Back in June, I reviewed Amarok 2.1 and was far from impressed. Amarok 2.2 has been released recently, and it’s a definite improvement, and may even be the best music player released this year.

The Amarok team is excited to announce the release of Amarok 2.2. In three and a half months, Amarok has made a huge leap forward, gaining many new features and a lot of old features from 1.4 have returned.

Apple will tell you that iTunes 8.2.1 fixes bugs and, in particular, improves interoperability with iPhones and iPod Touches running iPhone 3.0 Software. But, it really it only has one "feature:" It blocks the Palm Pre's iTunes compatibility. KDE thinks there's another way.

With the tagline “Let there be light” the all new Amarok 2.1 release seems to be another step closer to make the popular music player the world’s best.

Minirok is a minimalist audio player which ships with a simple and intuitive interface, which kind of resembles Amarok.

One of the new additions which are noteworthy to mention for Amarok 2.1 is the introduction of the classic playlist (the one from 1.4) and also the playlist editor.

Amarok 2.1 Beta 1 is out in the wild! Featuring one of the longest ChangeLogs in Amarok history, this beta release showcases what is possible when building on the strong technical foundations that have been laid with Amarok 2.0. Nearly all parts of Amarok have received attention, and while not a final release, it is already very usable and quite stable.

The current version of Amarok 2 does not include all the features 1.4 had, like the equalizer, statistics or queue manager, however it is a new foundation for the releases which will follow. The introduction of widgets is very useful if you ask me, and I also liked the new interface.