Comment 7 for bug 84173

You're correct, I bet Amarok does perform a bit poorly with 18,000 songs, since it's using the sqlite database backend by default. If you're dissatisfied with sqlite's performance, I'd recommend trying out mysql. There are instructions available at http://amarok.kde.org/wiki/MySQL_HowTo#SQLite_-.3E_MySQL on how to convert from sqlite to mysql.

It'd be nice if the switch from sqlite to mysql could be made when a user's collection gets to a certain point just to increase performance. The only problem is the extra dependencies that would bring in. Just throwing ideas out there.

Let us know if you decide to try mysql.