The world of digital music management has changed a great deal since the birth of Amarok four and a half years ago. Amarok 1 established a reputation for innovation, but maintaining development with the old framework became more difficult as Amarok grew, often in directions we never imagined. KDE4 brings many new technologies and design patterns, and we decided to use this opportunity to improve upon Amarok's original design. We thought about how to best design a program that would allow us to stay at the cutting edge of digital music management. We also sought to distinguish Amarok in an increasingly saturated market of music players. To achieve this we took the best ideas from the 1.x series, and brainstormed what else we could do to help our users "rediscover music". And then we started developing.

Now, after two years of development, we are proud to announce that Amarok 2 has arrived. This arrival is just the beginning.
This new version brings with it a lot of changes:

• Completely redesigned user interface
• Tight integration with online services such as Magnatune, Jamendo, MP3tunes, Last.fm and Shoutcast
• Completely overhauled scripting API and plugin support to allow better integration into Amarok
• Migration from the KDE 3 to KDE 4 framework, and utilization of core technologies such as Solid, Phonon, and Plasma

The user interface has been redesigned to make context information like lyrics and albums from the same artist more accessible and allow you to decide which information you want to see by adding applets to the Context View in the middle. The new Biased Playlists offer a way to let Amarok take care of your playlist in an intelligent way similar to Dynamic Playlists in previous versions. A new service framework allows for a tight integration of online services like Jamendo, Magnatune and Ampache. New services can easily be added via GetHotNewStuff in Amarok or from kde-apps.org. More applets and scripts are being worked on and users are welcome to contribute more to make Amarok suit their needs. The migration from the KDE 3 to KDE 4 framework allows us to make use of technologies like Plasma, Phonon and Solid which make Amarok easier to use and maintain and ready for the future of music on your computer and on the internet.
These are only some of the great new features of Amarok 2. Give it a try!

It is important to note that Amarok 2.0 is a beginning, not an end. Because of the major changes required, not all features from the 1.4 are in Amarok 2. Many of these missing features, like queueing and filtering in the playlist, will return within a few releases. Other features, such as visualizations and support for portable media players, require improvements in the underlying KDE infrastructure. They will return as KDE4's support improves. Some features, such as the player window or support for databases other than MySQL, have been removed because either they posed insurmountable programming problems, or they didn't fit our design decisions about how to distinguish Amarok in a saturated market of music players.

Amarok 2.0 is now available for all major Linux distributions. KDE4 is still under heavy development especially on Windows and Mac OS X, and Amarok 2 is available as a "Beta" version on those platforms. In the coming months, we expect to regularly release a series of bugfix versions in the 2.0 series. Work on features, both old and new, has also continued. So while Amarok 2 has already been a long journey for the Amarok team, for you, the users, it is just beginning!

Amarok's journey has just begun and we are excited to have you join us for this event. Change and improvement would not have been possible without the help of everyone who contributed to this ambitious project in the form of code, promotion, documentation, donations, and a lot more. To all of you we say: Thank You!

Join us in Amarok'ing in a Free World! Please consider contributing to our fundraiser, reading the Amarok 2 FAQ and of course don't forget to celebrate with us!

We have been waiting a long, long time and now we finally did it: Amarok 2.0 is really soon to be released!

To celebrate this really major event in Amarok history with our fans all around the world we would like to invite you to join us to party really hard. Could there ever be a better reason to do so?

As our fellowers are -more or less- randomly spread all around the world one release party won't be enough, no, we need a lot of them. This is where YOU can help: check out the list on our Wiki, if there is a party close to you location join it by adding yourself and contacting the organizer. If there is no party close enough for you to take part: start one! Simply add it to the list and spread the word.

How should a release party look like? Any way you like it! You could simply get some drinks and loud music. You could set up some ancient game consoles. Just do whatever you think might make that event special and is fun for you and your guests. Take fotos, write blog entries and let us know how you (Ama)rok. Let's get the preparations started.

The timeframe for parties starts this Friday and ends two weekends later.

Today the Amarok project releases Narwhal, the release candidate of the upcoming Amarok 2.0.

The changes since Beta 3 focus mostly on fixing bugs, as we are in a fairly hard feature-freeze to give us time to polish the final product. However, this didn't stop us from adding a few nice new things:

• Users' Recommended radio is now shown in the Last.Fm Service.
• Playlist browser items can be deleted and renamed using the keyboard.
• Basic and Advanced view when editing a filename scheme are synchronized.
• Added delete button to Advanced view for defining a filename scheme.
• Importer for iTunes libraries now allows you to import your statistics from iTunes.
• The settings dialog now remembers the page that was last used.
• Track information can be edited from the file browser.

In addition, there are the following changes:

• User playlists added from files are now updated on collection rescans, so any changes in the file are reflected in the SQL playlist.
• Layout refactoring in the Organize Collection dialog.
• Enabled Last.fm scrobbling by default when Last.fm login is supplied.
• "Show active track" has been moved from the playlist context menu to the playlist toolbar
• The video and Last.fm applet have been removed for now as they are not ready for final release. They will be readded in later releases.

There are, of course, a ton of bugfixes. See the full ChangeLog further below for all the goodies.


A lot of great new scripts have shown up on kde-apps.org. Give them a try and enjoy.

Packages are available through your distributions package manager, the KDE-on-Windows installer (beta release only) and from the Mac download page (beta release only). Additionally the tarball can be downloaded here:

Has your favourite Amarok 1.4 feature not been added to 2.0 yet, or perhaps something you read about on someone's blog has not yet shown up? Not to worry -- we've got a large number of things on our plate waiting to go once 2.0 is out the door. So expect to see lots of new, great things being added in short order, plus the return of some old favourites. Have a look at the Amarok 2 FAQ to find answers to the most common questions about Amarok 2.