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Music Media

MP3 Jukeboxes with a Web Frontend? 48

Posted by Cliff from the I've-gotta-build-me-one-of-these dept.
johnmearns asks: "With hard drive prices so low I couldn't help but pick up a large drive and finally get around to setting up a file server in my house. I normally do all my home computing from my laptop and would like to play mp3s stored on the fileserver back through my stereo. I've found lots of nice streaming mp3 server packages like NetJuke, but I don't want to stream. I would like a player that offers controls that I could access via a web interface from any machine on the LAN. Many of the alternatives I've found seem to have a nasty interface and have been abandoned for years. I thought I'd check and see if other Slashdot readers were using for this. Preferably it would work easily with FreeBSD, but I'm not picky at this point!"
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MP3 Jukeboxes with a Web Frontend? More

MP3 Jukeboxes with a Web Frontend?

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  • Globecom Jukebox (Score:5, Informative)

    by Chase ( 8036 ) on Wednesday April 09, 2003 @05:36PM (#5696567) Homepage
    Take a look at Globecom Jukebox [sourceforge.net]. I have been using it for over a year now. Its very stable and easy to use. It manages ripping new disk and has a simple interface for importing existing MP3s.

    It can push a local sound card and multiple icecast streams at the same time. It also has multi-user support with the ability to set user weight.

    I could go on and on. These were the features available when I set it up over a year ago.

    Have fun!

    Chase

    • Globecom Jukebox is definitely cool, I ran it for a while a few years ago. Another neat project is Tunez [sourceforge.net], developed mostly by some friends of mine at school. It's not quite as mature as GCjukebox, but it's getting there, and it's very featureful. Multi-user support with several different voting systems, database-driven backend, all done in PHP with a little perl. Very flexible, and it should run just fine on Freebsd, as there is nothing platform specific at all. We develop on Debian, and in the office

    • I'll second the recommendation. I've been running it for a couple years now for our home jukebox. All our CDs are in it, and a input on our receiver acts like our own custom radio station.

  • SlimMP3 (Score:3, Informative)

    by pbox ( 146337 ) on Wednesday April 09, 2003 @05:39PM (#5696593) Homepage Journal
    It is a bit pricey, but consistently gets good reviews. All out hardware solution. Also has web interface, as well as remote control. Also capable of playing net radio.

    Link to their site [slimp3.com]

    I do not work for them, but I have been trying to justify $230 + S&H for it for a while.

    • Re:SlimMP3 (Score:2, Informative)

      by Jahf ( 21968 )
      SliMP3 would be perfect for me if only it handled Ogg natively. The patch to play Ogg by decoding to .wav and then encoding to MP3 is a bit clunky and seems like it would eat up a lot of CPU. I'm still considering it given it's remote control capability ... but -ugh- so close.
      • Yeah, it's a pity that the hardware mpeg-decoder does not handle ogg. It's no big issue if you have got a reasonable new system for the server though.

        I've got an Athlon xp 2000+, and with this system the cpu-use stays at like maybe 5% when playing oggs trough the slimp3. When playing mp3s the cpu-usage is not noticeable at all (i.e. in the noise)

        • Is the patch smart enough to pre-de-re-encode so that you don't have to wait for the next song to be re-encoded before it plays? My server is a dual 1.4GHz P3, so assuming the encoding isn't multi threaded, I suppose I'll always have 1 CPU fairly free from encoding issues. If there is no wait between tracks for encoding, maybe the slimp3 will work good enough.

          How is the quality of the re-encoded songs? Do you lose alot coming from Oggs?
          • The SLIMP3 server transcodes to ogg on the fly, so there's no noticable delay.

            The encoder that it uses by default is LAME, and you can choose the settings, so the quality can be tuned to your ears.

            With LAME and the Ogg tools installed it can transcode compressed Ogg files and uncompressed WAV and AIFF files and, of courses, play compressed MP3 files natively.
          • It does not pre-de-re-encode (funky word !), but on the other hand you also do not have to wait for the recoding to take place, because the slimp3-server uses pipes and essentially streams the ogg trough ogg123 and lame, there is in theory something like 1/10s delay before the pipeline fills up and the song begins, but honestly I've never really noticed.

            I find the quality quite acceptable, but obvioslu transcoding from one lossy format to another will always cause some quality-loss. For me this is not no

    • Re:SlimMP3 (Score:3, Funny)

      by Enry ( 630 )
      Pricy but WAY worth it.

