Amarok Music Player Review
Amarok is probably one of Linux’s most popular music players, not just because it provides an easy-to-use and intuitive GUI, but also because it’s features blow away any other music player created for computers. Best of all it’s free!
Amarok 2.0 is scheduled to be released in the near future, with a version of the player that can run on Microsoft Windows. However, they need € 5,000 for server expenses including distribution costs. However the point of this post is not for that, but to give potential Windows users an insight into how great Amarok is, and how great free software can be.
One great feature I love about Amarok is that it can display your album covers in a nice format so you can easily pick albums. The best part is, if you don’t have an album cover for one of your tracks, Amarok will automatically download the appropriate one for you!
Amarok also automatically downloads lyrics and stores them for all your songs. This is great because I don’t have to go scouring the internet for song lyrics. I just sit back and let Amarok do the work for me.
Amarok is one of the few applications that sports Wikipedia information. What does that mean? Well that means that tons of information about your favourite artist is right at your fingertips!
Amarok includes a smart context browser which gives you a ton of information on the fly about your tracks. It can also suggest a track similar to the one that is currently playing which you might like.
Amarok also features a very useful statistics window. I find it great because I can easily keep tabs on how many tracks, artists, albums, etc, I have. Also using it, I can easily go through my favourite artists, albums, tracks, etc.
My most favourite part of Amarok is probably the eye candy. It really does look nice with effects everywhere in the player. It definitely doesn’t make your music browsing boring. Amarok also features skin support, so you will never feel bored with the layout of your Amarok.
And finally, one of the greatest parts of Amarok is that it supports a large variety of music devices. This is good news for both Linux and Windows users. Also good news for iPod users since Amarok supports iPods, so those who want to dump iTunes like I do, can do so.
Some of the music devices supported by Amarok are:
- Apple iPod
- iRiver iFP and T players
- Creative Zen and Nomad players
- Generic USB players
- Generic MTP players
So for those who can’t wait to download Amarok for Windows, please folks, donate to their cause at
http://amarok.kde.org/en/node/245
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