3 years ago when I worked on a government project, one of their requirements was to create a jukebox server. I seriously had no idea what exactly they wanted but I guessed it’s something where the employees is able to connect to the server and then listen to songs. After a little research, I found that the easiest way to do it is to configure a file sharing access to the MP3s and use a small tool called MP3 Playlist Generator to create a playlist. The employee only requires to access the server’s shared folder and run the playlist file. Since it is open source, I modified the code according to the needs of the jukebox server. It works but am not sure if they’re still using it.
Create jukebox mp3 streaming server
Today I found a better and more complete freeware called Vibe Streamer which allows me to create a free MP3 streaming server. This software is way better than the jukebox I created few years ago because it comes with a lot of useful features. Vibe Streamer is surprisingly easy to set up and the setup file size is only 661KB. Imagine a software capable of making your computer a “server” and it’s less than 1MB… Let’s take a closer look at Vibe Streamer on what it has to offer.

Vibe Streamer is a free MP3 streaming server that allows you to connect and stream your music using only a standard web browser.

Free MP3 Streaming Server

Vibe Streamer Features:

  • Free
  • Easy installation and configuration
  • Share unlimited files and directories
  • Full support for Windows NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista
  • Protect your directories with user accounts and groups
  • Easily manage your users, groups and their access rights
  • Restrict access to your server based on the clients IP address, for better security
  • Unlimited skin possibilities, create your own or download new skins as they appear on our website
  • The included standard skin supports the latest versions of Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Opera
  • Our own Vibe Script Language, for unlimited possibilities in skin creation
  • Guaranteed free from backdoors, spyware, adware and other non-requested software

    • Here’s a short walkthrough on how to set up Vibe Streamer. On the computer that will be the server.

    1. Download Vibe Streamer from the link at the end of this article and install.

    2. Create a user. Go to Users and Groups tab. Right click on the Users area and select Add. Enter the username and password. Go to Playlists tab and check the Enable playlists checkbox. Click OK.
    Add Vibe Streamer User

    3. Configure the MP3 to share. Go to Sharing tab, right click at the Shared directories and select Add. Browse the location of where your MP3 is. Check the username to allow the user that you created earlier to access the MP3. Click OK.
    Add MP3 to stream

    4. Start the server. Go to Stream Server tab and click on the Start box.

    The server is all set up in a very basic manner to share the MP3. Now on the computer where you want to access the MP3s in the server.

    1. Launch any web browser that has Adobe Flash Player installer. Type the address http://IP.Address.Of.Server:8081/ and click OK. Enter your username and password when prompted and you’ll see a player on your browser.

    2. To play MP3, simply go to MP3 folder and double click on the MP3s that you see to add it to your tracklist. When you close your browser and reopen the MP3 server, the tracklist will be empty. The playlists comes into play if you want to manually add the songs to tracklist the next time.

    3. To create a playlist, click on Playlists, click New and give it a suitable name. Now load songs into your tracklist queue as you normally would. When you’re done with the tracklist, click Save. The next time you log in to the MP3 streaming server with your account, the playlist will be there.
    Vibe Streamer Playlists

    You can actually stream this over the Internet if you have a fast upload speed. Other than that, if you have a router, you’ll need to forward the port that you use for Vibe Streamer. The last time Vibe Streamer updated was on July 06 2006. This project is not really dead because last month they released Vibe Streamer 3 beta. Once they’ve fixed all the bugs and found to be stable, the version 3 will be officially released.

    [ Download Vibe Streamer ]

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