Welcome to the AmpJuke homepage !

AmpJuke is a program that runs on Linux using Apache, MySQL and PHP. AmpJuke stream music files to one or more clients using the HTTP-protocol. Any program that can handle M3U-playlists (f.ex. WinAmp, Microsoft Media Player, XMMS) can play the streamed music. AmpJuke focuses on flexible, simple, easy navigation as well as speed. Features include, but are not limited to: Scanning and import of music stored in the MP3, OGG, WMA and/or APE format. View: Track, Album, Performer, Year, Favorites etc. Themes. Simple administration. Automatic retrieval of album/cover art. Get lyrics for individual songs. Multiple languages:                         The best ? Its free ! (based on the GPL license)

News

04-04-2008: AmpJuke 0.7.2: Submit streamed music files to last.fm ("Scrobbling").

The new release of AmpJuke (0.7.2) is available for download. This version is about the following: - Submit music to last.fm (aka. "Scrobbling"). Fancy stuff ahead if you're a last.fm aficionado: Submit tracks to last.fm. AmpJuke will submit music to last.fm that each user listen to. After streaming it will show up on the recently-played list and update last.fm's listening statistics. This will happen automatically (at least one last.fm profile is required). You can configure AmpJuke in several different ways to send recently played music to last.fm - this FAQ-entry has the details about configuration. There's also a FAQ-entry explaining how this works for users (when enabled, it can be a personal setting). Once again: a big "thank you" to the nice folks at last.fm for providing such openness (as seen in the Audioscrobbler Web Services API) to the data. - Show what's up next. When displaying what's being played currently, AmpJuke also displays the name of the _next_ track to be streamed (or just "Random play" of you're at the end of the playlist). This is only displayed in the "Now playing" section (not in the "pop out"), and only of your media-player isn't in the "light update" list. Confused ?? Don't be ! Help is available in this FAQ-entry. Sidenote: I might change this in a later release, so each user can hide/show the name of the next track to be played. - New icons: The minimalistic "Pi Diagona" (10x10 .png format) has been added. Feel free to add your own. - Minor inconvenience fixed. Added a check to see if all pictures are locally available when displaying related performers (as in: performers related to the performer displayed currently). If not, refresh related performers from last.fm (automatically, of course). More info. about related performers and how it works can be found in this FAQ-entry. - Added an (unobtrusive) donation button. Only AmpJuke administrators will see this, and furthermore it's only seen on the personal settings page. The ads on this page doesn't even come close to cover the hosting expenses for this site... - Improved security, again (a few words that describes a lot of work...). This time I'll probably get off the hook from the paranoid security types out there...LOL So go ahead and knock yourself out: Download AmpJuke, see the detailed installation example, browse the FAQ, take AmpJuke for a spin in the demo or perhaps see what's up in the forum. //Michael.

14-02-2008: AmpJuke 0.7.1: Stream related performers, XSS issue fixed and "cutoff" date introduced.

A new release of AmpJuke is available for download. This release covers: - "Cutoff" date introduced. A new option is available when setting up scan+import of (new) music: "Cutoff" date. If/when set to a date in the past, AmpJuke will only look for+add music tracks that have been modified on or after that specific date (actually it's a UNIX timestamp). This makes scanning+importing new music into AmpJuke really fast, compared to previous functionality (scan everything, everytime). If you - like kanna and me - have a not-so-up-to-date system, the "cutoff" date might be invaluable for a medium to large music collection. For more info. about the new scan-option, please consult this FAQ-entry. - New functionality: Stream music based on related performers. This is possible using a (brilliant) webservice from last.fm. Just like last.fm, AmpJuke selects a random track based on a performer that's "related" to the most recently played performer. Whether you want this or not is a personal setting, - this FAQ-entry has more information about how AmpJuke pick and stream related performers. - When searching in previous versions of AmpJuke, there was a XSS-vulnerability which have been reported elsewhere. XSS is (should) no longer (be) possible. - New theme: "Kutzaray's Cool Theme". Thanks to kutzaray for taking the time do do this. - Minor improvements here+there. F.ex. scan show the number of seconds used to scan - you might, by the way, want to compare scan time with a "cutoff" date against doing it without a "cutoff" date ("scan everyting")... The FAQ has been updated and that's true for the installation example as well - the demo will be updated soon. Next move for the AmpJuke project ? On to 0.7.2...I'll evaluate the (rather good) suggestions from the forum and see what's reasonable/possible to implement. //Michael.

15-01-2008: AmpJuke 0.7.0: Transcode streamed music and icons.

