Amarok Part 2 - Magnatune

So I mentioned in my last post that I would expand on the Magnatune tab within the Amarok player once I had a chance to play with it.  This was easier said than done, as I was experiencing some buggy behaviour with respect to *some* of my audio output.  And before you ask, yes, the first thing I checked was the volume ;)  Being a recovering winblows user, I fell back on the only real solution that seemed to "fix" anything in the microsoft world: reboot, (or in this case, restart).  This did occasionally fix the issue, but never for long.  Then, my Unix tutor explained to me that I was running Gnome, and Amarok was a KDE app.  Although KDE apps can run in Gnome, there may be some minor issues.  So, with some help I installed KDE, set it as default and have had no problems since.  One thing I was very happy about was that even though I had changed from Gnome to KDE, nothing on my system had changed.  Of course, my tutor had told me this would be the case, but being a former zombie in Gates' army, I could not fathom how everything would remain the same.  Kinda like trying to explain snow to someone who has never left Cuba.

 

Magnatune's  claim is that they "are not evil".  They expand on this tag-line by explaining that they "work directly with independent musicians world-wide to give you downloads of MP3's and perfect-quality WAV files.  We never work with major labels, and our musicians always get 50%.  You can listen to every album in it's entirety before buying or becoming a member".  Pretty awesome.  On it's own, Magnatune is a really good place to not only find new music (and some music videos), but to help support the up and coming bands that you think deserve it.  The magic happens when you team it up with Amarok.  Based on your music preferences, the Magnatune tab within Amarok suggests artists in every genre that you may like.  It gives you multiple artists, some of them with multiple albums, and allows you to add them directly to your current playlist.  I'm not talking a 30 second preview of each song, either.  Complete tracks on what I assume are complete albums.  For example, when I chose the genre metal, I was given six different artists, and the shortest album contained 7 songs.  Now, at the end of each song a voice tells you the track number, band name, album, and that you can buy it at magnatune.com.  I don't find this to be a problem at all, as it's about a 10 second message, and I get to listen to each song in it's entirety.  Sure, it may mess up the flow of an album, but still, who cares?  After all, this is free.  Also included in the Magnatune tab within Amarok is a bio on the artist, as well as album covers, but my favourite part about being able to add each track into my playlist is that I can rate each one.  Now, I won't go into how much I love the 10 star rating system again, (I really love it), but in this case it is especially useful.  You see, I have 99 metal tracks to listen to, by 6 different artists.  I am currently listening to them in the background as I type this, occasionally switching over to rate the current song, (enjoying "Siamese Suicide" off of The Citadel by Heir to Madness right now).  This way, even if it takes me a week or more to get through every album, I can look back and see at a glance which artists I particularly enjoyed, and then I can purchase albums by those artists, knowing that 50% of the cost is going directly to the band, and not getting eaten up by their label.

 

An interesting article featured in USA Today about Magnatune quotes founder John Buckman as saying, "We want to be the Linux of the music world".  He is referring to the fact that contracts with artists allow for a certain kind of sharing of their music allowing users to "take it apart, improve on it, and use it to make something new" essentially making it open source.

 

So, in the time it has taken me to write this blog entry and peruse the Magnatune website, I've listened to three artists, Heir to Madness (alright), Mandrake Root (couldn't even make it through the whole album), and Pain Factor, an artist I will be supporting for sure.  Excuse me while I fetch my credit card.  :)