noa ks
As i’ve mentioned a couple of times, i recently set up navidrome to stream music to my phone. I keep the whole music collection on my computer for convenience, and sync it to the server using rclone.
This means that when i’m using my computer, i can listen to music without having to stream for no reason. I have the storage space, so going through a server seems silly.
Another annoying thing in the world of bluetooth is how much harder it is to pass the aux to someone else. Spotify (and maybe other services) have attempted to remedy this with shared queues and the like, but that requires everyone using the same service, and still has that streaming dependency. Surely there’s another way?
Well on my computer i use mpd and cantata to play music. Mpd, as the name suggests, is a daemon with a server and a client. Cantata is the client i usually use, but it doesn’t have to be the only client i use. If i set up a web-based client accessible on the local network, anyone will be able to manipulate the queue just by navigating to the right url.
I tried out a few of the available web-based clients, but the majority were either stagnant, or heavyweight node-based things. I put my biases to the side and tried to set a couple up, but it was simply too much effort for something i don’t care so much about. This is more a curiosity than something actually useful for me, because most of the time i’m the only one listening to music. Anyway crossing off all the node-based or stagnant options pretty much only leavess mympd. It’s written in c and has some strange configuration layout with a file per option, but once i got the hang of that, it was smooth sailing.
That’s all it took to be able to control the queue from my phone. The interface is not perfect, but it’s a good start, and it’s possible to move things around a bit. I’m going to see if i can get it to look how i want. If not, the only option might be to write a new web client, but i’d rather avoid that eventuality for the moment.
If you happen to also want anyone to be able to control a local mpd setup from any device, mympd might also be a decent option for you!