I’ve finally completed a project that I’ve been wanting to do for a long time – create a music server for my home.

Using an old computer, a copy of Ubuntu and an open-source PHP jukebox application called Jinzora I’ve created a server that’s connected to my stereo. It can be controlled from any computer within my home network. Alternatively, it will stream tracks to any client on the network so I could listen to something completely different to someone else. :)

The tedious part was putting all of my CDs on it. Each track needed to be in a particular file structure (Genre->Artist->Album->Tracks) and unfortunately my music collection is a bit of a mess, spread across drives and folders with no discernibile structure. Oops.

I did toy with the idea of making it accessible to the Internet so that I could connect, log-in and listen to my collection when I was out of the house but I didn’t really fancy the security risk of exposing the server to the outside world.

Still to do: The computer I used has the generic beige finish so I’d like to take off the case top and facia and spray them black so it looks nicer. I wonder if I’ll ever get around to it? ^^