As mentioned earlier (when releasing 0.6.0), your mother/father/family/friends may have warned you about drugs, driving with strangers and software releases with a .0 (point-oh) at the end. Well...having tested as much as possible (i.e. taking my own medicine), I'm taking the plunge and offering AmpJuke 0.7.0 for download. In this release, you'll get the benefit of the following: - Realtime (on the fly) transcoding (downsampling) introduced. Lame is required to be present on your box, if you want to do this. You can set individual transcoding parameters for individual users, and/or completely turn off transcoding for one or more users. This FAQ-entry has all the goofy details about configuration of transcoding, as well as some (rather) important notes in relation to this. - Icons. A new personal setting means you can combine themes with icons. If you still want the 'good old' behaviour, you can select "no icons" in your personal setting, and the usual "arrow" is displayed in various places. If you want more eye candy, please take a look at how to add more icons (in the FAQ). - Hungarian language updated. Thanks to Rezso for doing this. - Estonian language updated. Thanks to kanna for doing this in the appropriate forum-thread. - The earlier reported error about the "disappearance" of the configured prefix for tables does no longer exist. See the previous newsentry below. Once again: Thanks to chs for notifying about this in the forum. - Refreshing related performers from last.fm happens automatically. If Displaying related performers is enabled, then a query will be made against last.fm. Of course the query will only happen if the cached list of related performers isn't available. A few more updates exists - for details please see changelog.txt (also included in the download). Good luck downloading/installing/upgrading, and please don't forget the Ampjuke homepage offers a comprehensive FAQ, a detailed installation example as well as a forum in order to help you with questions. By the way: I did spend quite a lot of time updating the demo (uuh-wee) //Michael.

06-11-2007: AmpJuke 0.6.6: Blood, sweat and tears.

November already, winter is approaching in this part of the world, and (what's really interesting) AmpJuke version 0.6.6 is available for download. This version is about: - Cleaned up + improved the entire streaming process. Basically, we're moving back to functionality from an earlier release with a twist, since the "Now playing" functionality is also available. However, if you - or your users - get into trouble in relation to "Now playing", I recommend you consider how it's configured (there are a lot of options...). See this FAQ-entry for detailed information. As an alternative, you might turn it completely off. - Improved the code that retrieves album covers using the Amazon web service. Besides a significant reduction (33%) in the number of lines to handle this, combined with a more speedy cover-retrieval, the code also relies completely on PHP5. - Hungarian language updated. Thanks to Rezso for doing this. - Corrected an error in relation to replacing an Amazon cover by either a "blank" cover and/or by looking up a new cover at Amazon. Thanks to kutzaray for notification about this in the forum. - New personal setting: Avoid duplicate entries. When enabled (checked), AmpJuke will not add a given track to a specific favorite list, if the track is already present in the favorite list. More information about this can be found in this FAQ-entry. - Minor improvements here+there. Such as: Added link to "Play/enqueue all..." when displaying a specific performer, added more links to the AmpJuke FAQ, etc... With this release of AmpJuke I hope that the focus from now on can be the development of future functionality and features. //Michael.

14-10-2007: AmpJuke 0.6.5: Two bugfixes and improved functionality.

Well...the previous version didn't last long. Some bugs and inconveniences has been reported in the forum, causing this release to happen rather quick compared to the normal schedule (approx. once every 2nd month). This release is about the following: - Corrected an annoying (but important) detail: When using Microsoft Windows Media Player and having "Now playing" set to "on", the track name in Media Player might be "stream" and/or delays happened. More information in this FAQ. Thanks to kutzaray for notification about this in the forum. - Corrected an error that appeared during upgrade. Basically, the upgrade stopped unexpectedly with an error. Thanks to wolf for notifying about this in the forum. - Spanish translation updated. Besides being available in the download, it's also available in the forum. Thanks to kutzaray for notification about this in the forum. - Covers for albums are now stored using "album_id.jpg". It used to be "performer name - album name.jpg". Thanks to kutzaray for notification about this in the forum. - "Help" links points to the AmpJuke FAQ. This is a personal setting. It can be turned on/off. When turned on, a small question mark appears next to various menus and configuration options within AmpJuke. As usual, more information is available in the changelog, which is also included in the download. //Michael.

10-10-2007: AmpJuke 0.6.4: "Now playing" introduced.

