Hi!

I started using Amarok a couple of months ago, after having spent years using the outstanding Apollo mp3 player on Windows (http://koti.welho.com/hylinen/apollo/). I love the context tab in Amarok - that in and of itself has made the switch very happy for me!

One thing that I really miss from Apollo, though, is the capability to have recursive playlists, i.e., playlists that contain other playlists. So, for example, I always have an "Artist.m3u" that looks like so:
Artist - First Album.m3u
Artist - Second Album.m3u
.
.

In Apollo each of the contained playlists is then shown a little indented, and with total playlist time on the line with the playlist, something like this:

Playlist                                              3:00:00
  Artist1                                              2:00:00
    Artist1 - First Album                    1:10:00
      Some song                                  0:05:24
      .
      .
    Artist 1 - Second Album              0:50:00
      Another song                              0:04:32
      .
      .
  Artist2                                              1:00:00
    Artist2 - Debut Album                    1:00:00

etc.

Does Amarok have this feature carefully hidden somewhere?
If not, could the developers please consider this as a feature request?

Thanks,
~mysh

Why make playlists? Try the "Collection" browser, and use the tree view. You can choose to group by Artist/Album for example.

If the "Collection" browser isn't made more customizeable, I can surely see this being usefull, as it gives you complete control.

I myself currently have an album, 2 disc, disc 1 with songs by the artist and disc 2 with songs remixed by the artist. That album should be listed under "Trentemoeller", but it currently under VA, and if I select "Do not show under VA" only the first disc is placed correct, the other is scattered in 10 places or so.

A simple, yet elegant, solution would be to support an "Album Artist" tag, and that can be done with minimum effort.

Hans Chen wrote:Why make playlists? Try the "Collection" browser, and use the tree view. You can choose to group by Artist/Album for example.

That sorts the albums alphabetically, not chronologically...
Secondly, playlists allow me to collect songs/albums by any grouping I choose, not just by the ones provided by the tool. For example, in my Radiohead playlist, I also have Thom Yorke's Eraser. The collection browser doesn't let me do that, as far as I can tell.

Incidentally, after posting my original post, I realised that the Amarok playlist view doesn't even allow the track length to be displayed - is that right, or am I missing something here?

Cheers,
~mysh

that's what smart playlists are for...

Hmmmm... thanks for the tip on Smart Playlists (there's a nice tutorial on them here: http://amarok.kde.org/wiki/Dynamic_Playlist_Walkthrough ). That's certainly better than having to re-build playlists every time, but still nowhere near the fine customisability of making my own playlists. Still, it'll tide me over until I have time to try to modify the code myself...

Thanks,
~mysh