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Since my dream of a native OS X port of [Amarok][1] seems unlikely I've taken to exploring other options. Today I ran across [Jajuk][2], a cross-platform, Java-based music jukebox. Jajuk is a Free Software published under GPL license and requires Java 1.5.
Jajuk has been around a while, but they recently upgraded to version 1.3 which utilizes mPlayer to add more supported music formats. Because I don't have mPlayer installed I wasn't able to test that feature, but MP3 files play fine without an extra work.
Jajuk has some nice features and mirrors Amarok fairly closely. highlights include:
* Ogg, ID3 V1 and V2 support
* Dockable perspectives and views
* Wikipedia view displays artist discography
* Visual catalog of all albums by covers
* Dynamic playlist creation by drag and drop
* Configurable cross-fade
* Recursive play/repeat/shuffle/push in directories/sub-directories or by genre/artist/albums...
* Best Of smart function to play your favorite tracks
Jajuk recommends using Java 1.5, but I got it to run using 1.4, though it did flicker occasionally so if you want to test it on OS X without upgrading Java it's possible, though for long term usage I'd recommend you upgrade to Java 1.5.
Jajuk has no trouble scanning my library and in fact it was able to do so in just over 5 minutes which isn't bad for 65 gigs worth of music, the same task in iTunes takes at least double that.
I had no trouble fetching cover art or CDDB info and the in-app Wikipedia lookup was surprisingly fast. There's also a nice graphical breakdown of your music based on tags that lets you see some aggregated metadata about your music collection (see screenshot below).
I'll admit that I don't really like Java apps, but Jajuk bucks the trend of the previous apps I've used by managing to be both fast and stable. That said, it still won't replace iTunes for me.
Because it's Java-based you can [test out Jajuk in your browser][3] if you'd like to use it without downloading.
[1]: http://amarok.kde.org/ "Amarok"
[2]: http://jajuk.info/index.html "Jajuk Advanced Jukebox"
[3]: http://jajuk.info/jnlp.html "Launch jajuk online"
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