Amarok 2.5 "Earth Moving" released

Up North, frost sparkles in the morning sunshine, while the Southern climes head into spring. All over the world, the Amarok team proudly presents Amarok 2.5, the most advanced release yet.

Some of the features we are happy about:

• GPodder.net podcast synchronization.
• Re-written USB Mass Storage support.
• The Windows version of Amarok is now officially declared stable.
• Many bugfixes to the iPod plugin, thanks to Mat?j Laitl.
• An integrated Amazon MP3 store. This major feature is the work of our web-entrepreneurs Sven and Justus.

We have simplified the version scheme to 2 numbers again to reflect our development process. 2.5 is a big feature release and has many bugfixes. The next planned version will be 2.6, with new features.

As promised, we've started a new year of donation mentions with the generous donators of the past Rocktober funding drive. Thank you all for contributing to Amarok, we hope you are pleased with this release.

Update: We have just uploaded a new Windows version with an important bug fix. If you were experiencing issues with the Windows build, please check out the updated installer.

We have the following download options available:

Source tarball	Windows installer	Instructions for various Linux distros

Full changes list:

Features

• Now It's possible to use formated strings for prefix and suffix in Playlist's layout items.
• New "equals" match in collection filter - e.g. label:=pop finds songs with label "pop" but not songs with label "electro pop". (BR 260004)
• Enable dropping tracks on empty area in Saved Playlists to create new playlist.
• Added a "create new playlist" action in the empty space of the Saved Playlists. (BR202725)
• Add new type of optional tokens in format string (Collection Organizer) (BR 264874)
• Compilations are properly marked as such when transferring music to/from iPods. (BR 207880)
• Ctrl+F now activates collection browser and focuses the seach collection bar. (BR 257381)
• Music store based on the Amazon catalogue.
• Podcast subscription synchronisation and podcast status synchronisation with gpodder.net service.
• Possibility to browse through podcasts suggested by gpodder.net and through gpodder.net top recommended podcasts.
• Made possible to make presets for TagGuesser. (BR 264632)
• Display current timestamp in tray tooltip. (BR 278445)
• Auto-save the playlist so that it is not lost if Amarok crashes.

Changes

• Load Last.fm friend/neighbour avatars on demand.
• Update tracks in the recently played widget only when needed.
• Allow editing the SearchWidget during a search animation.
• Update the collection view while UMS is scanning.
• Don't block the UI while scanning UMS device.
• Allow going back and forward in Amazon store. Thanks to GCI student Nikola Miljkovic.
• BPM (beats-per-minute) attribute is now kept when transferring tracks to/from media devices. (including iPods)
• Better, shorter internet service descriptions.
• Both Delete and Move to Trash actions are now offered in the collection browser context menu. (BR 286356)
• Amarok now depends on libmygpo-qt >= 1.0.5.
• New USB Mass Storage media-device plugin using the Amarok Collection Scanner.
• Browser widget backgrounds can now be enabled/disabled.
• Playlist: Don't group albums without name. (BR 243344)
• Make delete confirmation dialog text less confusing. Patch by Gilles Habran. (BR 263693)
• Removed never-working right-mouse-button action to unset iPod album cover.
• Removed the confusing ability to edit the navigation breadcrumb.
• BPM is now read from/saved to media devices (e.g. iPod).
• Track last played date and time is now correctly read from/saved to iPods.
• Depend on KDE 4.6 - various bugs were caused by older versions.
• Total rewrite of Automated Playlist Generator algorithm. New algorithm is far less complicated and crash-prone, but at the cost of taking longer to converge when the constraint tree is complicated. (BR 240927, BR 240301)
• Improved the playlist synchronisation feature.
• Make possible to get count tracks before the XSPF file is fully loaded.
• Stop fetching guitar- and bass-tabs from fretplay.com because the site is down.
• Mark unplayble tracks in the playlist. Patch by Sandeep Raghuraman. (BR 263640)
• Current track applet: show number of artists instead of genres. (BR 261077)

