Why I think Amarok rocks....

I just purchased an Amarok hoodie and t-shirt; and I couldn't be happier supporting one of my favourite open source projects! What makes it so good? Have you ever heard of Amarok? Chances are if your an OS X or Windows user; you haven't. All this is about to change! The amarok team are busy porting it from it's UNIX underpinnings to Windows and OS X.

Whats to like about Amarok then?

• The blazingly cool name: Amarok is an intuit name for a wolf and also is cool phonetically: am a rock!
• Album covers in full glory (see picture right)
• Full lyrics support; even for the most obscure songs you have laying around!
• Wikipedia integration: truly a gem; you can do what Amarok says "Rediscover your Music" in looking up artist, song or album in the free encyclopedia.
• Playlists form the backone of the player; great for people like me who like to compile sub-sections of songs for car journeys and the like!
• Smart playlists: you get playlists which can update based on how your rate them; which artist or what genre; sorting conditions ar infinite! Example is a 5 Star playlisat with all my top rated tunes!
• Dynamic playlists: built from your static and smart playlists; it can show the last X songs you played and Y upcoming. So I could select my 5 star faves and my Strokes favourites; set it to show 5 last played songs and 15 upcoming. I never need to edit the playlist again as it will auto choose and update the list!
• Statistics: Show all your stats on your collection! From favourite artists to most played albums: it's all there waiting!
• Last.fm & Tags: Tag and compiles your music listening tastes with integration in the most popular social music site online!
• IPod integration is second to none (as well as many 0ther popular players!)! Amarok will convert it to mp3; sync podcasts and playlists; transfer ratings and even submit listened tracks to last.fm!
• All the added extras: Equaliser with presets; Random and Repeat capability; Visualisations! You can even sort you collection by mood with Moodbar installed!
  
• Scripts!?! One of the coolest thing is scripts: think Firefox extensions only slightly more powerful!
• Built-in editing of song names; album names and all info! Don't bother telling Amarok to add the music you just ripped; as long as it's in your music folder its automatically picked up and added!
• An intuitive interface: built for function and power: Amarok is almost perfect in its balance between feature and function. The OSD )On-Screen Display) with show you any details your playlist does; like Artist Name; Album name; Rating and how long a track is!

Man I am exhausted already and I haven't even covered all of the features; their is just too many hidden gems I wouldn't be doing you justice by telling you them all (see: Scripts)! That's why Amarok rocks my world! (As a side note: yes I will get my picture on this page eventually!)