      The web interface rocks, it has an intelligent remote control interface, and my wife hasn't busted it in frustration yet.
    • With a bridge to 802.11b it gets really expensive: over $300 :-

  • MythTV (Score:1)

    by crow ( 16139 )
    Doesn't MythTV have a music module?
  • I wrote a web app that allowed me to search+download mp3s from my webserver at work. It took me two hours to write in PHP. It just looks for keywords in the title of the song and list them. Then about 2 weeks later I set it up to stream MP3 layered music by whatever i selected. It took me 2 days to write that app. Its not a hard tech to create. Just ask Live365. They basicly had the same idea.

    Ohh yah... The server software I wrote even links up to Shoutcast.com and lists it self.

    It really all depends o

  • SLIMP3 (Score:4, Informative)

    by El Kevbo ( 81125 ) on Wednesday April 09, 2003 @05:45PM (#5696653)

    I'm not quite sure what you're asking, but it's possible that a SLIMP3 [slimedevices.com] may be the answer. Small, quiet (solid state), open source software, active developer and user communities, etc. I know that I'm not the only happy owner here on /. and that many others will also recommend it.

    Kevin

  • Look a little harder at Netjuke... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Dr. Bent ( 533421 ) <<ben> <at> <int.com>> on Wednesday April 09, 2003 @05:48PM (#5696674) Homepage
    You can set up Netjuke to play files locally (as in, on the server where the MP3's are) via MPG123 or Winamp. You just set up a standard Netjuke playlist, log in as an admin user and send it to the local player. Then you can control it via the standard Netjuke interface.

  • Check out Andromeda (Score:3, Informative)

    by Saggy ( 142571 ) on Wednesday April 09, 2003 @05:57PM (#5696749)
    I looked EVERYWHERE for a web based frontend to my mp3s. The best software I found was Andromeda [turnstyle.com].
    It seems to be the most intuitive interface for guests to play with too...

    • Can I just say GNUMP3d [gnump3d.org] ?

      True it's not relevent to the jukebox question as it's a streamer, but it is free, open and portable.. For bonus points it's in (unstable) Debian GNU/Linux, SuSe, and in the FreeBSD ports collection.

      OK I'm biased I wrote it... I admit it!

  • there's vnc + xmms.

    if that doesn't work for some reason, you could easily code a cgi front-end to xmms-shell, which seems to do what you want.

  • Muse.Net (Score:3, Informative)

    by moosesocks ( 264553 ) on Wednesday April 09, 2003 @05:59PM (#5696760) Homepage
    Try out Muse.Net [muse.net]

    While it IS a subscription-based service, the price is reasonable ($20/year), and the company releases a good deal of source code from their products under the GPL. Not to mention that it has an awesome XML backend (completely open. the company encourages users to hack it and write new clients via their excellent SDK).

    Simply install the server software on the PC(s) which you have the music on, and access your collection(s) from one unified website. Everything is done peer-to-peer, the software supports transcoding, and you can play locally or remotely (another cool feature is that you can start playback on a remote machine (ie. I can control the music being fed into my stereo from my office).

    Check it out: http://www.muse.net [muse.net]
  • GNU MP3d [sourceforge.net] is what you are looking for :)

  • Halo 8 WWWinamp (Score:3, Informative)

    by ruineraz ( 515154 ) on Wednesday April 09, 2003 @06:18PM (#5696901) Homepage
    I write a small piece of software that i use in my home LAN, and from work. It's called Halo 8 WWWinamp, and it's a continuation of the WWWinamp project from the nullsoft guys, who abandoned further development and open sourced it.

    It is used in conjunction with Shoutcast, so it involves some streaming, but I think when it's all set it up, it could be what you're looking for.

    feel free to contact me if you need help or have feature requests

    it's available at http://sourceforge.net/projects/halo8wwwinamp

  • I'll pipe up really quick... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ActiveSX ( 301342 ) on Wednesday April 09, 2003 @06:23PM (#5696934) Homepage
    I realize that others have mentioned some other suitable products, but I thought I might mention JWZ [jwz.org]'s Gronk [jwz.org]. It's nice because it'll do both streaming and local playback, and doesn't rely on an SQL database (which is honestly overkill in this situation).

