Subsonic: Your Very Own Personal Media Server

There are many commercial services that allow you to stream music over the internet. Yet, many of these services place limits on how you can access that music.

You negate these limitations when you stream music through Subsonic, an application that turns your computer into a personal media server.

Subsonic is an open source application that gives you full control in how your music collection is accessed over a home network and the internet.

Limitations of the cloud

We relinquish certain rights when we allow Cloud providers to be the gate keepers to our music collections.

Services like Google Music Beta and Amazon Cloud Music are hindered by the need to upload your personal collection to the host server. Furthermore, once it is uploaded, a degree of control passes from you, to the provider. Including a cap on the number of files you are allowed to upload and a limit on who can access your content.

You will not have these issues when you run Subsonic.

Customizable features include:

· The number of users who can access the server is only limited by your upload speed and the resource drain on the system

· You can protect your bandwidth by limiting streaming bitrates (64bps to 256kps) for particular users.

· The program serves up your entire music collection from its existing location on the computer.

Accessing the content

You can access the service through mobile devices (iPhone and android), desktop applications (OSX, Windows and Linux) or the web-based interface.

Here is a link to the complete list of applications that connects to Subsonic.

Available options through the web-based interface include:

· Creating and editing playlists,

· Video and audio flash players with multiple bitrates settings.

· The ability to stream music to 3rd party players like Windows Media player.

Drawbacks to the interface:

· Audio scrubbing a long audio file is difficult as hitting specific marks in the timeline is tricky.

· A lack of right click functions (Not a HTML5 or Ajax application) makes creating playlists through the interface an awkward affair.

Mobile Access

On the mobile front, I found iSub to be the best all around Subsonic app available on iTunes.

The app has many features that iTunes currently lacks, including the ability to sync content through WiFi or 3G connections.

Conserving space on the iPhone is set by configuring iSub to cap the space available for caching. Also, you can see how much hard drive space is available in the cache queue screen.

To avoid exceeding 3G bandwidth, change the cache setting that allows iSub to automatically cache songs as you stream your music.

Using Subsonic and iSub for audio books and podcasts

Besides music, Subsonic is a great way to stream audio books and podcast collections. The only drawback to using it for longer audio files is that the application lacks a preset function to rewind or fast forward by 15 seconds to 1 minute. Also, it does not have a much needed auto resume function.

However, there is a workaround to the auto resume issue. iSub allows you to create bookmarks while listening to files. Thus, allowing you to resume where you left off when you change files.

Donations

The best features on Subsonic are available when a user donates to the development of the program.

These features include:

· A personalized web address under the Subsonic.org domain. Therefore, allowing a user to connect to your media server even if you lack a static IP address.

· Elimination of ads on the web interface

· Streaming access on mobile devices

Final notes on the program.

· Protect your server with unique user id’s and strong passwords.

· If you plan to allow multiple users to access the server, it is a good idea to create a dedicated media server.

· Subsonic and iSub allow you to create shuffled playlists and search your entire collection by album, artist or song.

While the number of options for media streaming is increasing, running a media server like Subsonic gives users full control over their online content and how it is accessed.

Note:

Lifehacker.com has a good Hive Five rundown for Personal Media Streaming Servers.