Music Browser

About

Music Browser is a light-weight web-based browser and streamer for you music collection. It is runs on most operating systems, and is light enough to run flawlessly on NAS devices like the Linksys NSLU2 or Freecom FSG3.

Features

Streams folders recursively as m3u, pls or asx playlists
All folders are available as podcasts/rss
Cover images (folder.jpg, cover.jpg etc.) are shown in folders and podcasts if available.
Embedded flash player (JW FLV Media Player)
Basic playback via Slimserver & XBMC Media Center
Very basic playback via sound card card on the server
Configurable, but no configuration is needed
Host access control from slimserver and server side playback.
Small size (70K download)
Open source (GPL): Feel free to edit the program to fit your needs.

Requirements

A webserver with PHP4.2+
Most platforms (Windows, Linux, BSD, MacOSX, ...) are supported
A 200mhz CPU and 32MB of RAM works great

Installation

Extract the distribution archive to a web accessible path (e.g. /var/www/musicbrowser)
Optional: Edit path in index.php to match your site (e.g. /mnt/media/mp3)
Enjoy your music collection through a browser (e.g. http://myserver/musicbrowser)

Templates

Extra templates are available as optional downloads from the Subversion repository. Just replace your current template.inc with one of the new ones.

Troubleshooting

I only get a blank screen!
Set 'debug' => true in index.php, you might see some helpful info. Also look into your web server's error.log.
Only 130 seconds of my songs are played!
Set max_execution_time = 0 in php.ini.
I need password controlled access
Your web server can provide this. Google for ".htaccess" if you are using Apache, and "auth.backend.plain.userfile" if you are using Lighttpd.
Unicode characters (asian etc.) look weird
Try replacing "iso-8859-1" with "utf-8" in the 'charset' configuration in index.php
PLS playlists with unicode names (asian etc.) doesn't play in WinAmp
Somehow WinAmp doesn't like unicode PLS playlist names, I assume it is a bug. Switch to M3U playlist, WinAmp will read this as it should. Also, PLS playlists will play just fine when opened in iTunes.
I get "Could not open URL - Error reaching slimserver" when trying to play on Squeezebox
Try opening the URL from the error message into a new browser window. You might see that you must lower your CSRF Protection Level in SqueezeCenter » Settings » Advanced » Security.

Verified configurations

Linksys NSLU2 / Unslung, lighttpd, fastcgi, PHP4.2
Linutop V2 / Debian, Apache 2.2, PHP5.1
D-Link DNS323 or DSMG600 / fun_plug, lighttpd, fastcgi, PHP4.4
Windows 2000 Server, Apache 2.2.3, PHP 5
Ubuntu, Apache 2.2.3, PHP 5.2.1
FreeNAS 0.69, FreeBSD 6.4, Lighttpd 1.4.20, PHP 5.2.8

Testimonials

After searching a bit for a worthwhile flash MP3 player suitable for a large collection, I finally came across something that works well. [...] Just drop musicplayer in place, edit index.php with your collection's location, and you're good to go. [tipoftheday.com]

Fits my needs perfectly [dsmg600.info]

Hail to the developer. It was a breeze getting it to work, even for me, and that is very good, as I don't really have any experience with these kind of things. I installed php for the first time, and still don't know what it does and how it works, but your music player is working flawlessly on my site!! [dsmg600.info]

Nice job. B-) [mpcclub.com]

i just installed your app, and i can't believe how easy it was. i'm a total newbie to linux and hacking but people like you just makes it so much easier to get the most out of my otherwise vanilla (but reliable) nas. Thanks so much. I'll be exploring a bit more now that I get the server working without a hitch. It's fantabulous! [dsmg600.info]

Nice and clean / quick ! [openfsg.com]

Great work, I like it. [sf.net]

Just wanted to say a big Thank You for Music browser. I have been looking for quite a while now for a solution to allow me to stream music stored on my NSLU2 to my PDA through its wireless connection. After trying out firefly media server and WiFiTunes, which had some major limitations, I came across your little app. A bloody mazing. I can access my whole music library (~10,000 songs) and can stream them to my PDA. Thanks loads, a truly great piece of coding. [from email]

Just wanted to drop you an email saying thanks to this great pice of software. I am running it on a nslu2 with lighttpd & php4-cgi. Works like a sharm! [from email]

Just tried it. Flawless.[from email]

Changelog

---------
0.24
- Bugfix (#2788788): Non-ascii characters didn't resolve well under Windows
- $thumbSize (size of cover image) available in index.php
- streamlib.php was renamed to musicbrowser.php
- Perform workaround if the Multibyte String Functions extension is missing
- the word_wrap function didn't wrap properly
- Bugfix: IE6 & 7 didn't know how to use string indexes
- CSS template added.  Thanks to Henrie van der Locht for all help with this template.

