[mythtv-users] mythmusic alternatives

[Willy Boyd]

On 7/3/07, Robert Longbottom <RobertCL at iname.com> wrote:
> You have a "music server" app running on your mythbox.  This app has no
> user interface, but it knows about your music collection, holds your
> playlists, and can play music on your speakers.  This app runs 24/7 in the
> background.
>
> You then have multiple "frontends" - these front ends talk to the "music
> server" backend.  They can get lists of songs, start a song playing, stop
> a song playing, get status info (what is playing, etc), they can manage
> playlists.  The idea here is that you have a "MythMusicFrontend" that is
> nicely integrated with Myth, and a WebFrontend that allows you to
> start/stop/manage playlists from a remote laptop / pda / whatever via your
> network.
>
> Maybe the server application also exports your library so you can play it
> in iTunes using mtdaapd in some way.
>
> I've not found anything that does this yet, but I've not looked very hard
> either.  I kind of think that vlc might have some of this functionality
> available, but I've never found time to look into it.
>
> Robert.

I know it's been mentioned several times on this thread already, but I
just wanted to mention my experience with musicpd.  Mainly because I
find it surprising it isn't MUCH more popular, but it does basically
what you just described.

I have over 50 gigs of mp3s.  MPD handles this library of songs just
fine, and running the "update" command to pick up newly added files in
the directory structure is very quick (it's been a while so I can't
quote a time but it's maybe less than a minute -- something that could
easily go in a cron job).  For iTunes, I found a little .NET/mono app
that exports my iTunes playlists from my powerbook, and with a little
script-fu I put them in the right place to be picked up as working
playlists in MPD.  Think iTunes smart playlists --> MPD, just not
totally live.  Run the sync once an hour or more and that is pretty
sufficient.  As for a frontend, I played around with an older web
frontend then started to write my own, but time got away from me.  I'm
going to check out this "Pitchfork" project now.  Having a Myth plugin
or at least good lirc support for MPD would be just the ticket -- web
frontend for fine-grained playlist control, remote support for basic
control from the couch.

Just my $.02
- Willy