Amarok is a cross-platform free and open source music player. Although Amarok is part of the KDE project it is released independently of the central KDE Software Compilation release cycle.

Amarok serves many functions in addition to the basic function of playing music files. For example, Amarok can be used to organize a library of music into folders according to genre, artist, and album, can edit tags attached to most music formats, associate album art, attach lyrics, and automatically "score" music by keeping play count statistics.

Primary Functions

  • Playing media files in various formats including but not limited to (depending on the setup) FLAC, Ogg, MP3, AAC, WAV, Windows Media Audio, Apple Lossless, WavPack, TTA and Musepack. Amarok does not play digital music files embedded with DRM.
  • Tagging digital music files (currently FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, WMA, AAC, MP3, and RealMedia).
  • Associating cover art with a particular album, and retrieving the cover art from Amazon.
  • Creating and editing playlists, including smart and dynamic playlists. The dynamic playlists can use such information as the "score" given to a song by an Amarok script, and the playcount which is stored in the database.
  • Synchronizing, retrieving, playing, or uploading music to the following digital music players: iPod, iriver iFP, Creative NOMAD, Creative ZEN, MTP, Rio Karma and USB devices with VFAT (generic MP3 players) support.
  • Displaying artist information from Wikipedia and retrieving song lyrics.
  • Last.fm support, including submitting played tracks (including those played on some digital music players) to Last.fm, retrieving similar artists and playing Last.fm streams.
  • Podcast.
  • From version 1.4.4, Amarok introduced the integration of Magnatune, a non-DRM digital music store, enabling users to purchase music in Ogg, FLAC, WAV, and MP3 formats.

Features

  • Three main window panes: playlist browser, collection and player window.
  • Systray (panel notification area) icon support.
  • Song collection, which includes specific folders on the filesystem.
  • Searching Files/Artists/Album/Genre in Collection can be performed using Simple and Advanced options
  • Intelligent Playlists support(Dynamic Playlists)
  • Integration with online services such as Magnatune, Jamendo, MP3tunes, Last.fm and Shoutcast.
  • Songs can be rated both dynamically (based on how much the song is played) and by hand (giving rating of 1-5 stars to the song).
  • Amarok File Tracking (since 1.4.3): Stores file checksum in the collection. This allows the file be moved around in the filesystem without Amarok losing track of the song statistics.
  • Collection filter (newest songs, highest rated, most played, etc.).
  • Support for Phonon engine. The backend of Phonon dictates which media types Amarok can play and how they play. When using Xine, Amarok supports crossfading, but not seeking in seekpointless FLAC files. When using Gstreamer, Amarok supports seeking and gapless playback, but not crossfading.
  • Support for moodbars.
  • Uses TagLib for tags.
  • Amarok can be controlled via D-Bus.
  • Amarok Scripts, for example, when writing lyrics fetching plugins, can be written in QtScript.

What's New

The Amarok Development Squad is happy to announce the immediate availability of Amarok 3.3.1, the first bugfix release for Amarok 3.3 "Far Above the Clouds"!

3.3.1 features a number of minor bugfixes and code and build system cleanups. Some occasional crashes related to the new audio backend have also been fixed, and the remaining non-theme icons in user interface have been replaced. The new release also features improvements to the scripting support. Although current scripting functionality is not yet on a par with that of 2.x series in the '10's, especially the script console improvements should help anyone willing to explore the current capabilities.

Features

  • Enable saving and loading script console items, autocompletion in script console, and re-enable some more scripting functionality

Changes

  • Convert the remaining main UI toolbuttons to use icons from theme
  • Clear out remnants of the now-discontinued MusicDNS service

Bugfixes

  • Fix example permission grant command in database settings (BR 386004)
  • Fix equalizer gains not updating when selecting some presets (BR 463908)
  • Fix continuing playback after timecoded tracks (cue files etc, (BR 270003)
  • Fix MusicBrainz search
  • Properly start CD playback if Amarok is not already running (BR 503310)
  • Also transmit embedded cover art through MPRIS (BR 357620)
  • Don't show transcoding dialog after canceling download (BR 275840)
  • Load network information earlier to avoid crashes on startup (BR 507497)
  • Try to export as-compatible-as-possible playlist files (BR 507329)
  • Fix some random crashes during playback