Episode: 177
Title: HPR0177: Rhythmbox Streaming
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0177/hpr0177.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 12:57:19

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music
Hello and welcome to Hacker Public Radio. My name is David Sterey, also known as Weeks.
Today's episode is about rhythm box and using it to stream music and audio from one computer in your house to many others.
Now this setup came from the idea that I've executed several times of copying all my music to different places, realizing that I may have downloaded some music to one place, not to another, and then somehow having to merge a later, it's an actual complete nightmare.
So this time I decided I would just put all my music on one computer, call that the server, and share it to the other computers in my home.
So what I've done is in my home I have one Windows XP laptop, and I have three hardy desktops. One of the hardy desktops has two hard drives in it, and I do the simple raid I guess just doing our sync from one to the other, so I know I'm not going to lose any data on that.
So basically on that computer I've got rhythm box, it's cataloging all my music, also cataloging some podcasts that I have downloading on a daily basis using a bash potter.
So what I've done then is I've got that copy rhythm box there, and I went into the edit menu into plugins, and I checked the box next to DAP music sharing.
Then I click configure, and you just check the box saying share my music, and I didn't require a password because this is within my home, and I have a NAT router, so I don't think anybody is going to be hacking into my network to listen to my music.
So that's the setup on the server, I mean that was it. Then what you do is you go to your other computers, other hardy desktops, anything that can run rhythm box pretty much.
Go there, go into the file menu, hit connect to DAP share, and then you just put in the name or IP address of your rhythm box server there, and it will start to pull down the list of files and songs and podcasts, whatever rhythm box has within it, you can get this way, and just listen to it freely, build your own cues locally, and enjoy.
Also, iTunes on Windows XP or Mac will look through the network for DAP shares, so I've noticed that my music is available if I happen to open up iTunes on a computer that it's there as well.
So this is about the simplest way you could possibly share music. I've tried other ways like using Edna, this is a Python script using Winamp, but basically nothing really beats this situation, and I've noticed this is very stable, plays forever.
I don't run into any stuttering issues, it's not dependent on another protocol like Samba or even SSHFS, so basically go to it, just set up rhythm box, put all your music in one place, make sure it's backed up, and then feel free to access it from wherever.
You could even, if you got a good internet connection, open a port on your router, set a password, you're listening to your music from wherever you want in the world.
So that's kind of an idea too, haven't tried it, but let's call that a homework assignment.
Okay, well that's it for this episode of Hacker Public Radio, I want to thank you for tuning in and keep packing.
Thank you for listening to Hacker Public Radio, HPR is sponsored by Carol.net, so head on over to CARO.NAC for all of us in need.
Thanks for watching, see you next time.
