The Amarok team is on its way to releasing the next version of Amarok i.e. Amarok 2.2, code named "Crystal Clear", with the release of its first beta.

Quite a few changes has been introduced with this version. The lots of work has been done with the playlist. It now supports multi-level sorting and full or partial shuffling. The grouping of tracks in the playlist can also be changed now. And to top it all, these differnt playlist settings can be saved in the form of bookmarks. The bookmarks can then be sorted, filtered etc. Another exciting new feature is the introduction of videoclip applet which can play music videos from various websites like YouTube, Dailymotion, Vimeo etc. A photo applet, which shows photos of the current artist, has also been added. It is also possible to change the layout of the different elemnts and even place them on top of each other, in which case you can switch between them using tabs.

The collection scanner has also recieved some improvements and bugfixes from the earlier versions. The media player support and audio cds handling has also been improved.

It does not seem like the version 1.4 users will be swayed to shift to the new Amarok. However, it certainly seems like a step in the right direction.

You can see the full changelog in the Amarok site.