Hi, I'm just trying out amarok, and I'm a little confused by the interface. As far as I can tell, it's quite playlist-centric. That is, one cannot play an album directly, but must create a playlist first. Is that true? It's not really a big deal, but just slightly fiddly.

Having said that, a major issue for me is searching a music library. For example, I might want to arrange my songs/albums by playcount, so I can see what I've played few times. Or by last-played date, so I can see what I've not listened to for a while. Or by (release) date, so I can listen to something recorded around 1972. Is it possible to directly show and sort by this information from the media-sources pane? Or would I have to move all my music (11 000 songs) to a playlist, and sort from there?

I do like the customisability and depth of the playlist pane, but I feel that some of those features also belong in the media-sources pane.

Did you try the dynamic playlist for that? I lets you generate playlists automatically based on the bias you choose. Please also have a look at our handbook: http://userbase.kde.org/Amarok/Manual/

Mamarok wrote:Did you try the dynamic playlist for that? I lets you generate playlists automatically based on the bias you choose.

Yes, but it's not really the same, nor does it allow the level of control and transparency that I'd like. As I mentioned earlier, the sort and display options in the playlist pane itself seem far more extensive than those available on the media-sources pane.

I looked at some of the source codes. It seems that Amarok understands only playlists. Even shuffle mode is a pre-made playlist which the player component plays in order. Shuffling on the fly is not possible.

Seems like Amarok was made to be used in a certain way ONLY. I'm really sad for not be able to use Amarok for its features it offers if it doesn't allow me to play music the way i like.