Amarok

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.  :)

One thing that worried me when I first installed Ubuntu was that I would be forced to learn how to use the CLI, Command Line Interface.  If you're unfamiliar with this, it looks a lot like DOS, where you are given a prompt and must input a command that you want the computer to run.  Having been enslaved by Microsoft from an early age, I have not learned to communicate in this specific language.  I'm all about the point and click...like a lab monkey trained to identify the red ball from the pile.  My worries were unfounded, however, as all the apps I've come across to date are customizable from their respective "settings" tabs, exactly as they would be in Winblows.  This was important for me, specifically when it came to the app I use most often, music player Amarok.

If you read my first post, you'll know that I wiped windows from my system completely.  Now, even though I had my music collection on the back-up disks I had made of Winblows, it seemed like it would be a hassle to try and extract those without re-installing the entire O/S, at least at my level.  So, once Amarok was installed I plugged my iPod (which thankfully contains the majority of my music library) into my USB port and crossed my fingers that Amarok would recognize it.  Not only did Amarok recognize it (and immediately begin playing my music), but I was able to take the files from my iPod and copy them to my Music folder on my hard drive, something that I had heard was tricky running winblows/iTunes, (though, admittedly, I've never tried it, it could be very straightforward).

At first (very quick) glance, Amarok appears to be similar to iTunes, specifically with respect to the playlist layout.  Then it gets much better.  Along the left hand side, you have several options right off the bat.  Context, which I usually leave up, allows you to toggle between Music, Lyrics (!!!), and Artist.  The latter automatically fetches information for the artist currently playing from www.wikipedia.org, Lyrics allows you to sing along with your favorite tune using a variety of databases, but the simply named Music tab is the most useful, (as much as I do love singing along).  It displays the title and artist of the current track, along with a counter telling you the number of times you've listened to that track, albums by that artist including the track listings, and displays similar artists and suggested songs from your library, each scored based on your listening history.  And if you rate the song (more on that later) you're listening to, the suggestions for both songs and artists will change accordingly to more precisely match your preferences.  As well, it allows you to enter a tag for the song currently playing.  Aren't familiar with tagging your music?  Type whatever word you like that describes the current song, and Amarok will keep track.  At this point, I'm still trying to figure out how to load a playlist based on tags, so that when I'm in a specific mood, I can type "metal" and have all tracks I've previously tagged that way populate the playlist, but I'll write about that when I figure it out.

The other options on the left include Collection, (which lists your entire music collection by artist), Files, Devices, (for your external players, such as an iPod), Playlists, and Magnatune, which I'm still playing with and will elaborate on in another post.

As for the rating option, anyone who has used iTunes in the past, (and I feel your pain) will be familiar with the 5 star rating.  Amarok doubles your fun, allowing you 10 different ratings to further distinguish between, "man, this is a really good tune", and "OMFG I LOVE THIS SONG!".  Now, to a lot of people this isn't really a big deal, but I was pretty excited when I found it, as one of my (many) complaints about iTunes was that 5 stars just isn't enough to cover the many different levels of how much I like a song. In Amarok, once you click in the appropriate spot for the desired track, moving your cursor will highlight between one and five stars.  If you highlight then click, say, 4 then all you have to do is click the 4th star and it will shrink, essentially giving that track 3.5 stars.  Hovering over ratings will give you a text description of the rating, in the previous example, "Very Good".  Rated the wrong track?  Just click on the first star once to shrink it, and a second time to erase it.

Nicole