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I used to use Amarok music player around 10+ years ago and it was the best music player I had ever used, from any operating system. I'm not the only one with this opinion. So it has come as a surprise to me to learn that it's no longer maintained and is unusable for beginner or novice linux users. It will only run on older distros such as Ubuntu 16.04 but doesn't actually work on more recent linux distros, even though it's still in the repos. One must be a linux expert to find workarounds to force it to work on more recent distros, due to it not actually being maintained anymore.

It also has obsolete Internet music streams that need to be removed or updated.

Due to Amarok being the best that I've ever used, and hearing from many others who've said the same thing, I am shocked that in recent years it has been completely abandoned. I've only found one project in the open source community which claims to be making a music player that's inspired by Amarok, so that we can have a suitable replacement. That's the Clementine project. See: https://www.clementine-player.org/

But Clementine is based off of Amarok 1.4, plus hasn't been updated since April 2016!

What would it take to revive Amarok? If it's not going to be revived, I think we should at least give it a good eulogy, since it was the best I had ever used, and I know of many people who've also said this. Someone needs to tell the story of The Greatest Music Player that Ever Existed. As far as I had known, that player rose to the top, the clear victor over all its rivals. For me to see that it's dead, and looking at its remains in some of the more recent linux distros, is like looking at the ruins of a once-great empire. Trying to get it to work on MX Linux 19 KDE Neon (Ubuntu 18.04) and Ubuntu 19.10 is like telling a aging, once-great athlete to play their sport like they did in their prime, and then getting depressed realizing that they're never going to get back to their previous form and should just declare retirement. I'm surprised no one else seems to be acknowledging this great rise to prominence on linux and now it's near-total disappearance from the scene, and just how quiet it's been.

I would also like to know if people just don't use big music players anymore, due to the things such as:

* there are streaming music services which play in the web browser
* youtube playlists
* people just use their phones
* one can add stream url's to a simple player such as vlc or audacious, and a big music player has stuff people don't want

So for the above reasons maybe there aren't enough people interested in developing music players on linux? It can at least be useful to have a music player with a good interface for Internet radio streams, with built-in links, so I think a player like Amarok can still have use in today's world.

I'd like to know what other people think about all of this.

It looks like JuK and Elisa are the contenders to replace Amarok.

JuK is the only one that's been developed enough for public release. But it doesn't show any Internet streams in screenshots on its homepage (https://juk.kde.org/), and looks like it's a shell of what Amarok once was, missing most features, but it doesn't state that it's inspired by Amarok or stives to be what Amarok was. So I have no idea what direction the JuK project is going to take. Looks like it can handle some basics for a personal music collection, and that's it. No information about Internet streams.

Elisa is described on its page (https://kde.org/applications/multimedia/org.kde.elisa) as still under development. It has a pretty lame one sentence description (emphasis added):

"A simple music player that should be easy to use. It does not require any configuration before one can use it. "

And it doesn't mention anything about being inspired by Amarok or trying to be a replacement for Amarok.

I'm surprised Elisa is promoted on the kde apps page (https://kde.org/applications/) when it's not even ready for public release yet, and the description page says nothing useful about it.

It's like there just isn't much effort going into developing a decent KDE music player.

There is a German saying: "Totgesagte leben länger."

Please don't assume because there was a hiatus that Amarok doesn't exist anymore, we are currently working on an alpha release of version 3. Please join the amarok-devel mailing list if you want to give a hand.

I'm not the only one who thinks Amarok is dead. A quick look into the forums and I found a user at the discussion (viewtopic.php?f=116&t=160431) said 3 months ago, "i am assuming the amarok is no longer being worked on." A user at (viewtopic.php?f=116&t=141464) said in 2017, "Bye Amarok".

I can see from the first link that there aren't enough developers. But I know a lot of people liked amarok, so there's got to be a good number of people out there who would be willing to help. Maybe it just needs promotion?

If Amarok isn't dead, how come it's not listed on the KDE apps page? Everyone who's interested in KDE is going to look at that app list and notice Amarok isn't there and just assume it's dead. I'm wondering if putting Amarok on it but marking it as needing developers would get people's attention.

Why not appeal to the communities that use KDE the most, such as OpenSUSE KDE and Kubuntu? Has anyone asked around if people are interested in developing Amarok? A message should be sent out that in the absence of developers, Amarok is going to be frozen forever in development.

We are not listed there for the moment because there hasn't been an official release of Amarok 3 yet, we are working on the alpha release as we speak. Several distributions already ship a pre-alpha version aka 2.9.70, a preview of 2.9.71 is running on my computer right now.

Hello,
It's now November 2020. Hopefully you're all well.

Is there any chance of an update on the status of Amarok?

It really feels like time to give up hope for V3. Like the op, I considered Amarok the best music player I'd ever used. Am I foolish to carry on waiting for V3?
Should I just put up with Clementine?

To answer showboat, I use a laptop with Kubuntu to do my work, and a decent music player is essential to that process. Amarok used to be perfect for my use-case. Clementine is OK, but the others I've tried don't come close. I don't listen on a phone very much, and have a large collection of ripped CD's.

Thanks

Graham

Hi Graham,

if you are using Kubuntu, you should try the excellent PPA for Amarok made by Pedro Gomes: https://launchpad.net/~pgomes/+archive/ubuntu/amarok

We have the same problem as ever: lack of available developers.

Oh Joy, Amarok is back!

It works (well, so far). I'm happy listening to Mozart, re-ripping all my cd's to flac.
Thank you so much. Shouldn't we be shouting this from the rooftops?

Regards,
Graham
... sudo apt remove clementine

Thank you for still working on Amarok. Like the others, I am using Amarok since it's initial release. For a long time now, running the latest GIT version on Gentoo. It's really the best audio player; I simply cannot adjust myself to Juk, Elisa and the others. I really wonder why people put their energy into creating something new like Elisa and are not contributing to this established, proved, great player?! There is no need no reinvent the wheel over and over again! Amarok does the job!

Hello,

Is there any info I can look at regarding Amarok 3? Like what have they changed, revamped, removed, etc. Are there any screenshots I can look at?
To be honest, I wasn't a fan of Amarok 2. Currently I am using Elisa and am semi-happy with it. I wish it had more juice to it like streaming support.

Kind regards

I've tried a bunch of music players and the only one I really like like is Strawberry, a fork of Clemetine. Audacious is a close second.

https://www.strawberrymusicplayer.org/

Closing this thread, because we just released a technical preview of what will become Amarok 3.0. Developers welcome!