Amarok article

[Greg Meyer]

On Thursday 13 September 2007, Martin Steigerwald wrote:
>
> 1) When writing about current state of affairs (i.e. Amarok 1.4.7), is
> there anything that you think I should include in any case? Anything that
> might be easily overlooked? I think I have quite a good grasp on the key
> features, but if you have some additional input for me, go ahead...
>
Dynamic playlists are important.  

Scoring is often misunderstood, because people try to think of it in terms of 
a rating, but that is different.  Scoring is designed to tell you what music 
you prefer by reporting what you actually listen to.  I know it changed the 
way I purchase music because it is focused on the the music I actually like 
instead of the music I thought I liked.  Much of the criticism was centered 
around the scoring algorithm, but this can be controlled by the user since 
scoring is done via script and the user can create their own custom scoring 
script.  

> 2) If I provide a tips and tricks section in my article, what tips&tricks
> should be in there IMHO? Anything else than
> http://amarok.kde.org/wiki/Tips_and_Tricks?
>
A big one for me is feeding a dynamic playlist with a smart playlist rather 
something static or user created.  I created a smart playlist that selects 
songs with a score btween 80 and 95, with more than 8 plays, and hasn't been 
heard in 3 weeks.  Now every time I run this it changes, so if I feed my 
dynamic mode with this, I basically get a never ending playlist of songs I 
really like and haven't heard in the very recent past.  There are endless 
other possibilities to query the collection with a smart playlist and have 
the result presented as an ever changing surprise.

Another thing might be that amarok is really designed around helping organize 
your collection and discover things about it.  It has a slightly different 
metaphor than say itunes, which treats everything like a playlist implicitly.  
Playlists in amarok are more explicit and sometimes users get confused 
because they expect amarok to act in a more itunesish sort of way.  I always 
send users that really desire this behavior towards juK, which is more 
collection centric and is more like the itunes metaphor of simplicity.

Another huge item for more technical users is the ability to retrieve 
information and control amarok through the KDE DCOP interface.  This will be 
replaced in 2.0 with DBUS.  Just type "dcop amarok" to see all the various 
dcop targets.  Then try dcop amarok player nowPlaying:

     user at localhost $ dcop amarok player nowPlaying
     The Cure - Friday I'm In Love

"dcop amarok player showOSD" displays the OSD, etc.  You can use the KDE DCOP 
browser to see everything available.

> 3) What social web offers and music shops does Amarok 1.4.7 support: Is it
> lastfm, magnatune.com, wikipedia, podcasts, lyrics or did I miss one?
> There are also streaming radios, but I think most of those except lastfm
> are one-way (producer => customer).
>
last.fm is the only true social music service on there.  Most of the other 
services used are really more of the retrieve information and display it to 
the user variety.  Download cover art from amazon, retrieve artist info from 
wikipedia, download lyrics from lyrc.

I don't think Magnatune fits neatly into either category, as it is a way to 
preview and discover new music, but also gives you the opportunity to 
compensate the artist if you like it.

Something you may have missed, which is a feature with weaknesses so you might 
not want to get people too excited about it, is the musicbrainz integration.  
A web service to help identify and tag tracks.

> 4) Whats the main point about integrating social web offers like lastfm,
> wikipedia, lyrics and alternative music shops like magnatune.com with
> Amarok. I think along
>
> - promoting alternative ways of licensing and sharing music? free
> software - free music
>
> - fill the "Rediscover your music" slogan with live
>
> - offering two-way approaches of experiencing music to complement just
> listening to / consuming (=one way) it
>
> Is it roughly about this? Anything to add?
>
I would say that the main reason is that people want to use these services.  
these kind of features are added because many of the devs like and use 
last.fm and they want to use amarok, their favorite player, to interact.  
they liek to browse wikipedia for artist info, so why not build it in, etc.

Those other things like promoting aren't necessarily secondary, but more like 
values of the people involved which ends up coming out in the features.


> 5) How do you see privacy concerns with social web offers related to
> Amarok? To me it seems that lastfm has a quite acceptable privacy policy,
> I even did not have to provide an email address to register. How does
> Amarok ensure that the user is in control on what data Amarok sends out
> to those service providers? IMHO there could be some more hints in the
> Amarok UI and documentation. Are there any plans for improvement?
>
Well, we are pretty clear about what information the app sends when it 
integrates with a web service.  It is also quite possible for anyone to 
review the source code for anything else.  I know not anyone can do that, but 
since it is available to anyone, someone can audit the code and report and 
rogue data being sent.

> 6) When doing a part about Amarok 2 what in your eyes should be mentioned
> in it? I have a collection of the following:
>
> - context view becomes main focus of the application and is plasmified.
> Here I would like more details. What does this plasma integration
> actually give to the user, what are the advantages? What are your plans
> for context view? Will it be possible to switch back to a layout like
> Amarok 1.x like previous Amarok users might be used to
>
> - enhancements regarding integration of social web offers and music shops:
> I read that a generic interface for social web offers and new music shops
> is already in implementation phase. What will be the advantages of it?
> What new social web offers and what new music shops are on schedule? I
> read something about Jamendo, concert information.
>
> - planned support for Windows and Mac OS X, while Unix remains primary
> platform
>
This is probably only going to come after the 2.0 is significantly along the 
way and shouldn't be stressed too much.  You can even build 1.4.x on OSX, so 
the real news is windows support, and although the app is being architected 
with that in mind, the port to windows won't really start until the 2.0 is 
working smoothly in the native environment.

Other than that I can't really comment too much on what is going on with 2.0.


> Anything else? I bet there sure is. I would like to limit my article to
> features that have matured enough so that they very likely will be in
> Amarok 2.
>
I am sure I could think of others but I am under a bit of a time constraint 
and can't spend much more time now.  When is your deadline?

>
> Ok, I guess thats enough for starters. Got to remember that I it is just
> to become an article, not a book and that I better leave you some time to
> develop on Amarok ;-).
>
You can always jump in and add to the user's handbook :)

Hopefully I haven't said anything that is incorrect and hopefully one of the 
coders will jump in and correct me if I am wrong.
-- 
Greg