Stream Music With Subsonic

Martin Brinkmann
Jun 18, 2009
Updated • Dec 4, 2012
Music, Music and Video
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11

Streaming music over a computer network or Internet was a complicated process in the beginning days of the Internet. Today all it takes to stream music is the installation of one program and a web browser to access the music. That's highly comfortable and doable even for inexperienced users who shy away from all things technical.

Subsonic is a Java application which, as we all know, has its advantages and disadvantages. One of the advantages is that it is available for Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems. To setup the service users need to install the computer program and check the Subsonic Music Streamer service to configure it further. Subsonic will automatically start its service which can be accessed by pointing the web browser to http://localhost:80/. Some users might run into troubles using that port which can be changed in the configuration.

The username and password admin will allow the user to add music to the program and change configuration settings. Subsonic does not come with a file browser which means that it is necessary to paste the path(s) to the music folder(s) manually into the interface.

The music is added automatically then which takes only a second to complete. Subsonic displays all band names in a left sidebar making it very easy to access the music collection. Songs can be played in the interface directly or in an external mp3 player which is configurable in the options.

Information about music including mp3 tags and album art are displayed directly on screen with links pointing to various popular sites like Last.fm, Wikipedia, Amazon and Google to look up additional information.

The admin can change many aspects of the application in the options. This starts with welcome and login messages, continues with user management and permission settings and ends with the ability to add podcasts and Internet radio.

Subsonic has to run on the local computer system before others can access it on a computer network or over the Internet. The number of users able to access it at once depends highly on the computer hardware and network speed.

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Comments

  1. Justin said on November 30, 2011 at 10:18 am
    Reply

    The warning message about AAC streams when you load streams is because you don’t have the free Orban AAC/aacPlus Player Plugin installed.

    http://codecpack.co/download/Orban-aacPlus-Player-Plugin.html

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on November 30, 2011 at 10:56 am
      Reply

      Justin, thanks for the information.

  2. santosh said on December 1, 2011 at 12:43 am
    Reply

    does this support AAC ? or only mp3 streaming

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on December 1, 2011 at 1:43 am
      Reply

      I’d say it supports all pls streams but I have not tried that so cannot verify it 100%.

  3. Barnabas said on August 3, 2012 at 5:15 pm
    Reply

    Thank you Martin for a most informative and viable solution (it allowed me to play streams from a Netherland internet radio station in my WMP)! Continued success to you!

    Barnabas (USA)

  4. AppleRome said on October 7, 2012 at 7:31 am
    Reply

    Your steps’ recommendation is still valid until 7th October 2012.. Thank you very much !!

  5. Laura said on December 1, 2012 at 4:41 pm
    Reply

    Thank you!

  6. sak2005 said on December 9, 2014 at 8:03 pm
    Reply

    You must convert file.pls to file.m3u
    because file.pls open with winamp and file.m3u open with wmp.

  7. Lithium said on February 10, 2017 at 11:10 am
    Reply

    Hi
    2017 still kicking on Windows 7
    Thx a ton

  8. Dennis said on April 18, 2017 at 4:05 am
    Reply

    Hey, even i can do it, i stumbled through it and it works great! The only instruction advice i will add as i had to figure this out, when the wmp box opens that says save or open the bar on right says wmp click that drop down and select “open pls in wmp” once you do that it will work . Took me quite some time to discover that as i am no computer expert by any means. Having said that, previously i had downloaded codec packages and something about aac. None did any good. This rocks, i listen to a lot of internet radio and a number of them have dropped flash player and getting wmp to work had been a nightmare. So many thanks for this great solution to another problem that Micro-Hell will not even address. Peace- Out

  9. stephen marshall said on March 19, 2019 at 2:07 am
    Reply

    openplsinwmp came in a zip file. I unpacked it, and didn’t find anything that looks like an executable, and even the files in the “doc” folder were in a format windows didn’t recognize. I’m not stupid. you said it would open effortlessly. It didn’t. This a rabbit hole I don’t want to go down.

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