Linux® For Dummies®, 8th Edition

Listening to Downloaded Music

Downloading music from the Internet is a fun activity. A lot of people like to pretend that it’s both legal and ethical, when in fact it’s often theft, depending on where you grabbed the music. I leave that ethical issue between you and your belief system, but because my own ethics say that it’s theft, I’m going to focus on showing you music that you’re welcome — legally and ethically — to download!

One place to find such material is on a band’s own Web site. Many groups today realize that offering free downloads of their work is a great PR move — if people love the sample songs, they’re more likely to go out and buy the album. For an example, I use the popular band Evanescence (www.evanescence.com).

Evanescence’s Web site, like those of many other bands, is done mostly with Macromedia Flash. (See Chapter 16 for how to add this functionality to your distribution.) To listen to music files in general, I personally recommend Amarok (http://amarok.kde.org/), which (again) you can get by using the tools discussed in Chapter 16 — search for amarok and install amarok, amarokFS, and amarok-visualisation. This feature-rich and professional-looking tool lets Linux desktop users feel like they’re actually in the modern age. I don’t have room to cover every option in exhaustive detail, but I’ll give you the nickel tour at least.

1.	After you have Amarok installed, start it up by going to ApplicationsSound & VideoamaroK. The first time you start Amarok in Fedora, ...