How to Stream your Music Collection using Subsonic

If you’re like me, you’ve amassed a collection of CD’s and MP3′s over the years. For some people its quite a large collection, for others its just a few songs. But regardless of how many songs and audio files you may have, wouldn’t it be nice to access them from any computer anywhere in the world? Yea. I would too.

Well, its all possible if you are using a cross-platform program that I just discovered yesterday called Subsonic Music Streamer. Its unbelievably easy to setup, and absolutely free! And for those of you using Fisher-Price toys otherwise known as Mac’s there is a version for you as well. Some other features:

• Listen to your music from anywhere – all you need is a browser.
• Assign ratings and comments to albums.
• Supports MP3, OGG, AAC and any other audio or video format that streams over HTTP.
• Transcoding engine allows for streaming of a variety of lossy and lossless formats by converting to MP3 on-the-fly.
• Control Subsonic from any mobile phone or PDA, using the WAP interface.
• Users must log in with a username and password. Users are assigned different privileges.
• Use HTTPS/SSL encryption for ultimate protection.

And there is lots of other features that are mentioned on Subsonic’s website. Like I mentioned before, Subsonic was extremely simple for me to install. I had attempted to install some other kind of music streaming software (I forget the name) months ago, but gave up after I got lost in configuring databases, etc. Not so with Subsonic. It was over before I knew what happened. If you are using Windows Vista, try it for yourself using the following steps.
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1. Download the Windows Installer from the Subsonic website.
2. Run the installation program. The following screenshot shows the only option that you have to make. Typically you would just click Install.
3. That’s it. If everything went ok, you should see the following screen. Since Subsonic is installed as a Windows service, it will be immediately started and will also automatically start when your computer is restarted. To add your Music files and other configuration tips, move to Tip #4.
4. By default, Subsonic installs an icon in the system tray. Double clicking the icon will start the Subsonic Control Panel. Here you can start and stop the streaming service, change the default port number, etc. It will also display the server address which by default is http://localhost. Clicking the server address link will open your default browser and take you to the Subsonic login page where you will need to setup a password. Once you have the password changed, you will be able to log into the Subsonic service.[ad#Adsense Centered]
5. Once you are logged into Subsonic, the next thing you want to do is add your music folders so that Subsonic can find them. Click on the settings button along the top, and enter the full path of to your music folder. For example, in Windows Vista the default path would be C:\Users\”your username goes here”\Music as the following screenshot shows. Click Save and now you should be all set to start streaming!

Congratulations! You have now successfully installed Subsonic Music Streamer. You can now stream music to any of  your computers in your local network. If you would like to stream music online to other computers outside your local network, read this article on how to forward port 80 on your router to your computer to allow outside access. I know I’m really enjoying having my music available anywhere whenever I want. Hope this tutorial helps you out as well. If you have any questions or have a better idea, feel free to post it below.
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