOSD.jpg

Furthermore there are noticeable improvement in the general responsiveness of the program itself. As Mark Kretschmann explains in the interview below : “Yes we have indeed tried to optimize certain parts of the application, like database access and playlist handling. Also, Amarok these days makes extensive use of multithreading, which greatly helps keeping the interface responsive. Multithreading isn’t always easy to implement, but especially with the advent of multi-core processors, it’s the only way to get excellent performance for a complex application. So we invested quite a bit of time in this.” Amarok 1.4.5 does feel very nimble compared to past versions. This is very important to me because my music collection is vast (approximately 500 gigabytes) and the majority of files encoded in the lossless Flac codec.

Amarok has recently integrated an online music store, Magnatune, into their music program. In Amarok 1.4.5 further improvements with Magnatune has been implemented. The Magnatune browser is now better integrated with the overall visual looks of Amarok. Also, album art is now downloaded automatically into the album directory when purchased through their online store as well. It should be noted that Magnatune provides music from relatively unknown independent artists and charge as little as $5 per album. The company does not use any form of DRM in their mp3’s. You can sample all the songs in their entirety that Magnatune carries through Amarok. If you are of the adventurous type you will have a good time going through their collection of independent artists. It would be nice to see more recognized artists along with the indpendent artists that Magnatune now carries. Hopefully that may come about down the road.

Amarok-Magnatune-00.jpg

Amarok-Magnatune.jpg

Another cool feature that Amarok has added would be the integrated Shoutcast radio directory. After selecting the Playlists tab, you can open the “Radio Streams” tab to find an extensive list of Shoutcast radio stations broadcasting in just about every genre you can think of. I spent time listening to some fun J-Pop Shoutcast streams, along with with various indie rock radio streams and listened to various talk shows streamed live. No matter how obscure your musical tastes are, you are likely to find something interesting in these Shoutcast streams.

Amarok-Playlist-Shoutcast.jpg

Beyond the impressive new features of Amarok 1.4.5 the features that Amarok already has makes Amarok one of the most impressive multimedia programs available. From the ability to edit the id tags manually or via MusicBrainz, to the ability to run specialized scripts (I use the alarm clock script, as well as the transcoding script to transcode my flac files to mp3s on the fly), to the ability to display the currently playing band’s wikipedia page - makes Amarok a must have program for my music listening needs. If you are lucky enough to have Linux installed on your computer, you should definitely try out the new Amarok.

Following these screenshots of Amarok in action, Mark Kretschmann will answer some questions on Amarok from their early beginning stages to some features that may appear in Amarok 2.0. I’m already drooling over the possibilities in Amarok 2.0.

Amarok-CoverManager.jpg

Amarok-Context-Music.jpg

Amarok-Context-Artist.jpg

Amarok-Files.jpg

Amarok-Themes-02.jpg

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mark-01.jpgLP6 : What were some of your primary reasons in getting the Amarok project started?

Mark: Back then I was a user of XMMS. I was pretty happy with it, but it annoyed me that you had to press so many little buttons to do the most basic tasks. Like, loading a few files into the playlist required clicking 5 buttons. When I was using the file manager Midnight Commander, the idea came to me of combining the two interfaces: A media player with a simple two-pane interface. On the left side are your files, on the right side there’s the playlist. And you would simply drag your files from the left to the right. That’s it. And then and I programmed a simple implementation of this interface, and it became the first version of Amarok. Although there were a lot of changes over the years, the basic concept stayed the same to this day.

LP6 : It’s amazing to think back upon the pre 1.0 days of Amarok and how much it has improved in a relatively short period of time. When did you know that Amarok had made it to the level of being a great music player?

Mark: Well, with software it’s a bit of a special situation. It’s never really finished. You release a version 1.0, and you think it’s good. Then you release version 1.1, and then it’s: “Ok, this release has so many improvements, it’s so much better than the last release. How could anyone use a lame piece of software like 1.0?” This goes on and on :) But basically when we’ve reached 1.0, I was satisfied with our work. All of our original goals had been met.

In terms of maturity and also popularity there was a big jump with the advent of the 1.4 series, though. I think this was maybe the version that turned many people over from old school players like XMMS.

LP6 : Great job on version 1.4.5 of Amarok! In the past, my only complaint with Amarok would be that, at times, the program felt sluggish or slow. I haven’t noticed such sluggishness with version 1.4.5, has anything specifically been implemented to make it feel more responsive?

Mark: Thanks. Yes we have indeed tried to optimize certain parts of the application, like database access and playlist handling. Also, Amarok these days makes extensive use of multithreading, which greatly helps keeping the interface responsive. Multithreading isn’t always easy to implement, but especially with the advent of multi-core processors, it’s the only way to get excellent performance for a complex application. So we invested quite a bit of time in this.

LP6 : What is your favorite new feature found on Amarok 1.4.5?

