Amarok is a free software music player for Linux and other varieties of Unix.It makes use of core components from the K Desktop Environment, but is released independently of the central KDE release cycle.
Despite the fact that Amarok uses wolf-based artwork, and that the name "amarok" or "amaroq" literally refers to the Inuktitut word for "wolf", it was originally named after the album Amarok by Mike Oldfield.
The 1.2 release originally had a wolf icon, but this was later withdrawn due to similarity with the logo of WaRP Graphics Inc.
Amarok's wolf logo has now been modified sufficiently so as not to infringe on WaRP's trademarked logo, and reinstated.
Originally named amaroK, it was renamed to Amarok in June 2006.
The latest version of the software called Amarok 2 was released on 2008-12-10 and it is a complete aesthetic and functional redesign of the Amarok 1.4x series.
The project was originally started by Mark Kretschmann as a means of bettering XMMS due to several usability problems, which interfered with the addition of new files to the playlist due to several user interface elements existing for one task. The original amaroK was created based upon the idea of a two-pane interface seen in Midnight Commander, and the first version of the software released solely by Kretschmann, was based upon the ideal of allowing users to drag-and-drop music into an interface in which the playlist was displayed on the right and information on the left.
After the initial release of amaroK, several developers joined the project to form the "Three M's" the first of whom was Max Howell, who acted as an interface designer and programmer for the project, alongside Muesli (Christian Muehlhaeuser), who also provided user interface insight and programming till the late 1.4 versions.
Amarok 1.4 established a reputation for innovation after its release, but maintaining development with the old framework became more difficult as Amarok grew. With the release of KDE4 the developers decided to give Amarok a complete overhaul aesthetically as well as functionally leading to the birth of a new, improved and robust media player named Amarok 2.
marok serves many functions rather than just playing music files. For example, Amarok can be used to organize a library of music into folders according to genre, artist, and album, can edit tags attached to most music formats, associate album art, attach lyrics, and automatically "score" music as it is played.
Although a more technical list of features is listed below, here are the primary functions or uses for Amarok:
* Playing media files in various formats including but not limited to (depending on the setup) FLAC, Ogg, MP3, AAC, WAV, Windows Media Audio, Apple Lossless, WavPack, TTA and Musepack. Amarok does not play digital music files embedded with DRM.* Tagging digital music files (currently FLAC, Ogg, WMA, AAC, MP3, and RealMedia).
* Associating cover art with a particular album, and retrieving the cover art from Amazon
* Creating and editing playlists, including smart and dynamic playlists. The dynamic playlists can use such information as the "score" given to a song by an Amarok script, and the playcount which is stored with the song.
* Synchronizing, retrieving, playing, or uploading music to the following digital music players: iPod, iriver iFP, Creative NOMAD, Creative ZEN, MTP, Rio Karma and USB devices with VFAT (generic MP3 players) support.
* Displaying artist information from Wikipedia and retrieving song lyrics.
* Last.fm support, including submitting played tracks (including those played on some digital music players) to Last.fm, retrieving similar artists and playing Last.fm streams.
* Podcast
From version 1.4.4, Amarok introduced the integration of Magnatune, a non-DRM digital music store, enabling users to purchase music in Ogg, FLAC, WAV and MP3 formats.
Some of these features depend on other programs or libraries that must be installed on the computer to operate.
Download
Precompiled binaries for your operating system may be available for download. Please, select yours to see what you have to do to enjoy Amarok.
Linux Distributions, BSD, other Unixes
 (K)ubuntu |  openSUSE |  Fedora |  Debian |  Mandriva Linux | |
 Gentoo |  Arch |  Ark Linux |  Pardus |   Other (FreeBSD, Yoper, etc.) | |
Screenshots of the current stable version, 2.0
Screenshots of the previous stable series, 1.4
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