Creating your own streaming music server

A little while ago I had an extra computer who’d been put out to pasture. This machine, while great in its time, felt the inevitable constraints of Moore’s Law and was forced to be removed from even semi-serious use. So instead of taking old Betty out to the glue factory, I turned it into a custom music server which allows me to stream my music library from anywhere with an internet connection.

Slimserver is an open source music server which allows you to do this with very little fuss or configuration. Now I can stream music from natemiller.org in my neighborhood coffee shop or at work.

Gotchas

Just like anything worth doing, it requires a little leg work to get off the ground (depending on your server’s platform and your network configuration). Also, I’ve found that it doesn’t always play nicely with Apple encoded music files (mp4’s) which run rampant in today’s age of electronics. But if you’re handy with the command line and some conversion tools, you’ll be able to fix this relatively easily.