This is an account of my experience trying Amarok 1.4.4, specifically for the Magnatunes feature, as an inexperienced Amarok user, hopefully it will be food for thought when considering user interface improvements to the music store feature.

I have since found out that the grave bug mentioned in my account has been fixed.  I still mention it because there are amarok packages out there with the bug, including the one from kubuntu.org which I used.  I have filed a bug against my distro to hopefully get the package updated ( https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+s ... +bug/75698 )

I had heard about the new "Magnatunes Store" feature, and I really wanted to try it.
Overall it worked well, I encounted one grave bug ( somehow multiple purchases were attempted by amarok ) which could have cost me $30 instead of
$10, but fortunately Magnatunes avoided that ( by detecting the duplicate orders ).

Magnatunes Introduction
========================

I think it would be helpful if amarok could include some more introductory comments about
Magnatunes for people who don't know about it.  Amongst other things I wonder if people
will start searching for big label bands and wondering why they are not found.

I recommend also using amarok to point artists towards Magnatunes as a place to sell their
music.

Finding Magnatunes Music
========================

The layout of the Magnatunes tab with the music list at the top and the album information at the bottom seemed a little odd, because the first thing you have to read is the welcome box which is not in the place expected.

When I first go to the Magnatunes tab I am prompted to click an "Update" button.
This manual labour seems unnecessary , please make amarok do it for me if at all possible.
Secondly the updates process really ought to be automatic, though I appreciate that will
require more work and this is the first iteration of the feature.

The incremental search facility found elsewhere in Amarok would perhaps be useful here, but since Magnatunes doesn't have big name bands the exercise is more of a

The 'Genre' selection dialog allows me to immediately find something that I like.
I found playing the music easy, and the ability to listen to any song on the album handy.
Plus the ability to listen to the whole song is great.  iTunes audio clips do not always
showcase the best part of the song.

Some visual bling ( album art etc. ) in the tree view itself would be greatly appreciated.

Bringing up the purchase dialog was quite straightforward but I think the Purchase button ought to be given some visual emphasis to make it more apparent.  After all, purchasing music is what Magnatunes is there for, it is not intended as a radio station.


Music Purchase Dialog
=====================

The good thing that first strikes me is that this is a single dialog, purchasing
music from Magnatunes is thus very easy and quick.

I immediately notice that there is a lack of security information.
I would like to know how my Visa card details will be kept secure.  This is the most
important omission for me.

The second thing I notice is that the least generous amount of money ( 5 USD ) is
selected by default.
May I suggest that you select slightly above average by default ( eg. 9 USD ).  On
Magnatunes website, the cost box includes generosity hints (eg. 8 USD is average ,
10 USD is generous, 12 USD is very generous ).  Please add those as well.

A question I immediately have is what happens if my amarok or my PC crashes after
I click the purchase button.  What will happen to my purchase?  It probably
is not a good idea to include an "If amarok crashes..." message, but something to the
effect that I will be able to redownload my music at anytime using a link that had been emailed to me would be good.

GRAVE BUG
===========

A serious bug I encountered is that despite only going through the purchase dialog once,
I received 3 receipt emails from Magnatunes.  Fortunately the store seems to be able
to detect duplicate orders and I was not charged more than once.

In case you need to discuss with Magnatunes, please contact me and I will give you a copy of
the order receipt.


After Purchasing
================

The purchase dialog which comes up does not offer a way for me to save the receipt somewhere
safe on my PC or print it.  This would be useful.  I feel that the ability to Print a receipt is likely to be very important to people who are less experienced with PCs, and like to treat purchases online in the same way that they treat shop-brought purchases (ie. keeping a paper trail )

I think it is worth discussing the wording of the confirmation message with Magnatunes - the phrase "evil music industry" struck me as a bit cheap.

I liked the choice of formats available, but I would have appreciated some hints about the differences between formats. eg. MP3 would be "Suitable for playing on most music devices (such as iPod players), Windows and Mac PCs."  Ogg Vorbis would be "The best format for Linux PCs".  I suggest that
instead of WAV, Ogg Vorbis should be selected by default to encourage the use of free formats.  However if this was done, Amarok probably ought to give advice about playing Ogg Vorbis under Windows, MacOS or an easy way to convert the files for playing on an iPod.

