Amarok, a familiar name from the Linux community, has decided it’s newest release will be available to all you Windows users. But what is Amarok? Amarok is an open source, extremely popular music player. It’s current version is only available in Linux, in fact I’m listening to my music through Amarok right now. Before I switched to Linux I was a heavy iTunes user but now I’d rather use Amarok. I can’t really pin-point anything that makes Amarok so much better than iTunes, I guess it’s just that I’m comfortable with Amarok now. For all you iTunes haters, Linux lovers, or people looking for a decent music app, Amarok is worth a good look. A list of what Amarok has to offer:

• Quick and simple drag and drop playlist creation
• Super eye-candy interface
• Multiple backends supported (xine, NMM and Helix)
• 10 band equalizer
• Automatic cover art download using Amazon services
• The unique and powerful Context Browser
• Automatic play-statistics generation (iRate style)
• Full lyrics download
• Funky visualisations from libvisual and XMMS
• Streaming from any KIO source
• Crossfading
• Fully configurable translucent OSD for track changes
• K3B (CD-burning) integration
• KDE integration
• Style your Context Browser with custom CSS styles.
• Save space in your Context Browser with collapsable boxes
• Show the Context Browser without amaroK open through the konqueror sidebar!
• Full support for last.fm! Share your music taste with friends on the net
• Generate dynamic playlists based on last.fm suggestions
• Support for sqlite, MySQL and PostgreSQL databases ensuring fast collection access
• Support for iPod®, iRiver® and generic UMS mp3 players with the all new media-browser
• Powerful scripting interface, allowing for easy extension of amaroK
• Complete DCOP access
• Translated into more than 35 languages, thanks to the KDE internationalization team.

I know a few of these don’t apply to Windows users, but most of these features will be included in the Windows version for Amarok2.

Here’s a quick screenshot I borrowed from the Amarok blog:

For more information about the Amarok2 development for Windows, check out the Amarok blog.