Software update: Amarok 2.1.1

The Amarok program is a popular audio player for KDE and features extensive possibilities to create (dynamic) playlists, search for lyrics on the internet and adjust MP3 tags. In addition, Amarok can play streams and supports various backends such as xine, NMM and MAS. The developers have released Amarok 2.1.1 with the following announcement:

Amarok 2.1.1 “Oceania” released

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 😀 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 😉

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.

Bug fixes:

• 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 canceling or 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)