Ampache: (For The Love of Music) A free/open-source streaming server, and so much more.

In This Video I Show You How To Install Your Very Own Music Streaming Server Using Linux.

But also doing it the easiest way possible: With Docker Containers.

Docker is a virtualization technology designed for developers so that they can build server environments & ship them to other members of their team in what are known as containers. Before this was available it was difficult to reproduce complex environments.
However, Docker is ideal for people who aren't developers because it makes complex servers and systems available to almost anyone.

In contrast to the way I first used Ampache:
I had to have a working Apache web server along with a MySQL database for Ampache configured with access for PHP. Doing this required a lot of reading, and a lot of trouble-shooting.

In my video I have Ampache up and running in minutes, but in reality it only took about a half hour.

An Obvious Question Might Be: Why Would I Need This?

How do you listen to your music?

Chances are you listen to your music via an online streaming service.
Pandora was the first big one I recall, but I think Spotify might be the big one now. Lots of people use Itunes or Google Music too. I think lots of people actually listen to their music from Youtube even.

But if you're like me maybe this doesn't really suit you.
I've always collected music, but not vinyl or discs. I've amassed a huge collection of files. Some of my music files are older than Itunes or Youtube even.
I collect entire discographies of bands and artists.
Sometimes I want to listen to the entire album, and not just one or two songs.
Some of my favorites are demos or alternate takes that weren't even released, and a lot of bands I listen to were never on the radio or the charts.
Furthermore, these songs could removed without notice from streaming services for any number of ridiculous reasons. The band could say something that's considered politically incorrect.

If you're like me. Ampache could be perfect for you.

I currently have a collection of over 50,000 songs & over 120 gigabytes of music.

Ampache adds a ton of features too.
So many that I don't even know all of them.
But some that are included out of the box are:

You can create accounts for friends & family.
Direct Messaging between accounts.
Playlist support: Including Smart Playlists & creating them manually using Ampache.
Artist biographies & album artwork
Democratic play where users vote on upcoming songs. Sort of like your own radio station.
MusicBrainz database integration for obtaining proper details/artwork.
Lyrics database integrations.
Video streaming is also built-in.
On the fly transcoding of most file formats & codecs.
Radio station support.
Support for integrating catalogs from other sources such as Dropbox etc.
You can theme the look of your Ampache web UI.

There's a built-in plug-in catalog that you can choose from to add extension features as well.
But built right in we have on the fly transcoding for various file formats.