We Will Amarok You!
Amarok is the single greatest application and is probably the best reason I switched to Linux in the first place. I didn’t want to make the switch, but once I was turned on to this app, I never looked back. Music is a big part of my daily computer use and having a media player that would go above and beyond my needs was a necessity. Amarok was the answer.
Like any normal media player, Amarok plays your audio files. I don’t need it to play videos because I use VLC for that. I did need it to connect to my media device and transfer any needed files. With Amarok, my audio files display all of the tag information correctly and easily as well as provide a pop-up displaying album art and information as my songs play. The main tabs while music is playing are Music which offers information concerning the current song (who is it by, do you have other songs by the artist, how many times do you play this artist, what is the popular song by this artist), Lyrics (display the lyrics for the song which are pulled from online sites, if no lyrics are found they can be added), Artists (pull Artist information from wikipedia, learn how the group started and any other current information that is truth according to Wikipedia).
Connecting my media device (Creative Zen Vision and Creative Zen V Plus) was a breeze. I navigated to the Amarok settings and selected the MTP Media device. Once that was setup and a nickname was provided for the device, I clicked connect and I was on my way. I ran into issues trying to move video files, but that’s a subject for another post (a Creative specific app is used in my case will I’ll provide info for later).
Besides my massive music collection (by my standards its big and size does matter), I wanted to connect to certain radio stations to listen to streaming music. This is an old school thought since radio is not great any more compared to a media player’s playlist, but there are a few good ones out there. I personally love Atlanta’s 97.1 The River. It plays a great collection of classic rock with limited commercial breaks and no morning DJ’s that prevent the tunes I so desperately need in my morning commute. Here’s a quick list of the streams I added to my amarok for those interested:
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