Some short release notes in relation to AmpJuke version 0.6.4: - New feature: "Now playing". AmpJuke can display what's being played currently in the browser. This happens automatically. A "popout" box can also display what's being played currently. This FAQ-entry has all the details about configuration of "Now playing". - New language: Estonian. See this FAQ-entry for more information about translations. Thanks to Kalmer Kand for this nice contribution. - Allow anonymous users to browse only. When configuring AmpJuke to allow access for 'anonymous' users, you can further limit 'anonymous' users to only browse for music (=they cannot not stream it). Thanks to viciouslime for suggesting this in the forum. - Songs with "#" in the filename could not be streamed. This has been corrected by introducing a configurable setting called "forbidden" characters (more information in this FAQ-entry). Thanks to kutzaray for notification about this in the forum. - Error correction in download. An error causing tracks with "special" characters (like o-umlaut) not to be downloaded has been corrected (see previous topic). Thanks to wolf for notification about this in the forum. - The './tmp' folder is no longer included in downloaded music. Thanks to  wolf for asking for this improvement in the forum. - Error correction: MySQL displayed an error when deleting stuff. The deletion simply failed when a performer with no tracks/albums was being deleted and "confirm deletion" was switched on This is no longer the case. Thanks to kutzaray for notification about this in the forum. - New theme: "Back to school". It's available in two flavors: Blackboard and Whiteboard. Depending on your age, either one might bring back memories from your time in school. The theme relies on certain fonts that should be installed on your system, in order for "Back to school" to show up like it's supposed to. So - quickly - download the latest release of AmpJuke to get started with the installation or upgrade. If you're worried about support there are various options, such as the step-by-step installation guide, a nice FAQ and of course the forum. //Michael.

30-08-2007: AmpJuke 0.6.3: Three improvements and one new feature.

The new version of AmpJuke is available for download. This release covers: - Change the contents on the 'welcome' page. The contents are now considered to be a personal setting that each user can set to his/her own taste and preference. Basically, you can set/change what's displayed in the three "boxes" shown on the 'welcome' page. You might want to try it out in the AmpJuke demo. - Remember login+password. Just like f.ex. Google and Yahoo!, you can check a "remember me..." on the login-page. This causes the login-credentials to be remembered on the computer being used to login with. - Scan+import: Deletion of "dead" records in the database will from now on happen BEFORE new music is discovered and added to the database. Thanks to wolf for suggesting this in the forum. - Upload a cover "by hand". If - for whatever reason may apply - the Amazon webservice doesn't return a suitable cover for a particular album in your collection, you can upload one (if you have appropriate access to do so). So far, you only had the option to use a "blank" cover and/or tell AmpJuke to retrieve a new cover from Amazon. Please note that only .jpg-files can be "recognized" by the new cover-uploading feature. Once again, thanks to wolf for suggesting this in the forum. With this release, some of the (brilliant/relevant) suggestions from the forum are introduced. There are still some outstanding though. I'll look into it, and possibly include most of it in a future release. Another important thing to remember is that AmpJuke will soon rely completely on PHP 5. So far, I've coded with 'backward compatibility' in mind, but since PHP 4 will reach end-of-life next year it might be a good idea to make the switch now, if you're still running PHP 4... //Michael.

26-07-2007: AmpJuke 0.6.1 released (Happy birthday!)

First and foremost: Happy Birthday, AmpJuke. This is the project's 2nd "online anniversary" ! As promised earlier, AmpJuke version 0.6.1 is now available for download. This version covers a lot (really) of new/updated stuff. Here's the short list: - Display related performers. May not sound of much, but take a look at it. I think it's cool -  at least from a technical point of view. The display of related performers is actually made possible using a webservice from the popular site/community last.fm. Important: you must run PHP version 5 in order to be able to display related performers. The rest of AmpJuke will still be usable with PHP4, but maybe it's time to upgrade...? - Getting/displaying covers is now done using Amazon's upgraded/new webservice (they refer to it as "ECS4"). Amazon have announced that the current version will shutdown by March 2008. - Upload feature introduced. It can be turned on/off completely for the site you install AmpJuke on. Furthermore, it can be set to on/off individually for each user. - The SQL-code for displaying album lists and individual albums is updated. Thanks to Stuart Hardy for supplying some code in relation to this ! - New theme, "AB Centered Terracotta". Thanks to Andreas B. for this ! - Corrected an error that didn't allow .wma-files to be scanned+imported. Thanks to Claes-Henrik for pointing me in the right direction ! - Improved some places in relation to installation to ensure a (hopefully) smooth, quick and error-free installation. This is especially important in relation to having the right permissions. If the 'right' permissions haven't been set, AmpJuke will stop whatever it's doing and make an intelligent complaint about what's wrong (in most places). - The login page is now mainly using css to control the look&feel of the page. The settings for this can be found (and altered) in the 'ampstyles.css' file. For a full list, please take a look at the changelog.txt file. Since this is a "birthday release", I have updated the page about the history of AmpJuke. Take a look at it if you want to know what triggers this particular project as well as what's been happening during the years. The installation example is updated already, and that's true for the FAQ as well. So there's absolutely no excuse not to download AmpJuke and get started. ...and the immediate future...? Well within a couple of days I'll be on vacation for quite some time, so I may not be able to answer questions. You might want to try the FAQ and/or the recently opened forum. //Michael.

