Why I think Amarok rocks....

I just purchased an Amarok hoodie andt-shirt; and I couldn’t be happier supporting one of my favourite open source projects! What makes it so good? Have you ever heard of Amarok? Chances are if your an OS X or Windows user; you haven’t. All this is about to change! The amarok team are busy porting it from it’s UNIX underpinnings to Windows and OS X.

Whats to like about Amarok then?
also is cool phonetically: am a rock!

• Album covers in full glory (see picture right)
• Full lyrics support; even for the most obscure songs you have laying around!
• Wikipedia integration: truly a gem; you can do what Amarok says “Rediscover your Music” in looking up artist, song or album in the free encyclopedia.
• Playlists form the backone of the player; great for people like me who like to compile sub-sections of songs for car journeys and the like!
• Smart playlists: you get playlists which can update based on how your rate them; which artist or what genre; sorting conditions ar infinite! Example is a 5 Star playlisat with all my top rated tunes!
• Dynamic playlists: built from your static and smart playlists; it can show the last X songs you played and Y upcoming. So I could select my 5 star faves and my Strokes favourites; set it to show 5 last played songs and 15 upcoming. I never need to edit the playlist again as it will auto choose and update the list!
• Statistics: Show all your stats on your collection! From favourite artists to most played albums: it’s all there waiting!
• Last.fm & Tags: Tag and compiles your music listening tastes with integration in the most popular social music site online!
• IPod integration is second to none (as well as many 0ther popular players!)! Amarok will convert it to mp3; sync podcasts and playlists; transfer ratings and even submit listened tracks to last.fm!
• All the added extras: Equaliser with presets; Random and Repeat capability; Visualisations! You can even sort you collection by mood with Moodbar installed!
• Scripts!?! One of the coolest thing is scripts: think Firefox extensions only slightly more powerful!
• Built-in editing of song names; album names and all info! Don’t bother telling Amarok to add the music you just ripped; as long as it’s in your music folder its automatically picked up and added!
• An intuitive interface: built for function and power: Amarok is almost perfect in its balance between feature and function. The OSD )On-Screen Display) with show you any details your playlist does; like Artist Name; Album name; Rating and how long a track is!

Man I am exhausted already and I haven’t even covered all of the features; their is just too many hidden gems I wouldn’t be doing you justice by telling you them all (see: Scripts)! That’s why Amarok rocks my world! (As a side note: yes I will get my picture on this page eventually!)