i found a web-based server application by accident when i googled to try to figure out if it was possible to broadcast on LAUNCHcast, which is the SHOUTcast-like protocol that Yahoo uses. i don’t think it is, but in the search results i found a blog in which ampache was mentioned as being the next revolution of music sharing. so, of course i had to find out what it was.
here’s the skinny:
say you have a lot of mp3s, or, any mp3s at all, really — check
and say you have a server — check
say you have a server with a MySQL database and PHP installed — check, check
say you like to share music, or just want to listen to your mp3s at work — check
well ampache does that.
ok, what if you don’t have a server, and you just have a windows xp box, but you want to listen to your mp3s at work. well, assuming you have a dedicated internet connection, preferrably high speed, you can do it as well, and there’s a tutorial on setting up your xp box as a server to run the ampache site.
ok, so what’s it like? well, you have all your mp3s, in my case that’s something like 13,000+. i say, my mp3s are located in this directory on my hard drive. ampache runs a script and catalogs the entire mp3 archive and stores the information it gets from the id3 tags on those mp3s in the database. here’s where you run into one of the flaws in ampache. it *only* reads id3v2 tags and that’s the only way the songs are cataloged. if all your mp3s weren’t tagged but were formatted like –
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