07-04-2007: AmpJuke 0.5.5: Contributions.

This version of AmpJuke contains new functionality, as well as some contributions. - New personal setting: you can pick the name of the favoritelist each time, before actually appending something (tracks, albums, performers, years). For more information, please see the FAQ-entry that explains this in more detail. - Hungarian language updated. (As always) Thanks to Rezso (www.rezso.net) for doing this. - Spanish language updated. Thanks to Claudio for doing this. - New feature: download individual tracks from a favorite list. Thanks to David for asking for this (obvious) feature. - Corrected an error in relation to fetching/displaying lyrics. Thanks to Steven for reporting this. The last three changes in this release, are found in changelog.txt (also included in the download). The detailed installation example has already been updated, so there's a good opportunity to try AmpJuke out and download the program... //Michael.

13-03-2007: AmpJuke 0.5.4: Maintenance update.

A 'maintenance' update in the stable 0.5.x-series of AmpJuke, covering the following: - Dutch language up-to-date. Thanks to Fokke Slottje (www.twilightmusic.nl) for doing this. - Incrementing the value of 'times played' by one for a given track, is from now on done *AFTER* the track has been streamed. - New theme: Typewriter. Minor improvements, - please see the changelog. For more information about AmpJuke in general, you might want to take a look at the requirements, see some screenshots, get questions answered in the FAQ, see how easy it is to install or perhaps go straight for the download. //Michael.

13-02-2007: AmpJuke 0.5.2: Share your favorites.

Release notes: - It is now possible to share favorites between users. If you're the owner/creator of a specific favorite list, and you want other users to access that list, it's now possible. For more information about this, please view this FAQ-entry. - The display of favorites is now faster, compared to earlier versions of AmpJuke. - Swedish language updated (done a long time ago in fact...THANKS, Jorgen). - Hungarian language updated (THANKS, Rezso, www.rezso.net). The detailed installation example has already been updated, the FAQ and the demo will be updated soon. Should you encounter any problems in relation to installation that's not covered in the FAQ, do not hestitate to contact me. //Michael.

05-01-2007: Site update.

The site has been updated, as follows: Detailed installation example Some entries in the FAQ The online demo. //Michael.

31-12-2006: AmpJuke 0.5.0: 'Under the hood'.

I know that 'major' new functionality was promised earlier. However, during development of 0.5.0, I realized that some significant "under the hood" modifications would be more appropriate for this release. So in other words: The 'major' new functionality will have to wait a couple of releases (cannot reveal what it's about, but I can promise it's 'major' in relation to the AmpJuke project). On the other hand: there are some new features available for this release. Please checkout the changelog.txt file (also included in the download) for details. As usual, I will be busy updating the detailed/guided installation example, the FAQ as well as the online demo in the beginning of 2007. Happy New Year to everyone, and a big thank you to all who have downloaded AmpJuke so far ! //Michael.

19-10-2006: AmpJuke 0.4.4: New method for streaming music introduced

- New method for playing/streaming music. Thanks to Allan Hansen from the getID3 project (getid3.sourceforge.net) for suggesting this as well as suppplying a couple of lines of code I could use for implementing this. - The 'demos' directory under the 'getid3' directory have been removed. Thanks (again) to Allan for pointing this out. - Hungarian languagefile was updated. Thanks to Reszo (www.rezso.net) for doing this. To everybody else: Please email me your updated language files, - they will be included in the next release. - Two settings have been removed as a consequence of the new streaming method mentioned above. Minor stuff: - Last search word(s) is (are) remembered. - Date+time on the 'welcome' page now uses the correct date (Thanks to Rezso). So far, the installation example has been updated, and (as usual) the FAQ as well as the online demo will follow soon. It is my sincere hope that this release will be good enough to last a little longer than the previous version did. In fact, AmpJuke 0.4.4 is supposed to be one of the last in the 0.4.x-series. //Michael.

21-09-2006: Off topic: How to compile Apache, MySQL and PHP on Linux.

Finally ! I've taken the liberty to put my guide online on how to compile Apache 2, MySQL 5 and PHP 5 on Linux. There seems to be so many guides out there, but I haven't been successfull enough to find one that covers some fairly new versions of the popular "package" (Apache/MySQL/PHP) that brings "web-life" to your databases... So - even though it's a little bit away from the Ampjuke topic - the guide is now online right here. //Michael. P.S. Yes - I'm working like mad on the next release of AmpJuke....stay tuned...

