As some of you already know, the Amarok team is building the next version of their music playing software with the QT toolset. That is to say, it should compile well as a cross-platform application (instead of just for Linux and other Unix variants).

Some of you may also know that I think Amarok is one of the better reasons to switch to Ubuntu, but let’s be honest here, it’d be nice not to have to. And from what I’ve seen, the digital music playback segment on Windows is dominated by iTunes (and oh my word, how iTunes sucks) and WinAmp (show its age really badly). Amarok 2, on the other hand, does everything iTunes and WinAmp do with music, and does it better and easier and — you have to realise that for an open source application this is major news — has a beautiful user interface to boot.

The above is a screenshot of Amarok 2 on Windows. Please do be aware that’s not the finished product.

But I’m still excited. Soon I can stop using WinAmp at work. Finally.

Tags: amarok, audio, geekery