The most important omission is that Amarok does not recommend a location to download music, and if I select a location which is outside of my collection, it does not automatically add it to the collection. 
I found adding the download directory to my collection difficult.  I was surprised that my collection was not updated immediately after adding the new directory to the collection.  It took me a while to find out that I had to make amarok manually rescan the collection.  I was also surprised to see this option in the "Tools" menu.

Something which I also discovered is that amarok does not download the album art for the album just purchased.  Instead of using the art shown in the magnatunes box, it found the cover of a different album from a more mainstream artist from Amazon.

If I happen to click on music from the Magnatunes store which is already in my collection,
perhaps amarok could simply add the playlist music to the collection instead?  Or offer an
option to redownload music that has already been purchased.

Magnatunes Summary
==================

It is a great feature, my first experience with it resulted in a purchase ( which is obviously a good sign ) but much more spit 'n polish is needed to make it a really slick experience.

Congratulations Amarok team, please keep up the good work

Hi!

Thanks for the very in depth review. The Magnatune store is my first contribution to Amarok, so I have been quite anxious to see how it was recieved. I am sorry you got hit with the dreaded "multiple purchase" bug, but I know that Magntune has been keeping their eyes open and refunding the people affected.

You make many good suggestions (even a few I have not heard before) and I agree with most of them. I am not sure that all of these things will be implemented by the time Amarok 1.4.5 is released, but I am continously working to improve the Magnatune store.

I will answer a few of your specific points:

I think it would be helpful if amarok could include some more introductory comments about
Magnatunes for people who don't know about it.  Amongst other things I wonder if people
will start searching for big label bands and wondering why they are not found.

I agree, but care must be taken to not clutter the interface with too much information wich is why it was left out in the first version

When I first go to the Magnatunes tab I am prompted to click an "Update" button.
This manual labour seems unnecessary , please make amarok do it for me if at all possible.
Secondly the updates process really ought to be automatic, though I appreciate that will
require more work and this is the first iteration of the feature.

This is on my own wishlist as well! Currently we have no way of knowing when Magnatune.com updates their catalouge, and as the download is a rather large on, we cannot just download it every time Amarok is started. For this to work really well, Magnatune.com has to offer some sort of info about changes to their catalogue.

Some visual bling ( album art etc. ) in the tree view itself would be greatly appreciated.

The current svn version looks a lot better already

I immediately notice that there is a lack of security information.
I would like to know how my Visa card details will be kept secure.  This is the most
important omission for me.

This one we are very aware of, and some info have been added already.

A question I immediately have is what happens if my amarok or my PC crashes after
I click the purchase button.  What will happen to my purchase?  It probably
is not a good idea to include an "If amarok crashes..." message, but something to the
effect that I will be able to redownload my music at anytime using a link that had been emailed to me would be good.

Again I agree! In general (besides the multiple purchase bug) the largest problem with the first version was a general lack of info

The purchase dialog which comes up does not offer a way for me to save the receipt somewhere
safe on my PC or print it.  This would be useful.  I feel that the ability to Print a receipt is likely to be very important to people who are less experienced with PCs, and like to treat purchases online in the same way that they treat shop-brought purchases (ie. keeping a paper trail )

The reciept is already saved by Amarok, but again, more info for the user is needed! Also, in svn there is now a "redownload manager" that automatically parses the stored reciepts and allows you to redownload any previously purchased album.

I liked the choice of formats available, but I would have appreciated some hints about the differences between formats. eg. MP3 would be "Suitable for playing on most music devices (such as iPod players), Windows and Mac PCs."  Ogg Vorbis would be "The best format for Linux PCs".  I suggest that
instead of WAV, Ogg Vorbis should be selected by default to encourage the use of free formats.  However if this was done, Amarok probably ought to give advice about playing Ogg Vorbis under Windows, MacOS or an easy way to convert the files for playing on an iPod.

I had not thought about that at all.... Good points!

Something which I also discovered is that amarok does not download the album art for the album just purchased.  Instead of using the art shown in the magnatunes box, it found the cover of a different album from a more mainstream artist from Amazon.

This has been suggested quite a few times and is something I am already working on!

Again, thanks for taking the time to write your review!

- Nikolaj

p.s. I cannot get the spellchecker to run, so I hope my post is readable...