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My office is thinking of setting up a media server with speakers connected to it so that everyone in our office can queue up music via a web app. Right now we just pass around a speaker cable. I'd like something like a jukebox, where the server plays its music through its speakers.

Does anyone know of a Linux web app we could install or some third-party web service that would allow anyone with access to the site/account to queue up music to be played on the media server?

Is there a webapp that could find shared music on the local network?

Michael Hampton
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Chad Johnson
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  • Dont know what your location is... but here in the uk you need to pay a license if you want to "broadcast" music among your friends colleagues..a PPL and a PRS license. Something i discovered recently. Even if it just the radio that you have at work for everyone to listen, then you need a license.. odd. – Nicolas Marengo Jun 05 '09 at 20:29
  • In the UK, you'd presumably need to get this: http://www.ppluk.com/files/tariffs/PPLPP112.pdf – JamesHannah Jun 05 '09 at 20:47
  • Thats the PPL one, you also need the PRS. One is for the performer and the other is for the writer. prsformusic.com/playingbroadcastingonline/music_for_businesses/Pages/default.aspx – Nicolas Marengo Jun 05 '09 at 20:53
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    Meh. We could just as well pass around the speaker cable. I refuse to pay for music other people are playing in the same room, so let them sue me. – Chad Johnson Jun 05 '09 at 21:09

5 Answers5

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We use and are very happy with MPD.

Music Player Daemon (MPD) is a flexible, powerful, server-side application for playing music. Through plugins and libraries it can play a variety of sound files while being controlled by its network protocol.

There are many clients availible, web, linux, osx, iphone and windows.

rkthkr
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  • This has been a big hit in my office! – Chad Johnson Jun 12 '09 at 23:29
  • We've linked MPD to a folder that has Samba shares from several laptops in the office, and so we have a huge pool of music. I then wrote a Cron script to automatically re-mount shares when computers return to the network. MPD will then automatically find the music within a few minutes of a computer returning to the network. Everyone then uses a desktop client to control output. – Chad Johnson Jun 12 '09 at 23:58
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I've really liked using Subsonic Media Streamer - seems to be the best mix of features and has a good inline player. Jinzora isn't bad either, but is a lot rougher around the edges.

Tim Howland
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  • Alright dude, I went with Jinzora as a frontend to mpd. So now I have a potential jukebox setup for the office! Sweet! – Chad Johnson Jun 06 '09 at 05:57
  • Just watch the skins- some of them are really random and turn off admin access- I broke my install a couple of times experimenting! – Tim Howland Jun 06 '09 at 14:23
  • I ended up going with relaXXPlayer (http://relaxx.dirk-hoeschen.de/). The UI is simpler and less cluttered. I have an article outlined which lists the steps I went through, and I plan to post in a blog. I've made a note to post here once that's up. – Chad Johnson Jun 06 '09 at 18:27
  • I use Subsonic to access my music and films everywhere. There are a lot of features (like playing all videos and musics formats I have). But, it's the uglier application I ran : there are frames and tables everywhere with no hiearchy… theming is just for the css and icons… – Dorian Jul 26 '11 at 15:50
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A lot of the answers provided so far seem to assume that you want a streaming solution where each person in the office can play their own individual playlists privately within the confines of their office/cube/pod/etc. If that's the case, feel free to ignore this answer.

However, it sounds to me like you want what is effectively an office Jukebox where there's only ever one song playing at a time and everyone in the general area hears the same thing. For a long time, my office mate and I had a setup for this type of situation using a combination of WinXP, Winamp, and a utility called WWWinamp. It looks like the WWWinamp project has been taken over and ported to .NET since we were using it. But basically, it provided a simple web interface to browse, search, and queue up music in Winamp on the "server" (the XP machine). The server played the music through directly connected speakers that we could both hear. We eventually added a simple Windows Media stream of the current audio output so that we could listen to "what was playing" remotely as well.

It was kind of kludgy, but it worked great at the time.

Ryan Bolger
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  • Yep, I am looking for a jukebox app, where the server plays its music through its speakers. We're on Linux and Mac, not Windows, so WinAMP won't work. Thanks for the idea though. – Chad Johnson Jun 05 '09 at 21:13
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Provided that all the Music is on the Server, There´s nothing more flexible than slimdevices squeezecenter. Of course Logitech will try to sell you their excellent Squeeze*** Devices but the Software also works without them and you can stream to any MP3-stream capable player.

http://www.slimdevices.com/pi_features.html

lepole
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You didn't mention voting, but if that is interesting, you could check out this thread on WebApps StackExchange: https://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/14171/co-op-playlist-of-music

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