Since MythTV's music player has an incredibly embarassing interface, and I still like to use my stereo system for my music, I clearly had a problem. The solution is
MPD: Music Player Daemon, as suggested by Kevin72594, from Gentoo OTW. MPD is a service that accepts various clients and plays music files on the host computer. This is NOT a program to stream media to the desktop which you're using. It is designed to control a central server. The particular client I'm interested in was a web based client. This way, anyone on my network could control my music with their laptop.
..:: Software Summary
Title: MPD (Music Player Daemon) and MPC (Music Player Client)
Type: media service daemon
Purpose: control central audio server
Tested OS: Ubuntu 6.10
Screenshots: via [
MPD clients |
djlosch UI ]
..:: Installation
Here's how to install in Ubuntu Edgy. First, make sure you have proper
ubuntu repositories (I think only universe and multiverse are needed for this).
sudo apt-get install mpd mpc
Then edit /etc/mpd.conf. You'll need to uncomment one of the audio output sections. I use the OSS output with the default settings.
audio_output {
type "oss"
name "my OSS sound card"
device "/dev/dsp" # optional
format "44100:16:2" #optional
}
Also set the playlist and music directory at the top. I pointed the music link at my monster drive that has all of my music on it, and then I save my playlists in my home directory.
..:: Install the Web Client
The web client will allow you to visit your box through any web browser and control your box. You will need apache and php already installed, so get them if you don't have them yet.
sudo apt-get install apache2 php5 libapache2-mod-php5
Then install the mp2 web client.
sudo wget http://mercury.chem.pitt.edu/~shank/phpMp2-0.11.0.tar.bz2 -O /var/www/phpMp2-0.11.0.tar.bz2
cd /var/www
sudo tar --use-compress-program bzip2 -xvf phpMp2-0.11.0.tar.bz2
sudo chmod 755 phpMp2 -R
..:: Customize the Client
Here's the stock screenshot from the
mp2 client page.
Open up your web browser and navigate to the box running MPD (
localhost if you're on the server right now, or most likely some address on your network like http://192.168.1.200). Once there, click the Update button in the top right to scan for your music. Changing the settings through the Options tab doesn't seem to save them permanently -- only for the current session. I'm about to hit you with a bunch of changes, so you may just want to get my copy of the config file, but read on for an explanation of changes.
I personally like size 8 font and the ember theme with the classic layout. To make these changes permanent, open the file /var/www/phpMp2/config.php. Go through and change the
font_size to
8,
layout to
classic, and
style to
ember. I also vigorously maintain my mp3's ID3 tags, but I don't ever bother with the track number or album tags, so change the
song_display_format, the
column_files, and the
sort variables to remove the
Track and
Album tags.
With these changes, this is what my UI looks like:
..:: Amazing Remote
If you have a cell phone, tablet, or PDA with wifi, you can control your music server from ANYWHERE that you get a wireless signal. This is awesome because then you don't have to worry about bluetooth applications with piss poor interfaces or transfer methods. I personally just use my laptop right now, but I'll definitely be moving to a smaller device soon.
..:: Streaming and Icecast2
MPD only plays music on the served box. You can also use MPD to serve files up to Icecast2, the internet radio streamer, but that's another how-to.
Post Last Updated: Nov 22, 2006 10:22 am
