Best way to listen to my music library through a web browser.

March 20, 2009 9:12 AM

What is the best way to listen to my music library in a web browser?

I have a music server (Windows XP, iTunes) and a variety of potiental listeners (Vista, Linux, PS3, etc.), the lowest common denominator is a Web Broswser, how can I listen to (and maybe even manage) my music library across all these clients? Is there a good iTunes web interface out there? I'm not opposed to using a different music manager.

posted by jeff_w_welch to Computers & Internet (12 answers total)

Are the files MP3s? If so, I absolutely love this thing: http://musicbrowser.sourceforge.net/

I'm running it off a DNS-323 NAS, but it says it supports Windows (you'll need a webserver installed too). It has its faults -- no playlist support, just directory support for example -- but it works very, very well. It's also sort of ugly by default, but it's very simple to customize. You're not going to be able to manage anything through it either, but I don't know of any interface that will let you do that.
posted by joshmcconaha at 9:20 AM on March 20, 2009

There's Jinzora. I've never used it but it looks pretty slick. Found it when investigating a way to do the same thing you're asking, but I never set it up for reasons unrelated to this context.
posted by Tacodog at 9:28 AM on March 20, 2009

I've used Winamp Remote and was quite happy with how it worked. My only problem was stuttering caused by low upload speed when streaming over the internet.
posted by Memo at 9:38 AM on March 20, 2009

You can run Squeeze Center on your home library. It creates a stream you can listen to via iTunes, winamp or some other software and is controllable via a web interface.

This is how I do it at work (note I've got a squeezebox at home as well)
posted by bitdamaged at 9:44 AM on March 20, 2009

OoTunes is kinda neat, but for pay.
posted by dmd at 10:01 AM on March 20, 2009

I second Joshmcconaha's musicbrowser recommendation. I use it on my 'modified' nslu2 and absolutely love it. The built in flash player is a big bonus. Having access to my music library anywhere is great, ultra bonus that it runs off a low energy sipping nslu2, rather than a fully blown pc/server.

The features are a bit slim, no playlists, no id3 tags, minimal gui interface, but for straight directory playing streams, its awesome.
posted by edman at 10:24 AM on March 20, 2009

I'd second Squeeze Center, but if you wanted to play it on the same PC that you are running SqueezeCenter, you'd have to add the head-less softsqeeze player. SqueezeNetwork is amazing and everyone should check it out.
posted by patrad at 10:26 AM on March 20, 2009

I've never used it, but my friend does something like this with Orb. Works for all digital content, not just music. The gist is that the content lives on a PC but can be accessed from any device anywhere, but you and/or by others.
posted by Askr at 10:45 AM on March 20, 2009

lala is a pretty neat service.
posted by DrDreidel at 2:23 PM on March 20, 2009

I like Ampache. It's free software, cross-platform, and I think it has a lot more features than the program joshmcconaha mentioned. It can stream files to another music player, or you can use the included a flash player.
posted by PueExMachina at 5:27 PM on March 21, 2009

Alternately, just set up a UPnP server like mediatomb. The PS3 supports it, linux applications like rhythmbox and totem support it, windows media player supports it.
posted by PueExMachina at 5:30 PM on March 21, 2009

I have used Orb for a few years. One of the great things about it is that it can adjust the stream parameters to accommodate for your bandwidth. Thus, it's also usable on a mobile phone, even for video.

I still use v1 b/c I don't like the interface changes that came along with v2.

v1 acts more like a file system browser to listen to music, while v2 lets you build playlists on the fly.
posted by reddot at 11:48 AM on March 24, 2009