Amarok's development team never sleeps! We are ready to deliver Amarok 2.1.1, the first maintenance release for Amarok 2.1.

While waiting for the next major release, which will be Amarok 2.2, you can now enjoy a more polished program. This is mainly a bugfix release with some improvements that didn't make it into the main release in time. But we also have some nice new features: For those who like flexibility we added the possibility to hide the Context View. The applets layout has been improved to make them fill the remaining space where appropriate. It is also possible now to load a local playlist directly from the command line. In the meantime we have been working on a lot of features and improvements for Amarok 2.2. Some of the things being worked on: CD support, a video applet, the possibility to customize the look of Amarok, biased playlists based on Last.fm recommendations and improved navigation and handling of the browsers (collection, Internet, files, playlists). Stay tuned, we are cooking up some really nice things for you!

As in past years we will be at Linuxtag in Berlin, taking place from the 24th to 27th of June. Our booth will be located in hall 7.2b and is shared with the rest of KDE and Kubuntu. Sven Krohlas will be giving a talk about Amarok on the 26th, room 'Saal 7' at 10:00 am. Also planned is a workshop 'Amarok Scripting: How to enhance your favorite music player' (further details expected after Sunday). And of course you can meet us at our booth :D
We have received free tickets to spread in our community, which is you. 15 tickets will be given out to people who leave their email address (human readable) in the comments before Sunday. We will then (semi-)randomly select the 15 winners among the entries. Of course adding a good reason why you should get a ticket will increase your chances ;-)

The changes for this version include:

Features

• Compilations with more than 60 artists are supported.
• Option to hide the context view.
• Applets are now laid out according to two criteria: either fixed height or flowing to fill the CV. No more slivers of applets visible at the bottom.
• Load contents of an m3u file if specified when running amarok from the command line. File must be local.
• Added large source emblem in current track applet.

Changes

• Removed option to purchase Magnatune.com albums using a Credit Card as this is unfortunately no longer supported by Magnatune.com. It is still possible to purchase albums using pre paid gift card codes, and all membership features still work.
• Make it possible to delete multiple selected playlists at once from the "My Playlists" category in the playlist browser.
• Show info box in CV if no applets are visible.

Bugfixes

• Don't hide the "On/Off" button for Dynamic Playlists if the window is not tall enough. (BR 195886)
• Make it possible to change the width of a playlist layout element if the combined width of items in the row exceeds 100% (BR 195846)
• Keep width slider and width display from overlapping when setting attributes on a playlist layout element.
• Don't overwrite cached lyrics when lyrics script returns a "Not found" result. (BR 195213)
• Fixed the layout of the "Edit Track Details" dialog, which came up broken under some circumstances. (BR 195081)
• Reset total playlist time when the playlist is cleared. (BR 153160)
• Don't crash when starting a collection scan after another scan had been aborted. (BR 195242)
• Fixed non-UTF8 MPEG tag wrongly shown.
• Fix problem with supported filetypes not being copied over to MTP device (BR 186835)
• Fix problem with playlist names containing '/' not being saved (BR 975995)
• Allow cancelling of rename input box in playlist layout dialog (BR 976409)
• Loading playlists from the command line works again. (BR 191347)
• Fixed formatting of the debug output when using the -d option.
• Detection of compilation cover during the scan works again. (BR 172953)

After 5 months of hard work, the Amarok team is proud to present the next major version of Amarok, 2.1.
When Amarok 2.0 was released, we celebrated the first of many steps along what will be a long series of Amarok 2.x releases. The 2.0 release brought with it an entirely new foundation to build on, and a developer team more motivated than ever to make Amarok 2 the best music player possible. While Amarok 2.0 contained many new features and ideas, it was also lacking many features that users of the previous, very successful, versions of Amarok had come to expect. With the release of Amarok 2.1 we are not only starting to close this gap, but we are also introducing a number of new and unique features that will make your music listening experience even better.

The highlights of this release are:

Playlist Improvements

The playlist in Amarok 2.1 has undergone many improvements since the last release. You can now search and filter its content and queue tracks as well as tell Amarok to stop playing after a certain track. The biggest change however is the new playlist layout editor. It lets you make the playlist look the way you like it. Covers, ratings, genres or just a simple track name? It's up to you! It comes with a few layouts predefined and leaves the rest for your creativity!

Context View

The improved Context View comes with a new layout and makes better use of free space. Applet management has been improved and applets follow your KDE color scheme. Instead of using multiple pages with applets, new Context View displays them in one vertical column which can be reorganized with a handy widget at the bottom.

Bookmarking

Bookmarking is finally here! Bookmarking comes in two types, automatic and manual. When you are listening to a long podcast, audiobook (or any other track longer than 10 minutes) Amarok will automatically mark the last listened to position and auto resume playback when you return to the track. You can also manually bookmark a position in any track to save for later.

Amarok URLs

Amarok URLs allow you to create a link to a certain place in Amarok. For example, you could make an URL to a great song you found on Jamendo and send it to your friend. Her Amarok will open the Jamendo service and the song you found. Stumbled upon an exceptional audio book on LibriVox? Create a link and send it to your family. In this release we are just starting to explore what is possible using these URLs, so expect to see many interesting features based on this in the future.

Last.fm

The Last.fm service received an interface update and now allows you to play any tag, user, or artist radio. We have also added an option to mark songs in your local collection as loved. Now you can show how much love you have, even for local tracks. ;-)

ReplayGain Support

Amarok now supports ReplayGain natively. When it is enabled Amarok equalizes the volume of songs with ReplayGain tags to avoid big unexpected volume changes between songs. It currently requires the GStreamer Phonon backend.

Collection Headers

Headers in the collection browser now have a much cleaner, more distinctive look.

Media Devices

Album cover support for iPods has been added and many bugs have been fixed.

Compilation support

Thanks to the sleepless nights of many Amarok developers, identifying albums as compilations (aka "Various Artists") now works more reliably :)

Phonon Configuration

There's no need to leave Amarok in order to change the system-wide sound settings anymore. The Phonon configuration can now be opened from Amarok's preference dialog. This is especially handy when using Amarok in other desktop environments and operating systems.

and more!

Grab your copy of Amarok 2.1 today and rediscover music!

You can find videos of some of the above mentioned features in our YouTube account. If you want to find out what we are working on for Amarok 2.2 and beyond, check our blog posts on our Planet.

The Amarok team is proud to release the second beta of Amarok 2.1. In the last month, the Amarok development squad has been focusing on bug fixing, usability improvements and optimizations to enhance your experience. Our recently held developer sprint in Berlin, Germany has allowed us to improve Amarok with feedback from usability studies as well as discuss the road map for Amarok once 2.1 is released.

We are also very excited to be bringing on wonderful new students to work with us with the Google Summer of Code, Season of KDE and Season of Usability programs, which will usher in a number of great features and improvements in the upcoming months. Although Amarok 2.1 is still in beta status, we encourage you to upgrade and provide feedback - the more we hear from you, the more improvements you'll get back!

Join us in Amarok'ing in a Free World!
Some of the changes since 2.1 Beta 1: