AmpJuke...and YOUR hits keep on coming!

Manage and stream your music online to several clients connected through a LAN and/or the internet.

AmpJuke will act as your streaming server. Besides online music streaming the script can fetch album covers/images/lyrics automatically using various webservices from last.fm and other sources.

Scan+import tags from as many tracks you like, use the favorites as well as a bunch of other personal settings to customize the way AmpJuke operates.

Focus is on easy navigation as well as speed. AmpJuke works well, even on rather old/slow equipment.
If AmpJuke is unknown to you, please take a look at the features and/or the requirements.

The best ? AmpJuke is free ! (GPL license).

Below is the most recent news in relation to AmpJuke. You might also want to subscribe to the RSS-feed: 

23-08-2012: Community (forum) is finally online again

After a long time where the old forum was left in a state of limbo, I have finally found the time (and the code) to start a new community (forum).

You'll find a link to the community in the menu to the left, - or right here.

The old forum is still online as a kind of reference. If you've registered in the old forum, you need to register again. Sorry for the inconvenience. 

//Michael.

07-08-2012: AmpJuke 0.8.6: Want an online jukebox ?

Yes: Once again it's been a while (a whole year) since last release.

This also means that AmpJuke's online "age" incremented with one year. Happy Birthday, AmpJuke!

This release - version 0.8.6 - contains some exciting new functionality as well as the usual bunch of small improvements here&there.

A brief introduction to the most important things in AmpJuke 0.8.6:

AmpJuke as an online jukebox.

Up until this release, AmpJuke acted (more or less) as a personal streaming service, making it possible for each individual user to listen to whatever he/she prefers to listen to - individually.

With the new "jukebox mode", you can turn AmpJuke into a regular jukebox, where each individual user requests music to be played. All users listen to the same music - simultaneously.

Requests are placed in the queue and can also be viewed there:

You can read more about running AmpJuke in jukebox mode in the FAQ.

The best place to start is here: http://www.ampjuke.org/?id=faq93.

AmpJuke + the Echonest: Improving the listening experience.

If you're familiar with AmpJuke, you might know that most of the artist+album images and biographies comes from accessing various webservices (or API's), - mainly the webservice provided by last.fm.

As I mentioned a year ago I "stumbled across an extremely interesting API".

This time the API/webservice is provided by the Echonest.

You can enable access to the Echonest API in order to take a huge leap towards improving the experience of listening to your music. The Echonest feature will ‘identify’ the song you are playing – analyse the tempo/bpm, danceability, and loudness levels among other things. 

That last sentence might have caught your interest, right ? Read more here: http://www.ampjuke.org/?id=faq87

Screensaver.

A simple 'screensaver' is available. Naturally, it only runs within the browser where AmpJuke is running:

Imagine something like this running as a "front end" to a computer/client accessing AmpJuke running in jukebox mode....

If you want to know more about how to enable+configure the screensaver, take a look at this FAQ-entry: http://www.ampjuke.org/?id=faq98.

Alternative scan+music management.
By Marc Apgar - THANKS!

Marc's got a rather big music collection and wanted a little bit more control of the scan routine compared to what's offered out-of-the-box in AmpJuke. 

You will find this new feature/tool in the admin panel on the left side on the "Welcome" page.
The tool is included "as is" as I haven't really had the time to look close into it.

Bye bye Bing!  

Sometimes I get just a little tired of Microsoft...

...here's another reason:

Recently, Microsoft decided to (almost) pull the plug on free usage of the API in relation to Bing! 

Unless - of course - you want to pay real $$ to get access to their webservice (API). Guess Microsoft is of the impression that that's a great offer.
I don't think so. 

So I flushed the countless hours of coding against the Bing webservice down the drain and turned to last.fm+Google for artist/performer images.

That's it! I bet your computer mouse is already looking for a download link and installation instructions!

Well - go ahead - don't let me keep you waiting.

//Michael.

31-07-2011: AmpJuke 0.8.5: Visual effects + random play improved

Yes, it's been a while since last release compared to earlier releases. There are many reasons behind this fact.

Although the so-called summer-weather so far has been pretty lousy (to say the least) here in Denmark, I've been busy doing other things (work, f.ex.) and had trouble finding time for AmpJuke.

By the way: AmpJuke's online presence (ie. this homepage) turned 6 years a little less than a week ago. Happy Birthday, AmpJuke!

Now, for this release, here's a brief list of most important updates/modifications/new functionality:

Introduced: jQuery.

It's almost impossible these days to avoid a site using some kind of JavaScript framework, so I took the liberty to introduce jQuery in AmpJuke.

Although I really would have loved to go berserk in all the great possibilities offered by something like jQuery, I've only managed to squeeze in some basic visual effects, - here's an example:

An image showing a "frozen" animation in AmpJuke using jQuery.

More information can be found in the FAQ: http://www.ampjuke.org/?id=faq86

- New feature: Edit tags on files.
It is possible to enable editing right away when an error/warning is encoutered after scan+import has completed.
Besides editing tags right after scan+import, it's also possible to do it later on.

This piece of functionality was made possible using the id3tag-class.

It's written by a guy named Jean-Sébastien Goupil - thanks, great work!
More in the FAQ: http://www.ampjuke.org/?id=faq35

- Improved: Random play.

Random play has been improved.

Besides the existing functionality, it's from now on also possible to specify a maximum duration of tracks to about to be played randomly as well as avoiding tracks to be picked by random, if a given track has been played within a user-specified number of days.

If "Automatic play" is enabled, random play will also avoid going "circular" (track A -> B -> C -> B -> C etc.etc.) from now on.

More in the FAQ: http://www.ampjuke.org/?id=faq30

- Information: GetID3 version 1.9.

AmpJuke uses GetID3 version 1.9 (http://www.getid3.org).
It's the newest.

- Language updates.

Italian language updated by Pietro "Maerlin" Baiguini. Thanks, it's highly appreciated.

Danish language updated by some strange fellow name Michael H. Iversen... :)

That's it. I will not hold you back, since you probably cannot wait to download AmpJuke 0.8.5.

Please note the installation example is supposed to help you with a step-by-step guide in order to get up&running smoothly.

Besides that you might also find the FAQ-pages to be a great resource as well as the forum.

//Michael.

P.S. Unless something "nasty" shows up in this release, I just happened to stumble across an extremely interesting API the other day.

The API offers some functionality that - if/when implemented - really will give AmpJuke a huge boost in certain areas.

I'll certainly look a bit deeper into it.

As you might know already, AmpJuke is already using API's from last.fm and Bing!

19-12-2010: AmpJuke 0.8.4: Self registration (finally).

This release of AmpJuke mainly covers some of the suggestions for improvements and/or new functionality found in the forum.

Although AmpJuke is my free-time project, I consider most of the improvements in version 0.8.4 to be “user driven” (suggested by you “out there”).

Let’s take a look at what’s new/updated/improved in this release:

- New feature: IE9 jumplists.
Frankly, I'm quite impressed with the Windows 7 / Internet Explorer 9 beta combination.
So I punched in a few lines of code that takes advantage of pinning a site - in this case AmpJuke, naturally - to the taskbar in Win 7.
Just take a look at how right clicking the pinned AmpJuke site (using IE9) located on the taskbar in Windows 7 presents the user with some interesting options:

AmpJuke pinned to the taskbar in Windows 7.

- New feature: Self registration (finally).
Yes - It's been on the to-do list for quite a while... Although I really have no personal interest in a self-registration feature, the question has been asked at least a couple of times in the forum.
For further information about how to enable and configure self-registration please take a look at this FAQ-entry: http://www.ampjuke.org/?id=faq85.

- New personal setting: Hide text next to icons.
A new personal setting can hide the text after the icons scattered around the various options in AmpJuke. The text in the main menu to the left will still be visible.
More here: http://www.ampjuke.org/?id=faq84.

- German translation updated.
Thanks to Benjamin Preuß (r2k) for updating the German language in the forum.
Feel free to introduce/update any language here: http://www.ampjuke.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=6.

- Improvement: Error checking of album covers downloaded automatically.
If an album cover isn't downloaded+stored correctly then the cover will be hard (impossible) to see later.
From now on, the routine that auto-downloads covers will check if the size of the image is above a "certain size" (10 bytes). If not, the default/blank AmpJuke cover will be used instead.
Thanks to Ben for suggesting this in the forum.

- Error correction: “Play all...” didn’t work with favorite lists.
Clicking on "Play all..." when displaying a specific favorite list didn't have any effect (ie. the music wasn't streaming).
That is no longer the case.

- Modified: Changed split() to explode().
The function split() has been deprecated since PHP version 5.3.0.
I've changed the code where split() is used and is now using explode() instead.
Thanks to all of you 'out there' who kindly mentioned it in the forum (and thanks to grep!).

- Fixed: “Broken” themes.
Some themes was "broken" (not rendered as expected in the browser).
It required some work *everywhere*. Anyway, "broken" layouts should be history now (I hope...).

- Fixed: Replacing an image using an URL didn’t work.
When replacing a picture of an artist (performer) and/or replacing an image for an album using an URL, nothing happened.
That is no longer the case.

- Fixed: XSPF-playlist format.
I've changed the way XSPF-playlists are generated so the XSPF-playlists in AmpJuke are according to the standard.
XSPF-playlists comes into play when enabling the built-in flash player in AmpJuke.
More about the flash music player can be found here: http://www.ampjuke.org/?id=faq73.

- Improvement: Cleaned up in some of the code.
...besides what’s stated above, naturally :-)

Please remember: Suggestions for ‘realistic’ improvements in relation to AmpJuke are welcome. Whenever possible, please also supply some code/links/examples.

Yes - you can join the party and grab your copy of AmpJuke right here: http://www.ampjuke.org/?id=download.
...and, yes, it is really easy to get it up&running: http://www.ampjuke.org/?id=installation.

Feel free to take a closer look at the FAQ, visit the forum, try the demo and/or browse the screenshots in order to determine if you would like to give AmpJuke a spin on your music collection.

//Michael.

P.S. I’m still accepting friend requests coming from other AmpJuke users at last.fm: http://www.last.fm/user/ampjuke  

13-08-2010: AmpJuke 0.8.3: Maintenance release

Well...a rather long news-entry this time...
For starters, the project turned the 5-year mark a couple of weeks ago. Happy Birthday, AmpJuke!

In relation to managing some of the content on this site, I have been through a rather busy period looking for a replacement to what I did previously (don’t ask...it’s complicated...).

I ended up with GetSimple CMS based on a lot of factors. I had to code some modifications here and there in order to suit all the needs, but I’m happy with the result so far.

With the above modification of the homepage in mind, it shouldn’t be necessary to mention that this release of AmpJuke is considered to be a maintenance release.

However, the changelog says that there have been corrected 4 errors, implemented 3 new types of functionality, introduced 2 new themes as well as added 2 new sets of icons...

...see for yourself:

- Fixed: Security issue.
An URL-parameter was not properly sanitised before being used in SQL queries. This is no longer the case.

- Fixed: Upgrade issue.
If you plan to upgrade to this version, please MAKE SURE that you're running AmpJuke version 0.8.0 or above. If not, I highly recommend a fresh installation.

- New feature: Use URL when replacing image for an album or artist.
If you're unhappy with the images suggested by the API from either last.fm and/or Bing, you can type in an URL that points to the image you want to use to represent the album or artist.

THANKS to jesperts for coding this simple,clean and efficient modification. It's great.

- New theme: Bright Theme.
Made by Eigan.no. Thanks! Looks extremely great!

- New set of icons: Spirit20 by Dale Morrell.
You can find the entire set here: http://19eighty7.com

- New set of icons: Crystal Project by Everaldo Coelho.
You can find the entire set here: http://www.everaldo.com

- New personal setting: Create favorite lists automatically.
It turned out that having just "Add tracks to favorite lists automatically" as the only option to automatically add something to a favorite list (existing or new) was a little overwhelming (ie. a *lot* of favorite lists were created). This has changed with this release.
More in this FAQ-entry.

- Error correction: ‘un-share’ a faovrite list throws an error.
This is no longe the case.

- Error correction: Anonymous users could not stream music.
This is no longer the case. THANKS to dontaco2000 for notifying about this in the forum.

- New theme: Big blue.
Made by me :-) Mainly for fairly large monitors.
...and/or to be used with Everaldo's Crystal Project icons

- Improvement: Turn on/off shared favorite lists.

A request in the forum made me code this improvment.

From now on, sharing of favorite lists can be completely turned on/off for all registered users.

More in this FAQ-entry.

Grab yourself a copy of AmpJuke 0.8.3 and throw it against your own music library.
Don’t forget the installation example, the forum and the FAQ are there to answer questions and/or provide general help.

Provided nothing "nasty" turns up in relation to 0.8.3 (as usual, AmpJuke has been tested before relase), I'll start moving forward to the next relase.

The forum has some interesting suggestions that are worth investigating, - you might want to take a look yourself.

//Michael.
 

24-08-2012