I have all my music stored as digital files on my hard drive, in a tree of folders. The smallest branches of the tree represent individual albums, each holding a dozen or so individual song files.

I have Amarok 2.0.2 installed on Kubuntu 9.04. The program opens as expected, and using the "Files" tab in the left pane I can navigate to any sub-directory I want. I can see the listings of songs within each album's sub-directory.

But I cannot figure out how to make Amarok play those songs. Drag and drop from the left pane into either the center pane or right pane does nothing. Right-click and "Append to Playlist" does not appear to do anything -- the "Playlist" tab in the left pane remains empty, and the center and right panes remain empty.

I've tried to find the answer in the on-line Amarok manual, but the documentation only seems to take me to the point of finding the songs in the left pane, but not how to make Amarok play them.

What am I missing?

You must drop into right pane, not center pane.

Which file type are you playing?
Please give us the output when you run amarok from Terminal:

Well, I got more than a screenful of messages, many of them repetitive:

amarok(9496) Phonon::KdePlatformPlugin::createBackend: unsing backend: "Xine"

Object::connect: No such slot MainWindows::showstatistics() in /build/buildd/amarok-2.0.2mysql5.1.30/amarok-2.0.2/src/MainWindow.cpp:692

Object:connect: (receiver name: 'MaineWindow')

QLayout: Attempting to add QLayout "" to MainWindow "MainWindow", which already has a layout

Link XMLID_7_ hasn't been detected! (This line is repeated once)

Couldn't resolve property: radialGradient3986

(The "Link..." line is repeated twice more, and the "Couldn't resolve..." line is repeated once.)

QWidget::insertAction:Attempt to insert null action (repeated 6 times)

amarok(9496) Plasma::Applet::save: saving to "1"

amarok(9496) Context::ContextView::setContainment: "" Line: 599

(The "amarok...Plasma...saving" line is repeated three times with consecutively-numbered "saving to" targets.)

amarok(9496) CurrentTrack::dataUpdated: CurrentTrack::dataUpdated

amarok(9496) Context::ColumnContainment::InsertInGrid: "" Line: 603

(Then there are several iterations of two copies of the "link XMLID..." line, each pair separated by a line that says:

Couldn't resolve property: radialGradient3986

(After six of these three-line combination, then . . .)

Object::connect: No such slot FileBrowser::Widget::setDir( const QString& ) in /build/buildd/amarok-2.0.2mysql5.1.30/amarok-2.0.2/src/browsers/filebrowser/FileBrowser.cpp-112

Object::connect: (sender name: 'kBookmarkHandler')

Object::connect: (receiver name: 'FileBrowser::Widget')

(The three-line "link..."..."Couldn't resolve..." combination is repeated twice more.)

amarok(9496) MagnatuneConfig::load: load

*Error: Badwindow (invalid Window parameter) 3
Major opcode: 20 (X_GetProperty)
Resource id: 0x16000064

amarok(9496) App::handleCliArgs: "" Line 295

[At this point, another CLI prompt appears, followed by a varying number if iterations of the following:]

amarok(9496) CurrentTrack::dataUpdated: CurrentTrack::dataUpdated

[...and then the system hangs until I hit Ctrl-C.]