0.23
- Added a template by Henrie van der Locht.  Look at
  http://musicbrowser.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/musicbrowser/trunk/templates/henrie/ for details
- Bugfix (#2785523): Url didn't resolve properly in some situations
- Bugfix (#2766482): Search with non-ascii characters on MacOSX is working now, but
  only when PHP 5.3 or the PECL Internationalization extension is installed

0.22
- Bugfix: flash player content was always shuffled
- Bugfix: selecting the root folder wiped flash player playlist in Firefox 3.0.x

0.21 (2009-04-19)
- UI changes: two letters are used in sub headings
- Several source code improvements
- Unicode ajax fixes for Safari
- Use ajax for squeezebox/server/xbmc playback

0.20 (2009-04-13)
- Added search
- Added XSPF playlist support (thanks to Christopher Eykamp)
- Small UI changes

0.19 (2009-04-09)
- Bugfix: ampersands in url hash weren't handled properly
- Bugfix: use CRLF in playlists

0.18 (2009-04-08)
- Improved error and dialog handling
- View enlarged cover image without disturbing playback
- Various small improvements

0.17 (2009-04-07)
- Some code refactoring
- New 'securePath' config variable to allow symlinks that points outside 'path'
- The browser back/forwards buttons now work
- Bugfix: spaces were trimmed from folders in certain situations
- Hosting over https should work better now

0.16 (2008-08-11)
- Added flash player hotkeys: (p)lay/pause, (a)dd all songs, (b)ack, (n)ext
- Fixed a bug in the breadcrumbs when using utf-8
- Fixed a quoting bug when using a permalink with an apostroph
- Renamed swfobject.js to musicbrowser.js

0.15 (2008-07-01)
- Use Ajax for browsing.  Flash player playback is no longer interrupted by
  selecting a different folder.
- File download didn't always work in v0.14

0.14 (2008-04-13)
- Remote control of XBMC Media Center added (http://xbmc.org/)
- Workaround for php versions without utf8_encode() (e.g. fun_plug for DNS-323)
- Improved play and download icons
- NB! Small config change, one enabledPlay entry is used instead of several
  enable* entries.  Please update your index.php file.

0.13 (2008-02-20)
- Added playlist shuffle
- Bugfix: UTF-8 handling in flashplayer and asx playlists would't work for
  some versions of PHP4 in certain situations
- Bugfix: Rss title linked to itself

0.12 (2008-02-12)
- Bugfix: Non-ascii characters wasn't displayed correctly in flashplayer and
  asx playlists
- Bugfix: The root playlist name was empty
- Clean up item naming in playlist and flashplayer
- Bugfix: Redirect (e.g. when using squeezebox playback) didn't work properly
- Bugfix: Flash player only played first song in a playlist

0.11 (2008-02-10)
- Bugfix: flash player support for UTF-8 link names 
- Shows covers for all folders when new config 'folderCovers' is enabled
- New color scheme

0.10 (2008-02-08)
- Bugfix: Download URL's were broken (bug #1889393)
- Improve file name parsing for flash player
- Charset for rss and browser is now specified in index.php
- Don't return everything from the root path if an illegal path is specified

0.9 (2008-02-03)
- Bugfix: Flash player didn't play songs with quotes (bug #1885871)

0.8 (2008-02-03)
- Add embedded audio player (JW FLV Media Player)
- Enable direct file access when possible (makes rwd/fwd work in i.e. WinAmp)
- Add style tag for file and folder items
- Add option to hide files and folders (see hideItems in index.php)

0.7 (2007-12-03)
- Bugfix: slim option wouldn't stick
- Word wrap long song names
- NB! Config update for slimserver, only base url and player id is needed now.
- Bugfix: Empty array in allowLocal blocked everyone

0.6 (2007-11-12)
- Bugfix: podcast/rss didn't work in PHP4.x
- Ability to enable/disable each playlist type in config (asx/pls/m3u)

0.5 (2007-11-11)
- All folders are available as podcasts (aka rss feeds)
- Bugfix: slimserver checkbox didn't work when server playback was disabled
- Use the current directory if config 'path' is empty
- Simplify GET statement
- Enable .asx playlists

0.4 (2007-11-05)
- Rudimentary Slimserver support (http://slimdevices.org/)
- Fix quoting bug when magic_quotes_sybase was enabled
- Fix display error when file names are utf-8 encoded
- Possibility to limit slimserver and server side playback to allowed hosts

0.3 (2007-11-03)
- lower PHP requirement to 4.2
- very basic support for server side playback
- prettier URLs
- move MusicBrowser class from index.php to streamlib.php
- play icon for all folders
- play folders recursively

0.2 (2007-10-23)
- lower PHP requirement to 4.3

0.1 (2007-10-17)
- initial release
- requires PHP 5.1

(Earlier versions has existed since 2006)

Licenses

Music Browser is released under the Gnu General Public Licence version 3.

Also included in the Music Browser distribution:

JW FLV Media Player is released under the Creative Commons License. Commercial usage of this player requires a commercial license.
SWFObject is released under the MIT License.