I posted a little rant thread over at Ubuntu Forums discussing the "stupid" things about Ubuntu that need to be fixed.  One of the things I just posted about has to do more with Amarok than it does Ubuntu.  I have no idea what you have packed in with Version 2 of Amarok, but I hope it will address this annoying quirk about your guys' great program:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p= ... stcount=34

Here's another one (although this doesn't land so much on Ubuntu's shoulders as it does Amarok's... or does it?)

Amarok, hailed as the top dog of music management and streaming radio stations, comes LOADED with radio stations in it's playlist that won't play "out of the box". (See screenshot). For instance, if you open up the "Cool Stations" channel filter, which has something like 30 "Favorite" "Cool" radio stations, and double-click on one, it doesn't want to play. How cool is that?

What's worse is the error message that is produced gives you absolutely no useful information. Not even a hint as to how to fix the problem or even an offer to fix it all on it's own via a nifty "Download the missing codec" button, which Totem actually does do on it's own in some instances.

Bare in mind this problem persists even if you have Restricted Extras installed. The exact same radio station will play in VLC or Totem, but not in Amarok? New users will see this "stupid" stuff and go, "Hmmm... What good is this???" And likely never use it again. "Do you use Amarok?" "No, why the hell would I? It doesn't do anything cool."

diablo75 wrote:Amarok, hailed as the top dog of music management and streaming radio stations, comes LOADED with radio stations in it's playlist that won't play "out of the box". (See screenshot). For instance, if you open up the "Cool Stations" channel filter, which has something like 30 "Favorite" "Cool" radio stations, and double-click on one, it doesn't want to play. How cool is that?

Sorry, but that really is a completely pointless rant. What do you expect to achieve with it?

That Amarok won't play these streams is obviously not Amarok's fault, but a result of the way it is packaged on your particular distribution, your setup, etc. I'm sorry that this disappointed you in your user experience, but blaming us developers for it is wrong, pointless, and frustrating.

I agree its pretty silly of Ubuntu to not have MP3 support by default. You realize not having MP3 support rules out 90% of radio stations out there.

Thanks for the reply.  All I really wanted to see where you guys thought the best place to put the blame is.  And I have to agree, whatever amarok comes packaged with when a person checks it off in either Synaptic or Add/Remove (Synaptic for dummies) should also include the necessary decoders for getting these stations to play correctly.