Amarok/Archives/Campaign:2.0/Analysis

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Core Competence

  • good and fast support
  • contextual information
    • last.fm related songs
    • last.fm+wikipedia related artists
    • artist/album/song information
    • lyrics fetching
    • playcount
    • score & rating
  • easy access to collection
    • sorting
    • search
      • quick and dirty search
      • advanced search
  • podcast support
  • the "amarok-feeling" (as a result of the stuff mentioned above)
    • amarok makes you love your music
    • amarok literally makes you rediscover your music
    • using amarok you confess that music is an important part of you life

Competition

Linux

Banshee
  • (+) development supported by novell
  • (+) extendable plugin system
  • (-) slow startup due to mono
  • (-) high memory usage
Rhythmbox
  • (+) easy playlist creation
  • (+) podcast support
  • (+) default gnome player
  • (-) awful interface (messy navigation)
  • (-) problems with importing various tracks
  • (-) crashing a lot
XMMS
  • (+) winamp clone (first choice for switchers who used winamp)
  • (-) not very handy GTK1 file selector
  • (-) crappy GUI
  • (-) no music library at all
  • (-) no podcast support
  • (-) loosing market segments to other linux players

Mac

iTunes
  • (+) podcast subscription (ilife-people love podcasts and they get them automatically downloaded; but do amarok users love them too? Are podcasts even more important?)
  • (+) music library
  • (+) well integrated with iPod
  • (+) well integrated with iTunes store
  • (+) lovely album view
  • (+) iTunes music sharing
  • (+) bundled with mac
  • (+) used by every proper iPod user
  • (+) smooth interface
  • (+) bloody easy&fast search
  • (+) relatively large navigation buttons
  • (±) available for win and mac (not linux though)
  • (-) no plugin support
  • (-) only supports some formats out of box (MP3, AAC, WMA)
  • (-) no button shortcuts (at least not on win?)
  • (-) not working on Windows Vista
  • (-) no queuing system (only playlists and party shuffle)

Windows

Foobar2000
  • (+) tabbed playlists
  • (+) small and fast
  • (±) extensible through plugins (not that much available/useful)
  • (-) crappy GUI
iTunes

see mac

Real Player One (>26 million)
  • (+) kicking ass streaming support
  • (-) very very very commercial
  • (+) Support for large number of media file formats "out of the box"
Winamp (>5 million)
  • (+) easy to use
  • (+) memory saving
  • (+) supports almost every audio format (even vorbis)
  • (+) big list of awesome vis
  • (+) themable
  • (+) good streaming support
  • (+) extendable plugin system
  • (+) generic mobile player support
  • (+) supported by IM's for what-I-am-listening-to feature
  • (-) music library is bascially ... shit
  • (-) even modern themes don't look that good
  • (-) no handy queuing
  • (-) xmms-like multi window system is harder to use
  • (-) button-size competes with Planck-Scale (veeery small)
Windows Media Player (>45 million)
  • (+) bundled with windows (windows == biggest market share == big plus for wmp)
  • (+) appeals well integrated into windows
  • (+) playback from within IE (ActiveX) and MFF (plugin)
  • (+) generic mobile player support
  • (±) rips by default to WMA
  • (-) only supports MP3 and WMA out of the box


Target Groups

Users

  • Age: 14-(about)35
  • everyone who's listening and/or buying music on the PC
    • using mobile players
    • is interested in contextual information on his music
Needs & Views
  • the interface has to be bloody easy to use (self-explaning)
  • easy and fast playlist creation
  • easy and good looking collection management
  • search feature for fast access to a certain song
  • ability to obtain statistics about the listening behaviour
  • easy ripping
  • easy extendable with all kind of plugins
  • hell good looking interface or the possability to make it be good looking (themability)
  • low memory usage (for gamers)
  • easy device/media-player integration
  • I-wanna-show-what-music-I-am-listening-to feature for instant messengers (Needed: Plugins for messengers, scripts for amarok. Would google support us in GoogleTalk?)

Distributions

  • main stream distros, using KDE or don't prefer any DE at all
Needs & Views
  • easy packagable
  • ability to preconfigure stuff
  • proper use of standards
  • way to give feedback
  • wanna ship the most stable/usable/good looking application to their users


The Brand's Image

The Brand's Advantage

  • Free and Libre (=> e.g. Firefox-users feel better than IE-users because they believe they are cool)
  • Possibility to REALLY influence development by feedback and bug reports
  • Fast release cycle
  • High quality, stable product (at least on *nix)

Values

  • Music is an important thing
  • Keep Amarok easy to use
  • Always have fun
  • Team work is awesome
  • The team is responsible, not a single person

USP (UDP)

  • available for *nix, Windows and Mac OS
  • Good user - developer communication
  • Innovative development
  • Fast development
  • FLOSS
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