Bugfixes

• Put a border around bottom toolbars, visually separating them from browser contents. (BR 277741)
• Align the bottom toolbars.
• Allow albums with empty name but nonempty artist in local collection. (BR 272471)
• Fix collection info display (track count, free space) for iPod and MTP devices. (BR 232093)
• Fix crash at exit with Qt 4.8
• Fix moving applets rightward in the context toolbar.
• Fix breadcrumbs not working properly for the file browser.
• Disable cover fetching action for tracks not in the collection to avoid crash when trying to "save as" a cover. (BR 287604)
• Show default cover in tag dialog when track is not in the collection.
• Fix directory selection when opening album location in tag dialog.
• Fix crash in CoverFoundDialog if progress dialog is cancelled just before fetch is done.
• Correctly parse disambiguation pages for songs in the English Wikipedia. (BR 270054)
• Fix wrong context view applets sizes on start up in some cases.
• Fix Amarok consuming CPU until main window is shown. (BR 278897)
• Fix last.fm 'scrobble composer' option's fallback to artist (BR 286215)
• Fix volume control from within Amarok.
• Fix slow startup because of imported playlists. (BR 284761)
• Fix audio CD detection on Amarok start. (BR 276032)
• Set a default filename scheme for USB Mass Storage (BR 285900)
• Fixed crash during MusicBrainz search. (BR 277475)
• Stability fixes for Dynamic playlist (BR 280056)
• Fixed crash in the Wikipedia Applet. (BR 279813)
• Don't crash with Qt debug builds when iPod is connected. (BR 279798)
• Fixed crash on exit while collection scanner is running. (BR 261421)
• Fixed collection browser tracks grouping after switching to Merged View. (BR 277015)
• Prefer track artist to album artist in Albums applet fiter. (BR 266682)
• Fixed the Metadata, CanGoPrevious, CanGoNext and CanSeek properties of the MPRIS2 interface
• Fixed Wikipedia search field not accepting space character or cursor keys. (BR 266591)
• Fixed SupportedMimeTypes method on the MPRIS2 D-Bus interface, so that it no longer appends duplicate entries on every call.
• Do not use Album Artist as Artist for files without Artist metadata. (BR 281283)
• Fixed crash on decodeing currupted media during MusicDNS search. (BR 284895)
• Prevent crash on getting cover from MP4 files. Patch by Charles Reiss. (BR 283675)
• Prevent several potential and one real media device crash. (BR 284838)
• Fixed iPod album covers not displayed in collection browser. (BR 263268)
• Do not crash when iPod is removed but some iPod tracks are still in playlist. (BR 245852)
• Fixed several potential AmarokUrl related crashes.
• Rework iPod identification so that it is more reliable (BR 263288)
• iPhone 3G (and perhaps later models) should be correctly recognized by Amarok now. (BR 281738)
• Automated Playlist Generator doesn't freeze anymore when it finishes. (BR 277865)
• Use regular MusicBrainz search for tracks with MBID. (BR 280857)
• Always use English AND/OR in Collection Filter even if translations are in effect. (BR 279559)
• Fixed errors in the saved playlists view when removing a playlist. (BR 273358)
• Fixed issue where the Context View wrench was not created when the Context View had no applets. (BR 280382)
• Fixed off-by-one error in organize collection dialog.
• Fixed issue that made TagGuesser dialog to forget setings. (BR 280288)
• Fixed tags guessing from full file path. (BR 264302)
• Work around a Qt bug that crashed Amarok in various situations. (BR 207382, BR 269227)
• Fixed issue with TagDialog that brought to messed up digits order in numerical fields (year, track, disk, score). (BR 277279)
• Made possible to store empty TagDialog's numerical fields. (BR 278921)
• Fixed issue with TagDialog's "Open Destination" button, now It opens correct directory instead of parent. (BR 279147)