25-07-2006:AmpJuke version 0.4.1: .ogg-error corrected + Happy Birthday, AmpJuke !

Actually, it's not until tomorrow that AmpJuke celebrates its 1st year "online-birthday". AmpJuke has just been released in a version 0.4.1, covering the following: - Error correction: When reading .ogg-files, nothing was imported. This has been fixed. - A file called 'template.php' now exists in the 'lang' directory. It contains all keywords/phrases you will need to translate to your own language, in order to get a 'local' version of AmpJuke. If you could take the time and e-mail me a copy of whatever language you have translated to, I (and possibly everybody else) would be happy. Include your homepage, if you want me to link to it. Thanks to Rezso ( www.rezso.net) for suggesting and implementing this. - Some minor inconveniencies have been eliminated. Once again: Thanks to Rezso for pointing this out. Note: If you already run version 0.4.0 and haven't missed the ability to import .ogg-files and/or new languages, you might want to skip this upgrade. //Michael. P.S. If you're interested, here's a link to the history of AmpJuke (so far).

08-05-2006: AmpJuke version 0.3.6: Download and Autoplay options

This release of AmpJuke covers the following: - Download option. A user with the appropriate access level can download individual tracks, entire albums, search results etc. This might come in handy when a portable device is present, and you want to transfer some music to it. - Automatic play option. Just after a login, it is possible to have AmpJuke play 1-x tracks based on "all tracks" or a favorite list. This was made as a result of a user-request (actually: many of you out there suggested this feature). - AmpJuke now "speaks" another language: French / Français. Thanks a lot to Edwin for getting this done ( www.allan.ch) ! - If no AWS-key is entered, AmpJuke will not try to find a cover for an album. As usual, the demo, FAQ and a lot of other stuff on this site will be updated in the near future. AmpJuke 0.3.6 will be the release for this summer, unless nasty errors comes along...(FYI: AmpJuke was tested before release !) I'm working on a "major" release (probably a version 0.4.0) which requires some work to be done, so this version will most likely be the last in the 0.3.x-series. Furthermore, the summer is approaching and there's also a major soccer event taking place in Germany in the near future... it will surely take some of my (rather limited) spare-time away As always, feel free to contact me with whatever questions you might have in relation to AmpJuke, but please remember to check the FAQ first. /Michael.

30-03-2006: AmpJuke version 0.3.5: More user-controlled settings

- AmpJuke "speaks" yet another language: Dutch. Thanks to Fokke Slottje for getting this done ! - Introduction of more user-controllable features/settings, such as: * Confirm deletion. * Display durations. * Display "totals". - The selected/active favorite list is now shown more clearly. As always, feel free to check out the release notes (changelog.txt). A brief note to those of you who are upgrading... Please note that there are two options when upgrading: a) Upgrading from a version before 0.3.4 to 0.3.5 (current). b) Upgrading straight from 0.3.4 to 0.3.5 (current). It's rather important that you select the right version you're upgrading from. The demo will be upgraded soon... /Michael.

17-10-2005: AmpJuke 0.3.1: Multiple fileformats

This is mainly a "maintenance" release. However, one important new feature is also included in this release: The ability to import music in MP3, OGG, WMA and/or APE format. The langauages that AmpJuke has been translated to so far, are also a part of the download. For further information, please check the changelog.txt file (also included in the download). I haven't changed the demo and/or screenshots, since the new features applied to this release isn't "visible" anywhere. /Michael.

08-10-2005: AmpJuke 0.3.0 released

AmpJuke version 0.3.0 is available ! This release basically addresses 3 new things and one update: Automatic retrieval of album/cover art. Multiple language capability. Automatic deletion of files in 'tmp'. (Update) install/upgrade. Details: Cover art. You can have AmpJuke display a cover related to an album. This is accomplished using a webservice from Amazon, - hence you will have to sign up for an "Amazon key". Check out the FAQ section for details. Multiple languages. AmpJuke has been translated to ONE language (apart from english): Danish. In other words: your help is needed in order to have more languages. Automatic deletion of files in 'tmp'. Think of this in the same way as your browser handles 'temporary internet files'. Check out the FAQ section for details. Install/upgrade. It is now possible to UPGRADE an AmpJuke installation without overwriting previous configuration values/settings (the db.php file). Just extract the files in the distribution to your ampjuke directory and point your browser to "www-ampjuke-directory"/install.php. If you're INSTALLING (from scratch or the 1st time) you should also run install.php. /Michael