  • Otto Jukebox (Score:3, Informative)

    by gus goose ( 306978 ) on Wednesday April 09, 2003 @06:24PM (#5696944) Journal
    I have been using Otto since Sept 2001. Has worked flawlessly. I see there are a number of newer versions, so have a look at the home page at Otto Home [cardhouse.com]

  • WinAmp and WebAmp (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Works great - works with WniAmp 2+ and allows MULTIPLE people to log in from anywhere and control winamp. Perfect during a party
  • If you've got a Creative NOMAD [nomadworld.com], Notmad Jukebox [redchairsoftware.com] can serve your tunes from it over the web (Winamp streaming format!!!), and it even acts as a SQL database.
  • I've been using this for years. It has the voting features that allow you to demphasize a song on the playlist and it has permissions. It can look sharp on any browswer and has some very nifty client interfaces. I've had it running for more than two years, and it's become an indispensible part of my work environment.

    http://www.mserv.org/mainpage.html
  • Try MP3 Sushi [maliasoft.com] for Mac OS X. My only complaint is that it does shut itself off (not crash) from time to time, once or twice a week, but easy to correct. From the docs:

    "What is MP3 Sushi?

    With only a few clicks, MP3 Sushi allows any Mac to be turned into a network Jukebox or Radio broadcast station. It's a cool way to share and stream music amongst a local network or the Internet.
    MP3 Sushi is a port of Open Source software - gnump3d, Lame, libmp3lame, iceS and icecast - wrapped with a beautiful use
  • Well you certainly *could* try one of these programs, but I'd think it'd be a lot more fun to whip up something yourself. It would be pretty simple to throw together a PHP or CGI script tht interfaces with Winamp or mpg123 or wht have you. You could even write your own 'playlist daemon' in Python or Ruby or something if you wanted more control. I did something like this once so that I could just type "mplay head like a hole" or "mplay underworld" and it would go through and find all matching songs and feed
  • If you happen to have an empeg Mark 2 with ethernet, this is very possible.

    It's also possible via an AudioTron or Rio Receiver. The later two devices should still be able to be found, and shouldn't run more then $150 tops.
  • I setup something using Winamp2 plus a plugin called Winamp Web Interface. It's entirely controlled through the web interface (no monitor or keyboard attached, I just sit it next to the stereo). The machine runs Windows 98 - no, seriously. I've been using it for a few months and it works almost flawlessly. All the MP3s are retrieved over the Windows network in my house.

    I wrote a little HOWTO [upenn.edu] if you want more info.

  • I wanted just such a tool, and also wondered why there were so few offerings.

    I found xmms-control, and it did quite nicely: http://www.joethielen.com/xmms-control/

    Basically you need a linux/apache/php web server, xmms, and xmms-shell to pass commands to the player.

    You'll need to take care of some security issues, though. The web interface is a bit spartan, but you can easily modify it to your liking.

    However, some other posters listed projects I never found. I'll be sure to check those out.
  • I myself am in the process of building a file server. I put in a videocard that supports TV OUT. The fileserver itself will be sitting in the living room. I also got a wireless keyboard+mouse. The PC will also be hooked up to the stereo for sound. This not only allows me to listen to MP3s, but also removes the need for a monitor or switch (plus I cn also watch movies from the PC)
  • Look at BSoftPlayer. It's kind of in a transition period, but it will have a web interface in the next version.

    It's SQLite based and has a pretty good interface.

    bsoftplayer.sf.net

    I would know, I programmed it. ;)
  • I have seen one that a friend set up called brunhilde... I don't know where to get it, or if it is still out there, but it was sweet stuff... he abandoned it though because he had all sorts of HW conflicts in his linux box, and this is a linux-native proggy...

    Just my quarter-cent

  • MythTV (Score:1)

    by orn ( 34773 )
    Try MythTV [mythtv.org]

    You might think it's overkill, but consider it because it can combine lots of separate functions together....

    Not just a PVR, but an MP3 jukebox, video server, web/weather/informaiton services and so on...
  • You want to head over to www.slimdevices.com and check out their product.

    I love mine to death. It takes all of 5 minutes to set up, and plays like a charm. It can be commanded from a skinnable web-interface (separate ligth-skin for pdas for example) by remote-control, or optionally trough an interactive CLI.

    The biggest two pluses with this device are that the product has good quality, and the company has a clue. Let me elaborate.

    The thing is small and elegant. It is well engineered. It has a VFD-displ

  • I've been looking into the exact same thing, and stumbled across WebPlay [sourceforge.net]. I haven't played with it that much, but it seems to have everything I was looking for. (Local play, web interface, etc..) Developed for OpenBSD, so should fit your specs pretty well.

  • edna.sourceforge.net

    That's great; I've been using it in 3 or 4 network deployments for a few years now. Since it's python, it's easy to hack on.

    You mentioned not wanting to do streaming; this does a kind of streaming; not icecast (ie- re-encoding) but it does allow the client player to "open" an URL; in effect streaming the file over an http connection. This works great, and even allows for seeking.

    The interface itself for edna is pretty simple, but as I said, it's python, so it's easy to hack!

    Coupled w

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