Amarok – A Powerful Cross Platform Music Player

Amarok is a cross-platform, free, and Open Source music player written in Qt (C++). It was first released on June 23, 2003, and even though it is part of the KDE project, Amarok is released as a software independent of the central KDE Software Compilation release cycle.

It features a clean, responsive, and customizable User Interface along with Last.fm support, Jamendo service, Dynamic playlists, context view, PopUp dropper, bookmarking, file tracking, multi-language support, and smooth fade-out settings, among many other options.

Amarok used to be one of Linux users’ favorite music players until its development became slow and things seemed to have come to a standstill. As a matter of fact, you are not alone if you had the impression that the project was dead.

However, it is with joy that I announce the Amarok project is very much alive and might have come back to stay for good with over 60 contributors.

You read that right. Amarok has finally dropped their long overdue new release in the form of Amarok 2.9.0; the beta for the same version name was released on August 16, 2015, and received no further improvements since then!

This latest version comes with many feature improvements and bug fixes to the beta version and it almost feels like the robust music player never left.

Features in Amarok Hibernaculum

  • Available to download free of charge.
  • Cross-Platform – Available for GNU/Linux, macOS, and Windows.
  • Open Source with different contribution categories as defined here.
  • PopUp dropper – Drag and drop support.
  • Support for virtually all music formats including AAC, ffmpeg, mp3, etc.
  • Bookmarks – Mark track, podcast, and audiobook positions to resume playback sometime later.
  • Play audio CDs with the option to rip them to local collections.
  • Context View
  • Dynamic Playlists – Create and audit smart playlists for quick recollection.
  • Database imports – Import libraries from the old Amarok 1.4 and iTunes database without losing playback statistics, metadata, etc.
  • Multi-language support
  • An audio analyzer visualization applet.

Amarok packs a lot more features than those I have listed here and if you want to check them out you are better of downloading the music player and trying it out for yourself.

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I imagine Amarok will do excellently the moment its user base increases and its devs will get back to work. Hopefully, this time around they will be more consistent with the bug fixes, version updates, and feature improvements.

What is your take on the topic? Are you excited that Amarok is back? And do you think it will be able to compete with (and maybe outrun) its alternatives that came to exist while it was hibernating?

Let us know what you think in the comments section below.

Divine Okoi is a cybersecurity postgrad with a passion for the open-source community. With 700+ articles covering different topics in IT, you can always trust him to inform you about the coolest tech.

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6 thoughts on “Amarok – A Powerful Cross Platform Music Player”

  1. Amarok 2.9 might be a sign of life, but is otherwise totaly meaningless, as it is still based on Qt 4, which some distributions have already removed. Amarok 3.0, which will be based on Kf5, is still in the works.

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