MusicSAUR (formerly the un-googleable "μsic")

Music Synchronization And Uniform Relaying

Update 12/19/2015: Version 1.2 released!

Major features include:

Improved server performance
State variables for reloading position in playlist and faster boot-up
Bug fixes
Fewer dependencies

Want to sync up your music on multiple computers? This accomplishes exactly that - using only a simple Python server and a browser. Simply run the Python server, and open up a browser on each computer you want to sync up - that's it!

This program is powered by the excellent howler.js library from goldfire. Essentially all the client computers sync their clocks and then try to start a song at the same time. Any dissimilarities between playback are also fixed, because the clients will automatically seek to the position of the server.

Installation

Tested on Python2.7 and Python3.4. Requires setuptools. To install simply use

pip install setuptools
git clone https://github.com/schollz/sync-music-player.git
python setup.py install

Usage

Open up the configuration file, config.cfg, and edit line 42 by inputting your music folder, e.g.:

music_folder = /my/music/folder

Now start the server using

python syncmusic.py

which should print out something like

############################################################
# Starting server with 346 songs
# To use, open a browser to http://W.X.Y.Z:5000
# To stop server, use Ctl + C
############################################################

Your server is up and running! Now, for each computer that you want to play music from, just go and load up a browser to the url http://W.X.Y.Z:5000. You will see the playlist and the music will automatically synchronize and start playing!

Auto-start Raspberry Pis!

If you'd like the server to automatically start up the Raspberry Pis, its easy to do. First, from your server computer (which can also be a Raspberry Pi) copy your ssh-key using the following command:

ssh-copy-id pi@YOUR_PIS_IP

Now sign-in to your Pi (you shouldn't have to use a password now) and install midori:

ssh pi@YOUR_PIS_IP
sudo apt-get install midori

Finally, open up the config.cfg and change line 16 to include the address of the computer:

clients = pi@YOUR_PIS_IP

If you have more then one, just seperate them by commas.

Some notes

If you don't hear anything, the client is probably trying to synchronize. The browser automatically mutes when it goes out of sync to avoid the headache caused by mis-aligned audio. You can see synchronization progress in your browser console.
If you still dont' hear anything, and you're using Chrome browser on Android you need change one of the flags in chrome to allow audio without gestures. To do this, copy and paste this into your Chrome browser:

chrome://flags/#disable-gesture-requirement-for-media-playback

If you want to play music from a Raspberry Pi, just type this command (works on headless):

xinit /usr/bin/midori -a http://W.X.Y.Z:5000

xinit /usr/bin/luakit -u http://W.X.Y.Z:5000

Screenshot

Contributing

Fork it!
Create your feature branch: git checkout -b my-new-feature
Commit your changes: git commit -am 'Add some feature'
Push to the branch: git push origin my-new-feature
Submit a pull request :D

History

12/19/2015 (morning): Version 1.2 Release
12/18/2015 (evening): Version 1.1 Release
12/18/2015 (morning): Version 1.0 Release

Credits

James Simpson and Goldfire studios for their amazing howler.js library
Zach Simpson for his paper on simple clock synchronization
Everyone on the /r/raspberry_pi and /r/python threads for great feature requests and bug reports!
ClkerFreeVectorImages and OpenClipartVectors for the Public Domain vectors

DeastinY / musicsaur