Mark: My favorite is probably the Shoutcast stream browser. I listen to radio streams most of the time, so this is very useful to me.

LP6 : Whats your engine of choice…Xine, Gstreamer, Helix and why?

Mark: xine - because this engine is very mature and implements all features. However, I sometimes use Helix for radio streams, which it handles better than xine.

LP6 : I have read that Amarok for version 2.0 will be ported to Windows and OS X. I kind of think of it as a double edged sword. Nice for me when I am using those platforms to have one more familiar Linux app available, but I also think that it could be one more reason not to try an alternative operating system like Linux for other people. What would be your view on that?

Mark: There’s a misunderstanding over what “porting” means in this case. Amarok is based upon the Qt toolkit from Trolltech, which is inherently a cross-platform toolkit. Any application written with Qt is automatically portable. Amarok also uses the KDE libraries, which have not been able to run on Windows until now. With KDE4 this changes. KDE is being made to work natively on Windows and OSX. This means that Amarok for the most part will simply compile on Windows. So you see, technically it would be foolish not to do it.

LP6 : I think there were discussions in the past about having Amarok play videos. Curious to what your thoughts are on that ability?

Mark: I think that Amarok2 might be able to do basic video playback, e.g. for playing music videos. We will not however turn Amarok into a full blown video/audio player, with DVD playback and whatnot. This would water down our GUI. Our focus stays at providing a good music player.

LP6 : What would be some of your favorite Amarok scripts?

Mark: Personally I don’t use many scripts. Some scripts are amazingly advanced though, e.g. the ReplayGain script, which provides audio normalization for Amarok. I think that’s a pretty cool script.

LP6 : This is a personal wish of mine, but what’s the chances Amarok could work as a plugin within MythTV & the fullscreen Amarok plugin?

Mark: Sure, there’s nothing standing in the way of such an extension. In fact a few days ago a third party extension was released for using Amarok in full screen mode, and it looks pretty cool as far as I can tell.

LP6 : As a user of KDE, what do you hope to see implemented in KDE 4.0?

Mark: As a user I’m pretty happy with KDE already. My needs are humble. My most used feature is probably the mini-cli (for starting applications), and the terminal emulator Konsole, which is hosting many Vim sessions for programming.

On the technical side, I’m looking forward to the new technologies like Phonon, and the improved libraries. These features make our lives as programmers easier.

LP6 : Lately there has been a lot of European countries coming against the iTunes music store and their Fairplay DRM. What is your opinion on this issue?

Mark: I think it’s a good move. Ideally though the costumers would wake up and boycott DRM encumbered services. There are great alternatives like Magnatune, who provide music without any DRM, in a format of your choice. And they are very fair with their artists; the artist gets 50% of the music price, which is considerably more than most traditional labels are willing to pay. It’s good for the artist, it’s good for the consumer. Why not check it out?

LP6 : Last question..what exactly is RokyMotion?

Mark: RokyMotion is the Amarok promotion team. They handle things like writing news articles, organizing events and general public relations work for Amarok. Sometimes they even coordinate releases. So it’s really a broad selection of important tasks they’re doing for the project. If you are interested in contribution to the project, this is a great way to start.

LP6 : Thank you Mark.

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6 Comments so far

  1. 6 Andrew Says: April 17, 2007

    Well iPods do the same thing, which might be a good reason to keep Amarok like that. There’s no excuse for not having an ignore-case option, though.

  2. 5 Budah Says: February 16, 2007

    Lurker:

    He is talking about when you hook up an ipod or mp3 player. Yes, in the collection section on Amarok, “the” is disregarded when alphabetizing. However, on your ipod, or mp3 player (the media device tab), it files any band name starting with “the” under the t section.

  3. 4 Lunapark6 » Blog Archive » Amarok 1.4.5 Overview + Interview w/ Mark Kretschmann » Kwotem Says: February 15, 2007

    [...] http://lunapark6.com/?p=3032 [...]

  4. 3 lurker Says: February 15, 2007

    Ngo_Q, are you talking about ignoring the word “The” in the artist’s name? Because Amarok does that just fine for me… and I’m using 1.4.3 !

  5. 2 Psumoni Says: February 15, 2007

    I agree.

    Letter case, and all non alphanumeric characters should be ignored. This is what is done in the great little Rio Karma music player, and works extremely well.

  6. 1 Ngo_Q Says: February 15, 2007

    I’m not sure if this feature became available in 1.4.5, but when I click on a music file in Konqueror, a pop-up window appears saying “one track was already in the playlist, so it was not added.” This is a really nice feature since in past versions I would end up with the same song added multiple times in the playlist. Also if you really want to have a song appear multpile times in the playlist, just drag a song from the Collection window to the playlist and that song will be added even though the song is already in the playlist. Nice and smart. Now if only Amarok could be made to ignore upper or lower case letters and ignore the word “The” then I would be completely satisfied. But thanks for this article and interview, I really appreciate Amarok and the work done by those developers.