[ale] playlists not available in RealPlayer?

[Jay Loden]

It's all about what you use your music player for, and how you use it. 
If you're a huge minimalist and all you want is a playlist and some play 
controls, then XMMS is probably for you. On the other hand, Amarok 
offers iTunes-like "jukebox" format, the ability to sync with iPods (or 
other portable media players), album covers and lyrics, animations, and 
lots more, all nicely integrated with KDE.

Personally, I tend toward just using simple playlists like you 
described. However, I think the Amarok interface is more attractive, I 
like the integration with KDE, and occasionally I really do enjoy having 
lyrics or album art close at hand. I've now switched to a Macbook for 
most of my daily computing (and hence to iTunes on OS X). However, if I 
were still using a Linux desktop on a daily basis, I would definitely be 
interested in having all of the above tied into my iPod as well - which 
only Amarok offers for Linux users.

I guess the point is, if you're a minimalist user who just wants the 
player to be invisible in the background, then XMMS and Amarok are going 
to have minimal differences for you (if any). I can certainly understand 
that approach, since I used XMMS (and Coolplayer on Windows before that) 
for the same reasons before switching over. At the same time, my best 
friend has an enormous music collection and manages it all through 
Amarok quite happily, and I'd consider him a "power user" of his media 
player ;)

The song notifications can be turned off in the Amarok preferences. I'd 
suggest you try turning those off and just use Amarok for a few days. 
See if it grows on you...if it doesn't, worst case scenario you can just 
go back to XMMS :)

-Jay

Bj?rn Gustafsson wrote:
> So what's cool about Amarok?  It looks pretty, but that may just be
> because I'm used to XMMS. :)  All I use a player for is to randomize
> all of my ~6k tracks (about 1/2 my CD collection that I've ripped).
> So far the only "fancy" feature I've seen, the popup with the new
> title, seems mildly annoying to me.
>