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Share Library between multiple PC's (and OS's)
Hi.
I'm interested in this software; it looks very interesting.
The feature for which I'm looking (and can't seem to find in any other media software) is the ability to share the library across multiple computers. It looks like the backend for Songbird is done in SQLite? Is it possible to use a public MySQL server instead? If so, do you envision that I would be able to update the library concurrently from multiple PC's?
I'm not worried about mounting the media remotely or streaming it. I can mount the network drive locally, etc.
Thanks,
Jeff
I'm interested in this software; it looks very interesting.
The feature for which I'm looking (and can't seem to find in any other media software) is the ability to share the library across multiple computers. It looks like the backend for Songbird is done in SQLite? Is it possible to use a public MySQL server instead? If so, do you envision that I would be able to update the library concurrently from multiple PC's?
I'm not worried about mounting the media remotely or streaming it. I can mount the network drive locally, etc.
Thanks,
Jeff
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The best points from everyone
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@ carl
Have you tried Dropbox-ing your profiles.. If all your computers are the same OS, then it should work by pointing your dropbox folder to your Profile Folder... All you would have to worry about is make sure you are running the same Songbird version on all your computers...
I’m hmmmmm.......
4 people think
this is one of the best points
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Syncing Songbird with Songbird
The What:
What I'm suggesting is that Songbird have a way to communicate between multiple versions of itself to sync both songs and meta data.
Using myself as an example, I have a file server in my basement with 100 Gig's of MP3's on it. My laptop has significantly less storage then that. In fact I don't keep any songs on my laptop, Rhythmbox reads the MP3's straight off the server. Which works as long as I'm on my home network, but I'm screwed out of the house. Plus I have another machine hooked up to the stereo and (for now) the ratings/play count/etc are separate and a chore to try and keep sync'ed.
How I picture this working (once again from my example) is that either the file server or the stereo machine would run a copy of Songbird which would act as the "master" then my laptop could connect to the master similar to how you connect to a shared library but with the ability copy songs locally and update the stats as necessary.
The Why (for people other then just me):
People's music libraries are growing ever larger just at the same time as ultra portable laptops are becoming more and more popular. What this generally means is that people are often left with far more music then they can (currently) carry around with them.
Usually another computer will act as a main store and the laptop will only have a copy of a portion of that. Which leads to multiple libraries with separate meta data stats like play counts and song ratings.
This is obviously parallel to iTunes as the main store and the iPod as the portable. (Or Songbird and the DAP of your choice.) Which has been working pretty well for a few years now. However the rise of the ultra portable introduces a new class of "DAP" to the mix which has the power of the full client, just not the storage.
Think of it as Songbird needing a Nest to go home to.
This reply was created from a merged topic.
I’m just throwing this out there.
7 people think
this is one of the best points
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I think the simplest solution now would be to implement support for variables in the library database. For example, if most of my music is in a folder C:\Local Documents\Musica, save file locations like this:
file:///%%location1%%/Beck/Odelay/novacane.mp3
then have a menu where you can edit locations
%%location1%%
Win="C:\Local Documents\Musica"
OSX="/Volumes/WindowsDrive/Local Documents/Musica"
Linux="/mount/MicroSux/Local Documents/Musica"
%%location2%%
... you get the idea
now every OS should be able to find songs in the library, whether it's a local drive or network share and libraries should become much more portable. Move your entire library or sections of it to another folder, drive or NAS without having to rebuild the library.
5 people think
this is one of the best points
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Inappropriate?When you say a public MySQL server, do you mean something along the lines of a "library.songbirdnest.com" which various installs of Songbird could login to?
That's pretty interesting.
I was thinking of a way to get around that sort of problem as well. I was thinking that different Songbirds could talk amongst themselves and keep their libraries in sync.
http://getsatisfaction.com/songbird/t...
Your method might be a little easier to pull off.
1 person thinks
this is one of the best points
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Inappropriate?I am really interested in this idea too... so many different options though depending on how you share/mount your Music files... Maybe somewhere along the lines of a SonicSwap/Simplify Media/Foxmarks hybrid...
or start with something simple by a way to sync libraries with dual boot computers (Windows/Ubuntu)... All you would need to change is the filepaths in the library file....
I am very intrigued about how the Songbird crew could go about this, but if they could get it done, that would be AMAZING!!!!
I’m hmmmmm......
1 person thinks
this is one of the best points
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Inappropriate?I was thinking along the lines of a home server hosting all the music files, etc. This way all internal PC's (laptops, desktops, media PC's) could connect - regardless of their host OS - to the same database so you don't have to worry about synchronization issues.
I would worry about legal repercussions of offering it 'publicly' in a literal sense.
1 person thinks
this is one of the best points
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Inappropriate?That's what I looking for. I have all my music files on a network device and don't want to have the songbirg library file doubled for each user and PC.
Therfore it would be great to have the opportunity to enter the path were songbird should store the library.
I’m excited about this idea.
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Inappropriate?If this were implemented I'd strongly consider using Songbird as my primary media player. I currently have all my music on a server machine (using Samba, running Ubuntu OS). My current solution is to have .m3u playlists in my music directory. These are created using MediaMonkey on my Vista machine and are usable by the various Linux-based machines on my network whenever I use a different computer. MediaMonkey is just a lot better at handling this type of setup at the moment as far as I can see. If Songbird could implement a better solution I'd install Songbird on all the machines on my network and use that instead.
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Inappropriate?I think the first thing to worry about is sharing a library on a dual-boot computer. For a cross platform media player, this is essential, since most people these days using anything but Windows dual-boot.
2 people think
this is one of the best points
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Inappropriate?I found a quite good solution to that problem. I'm using FreeNAS with integrated Firefly server (formerly called: mt-daap) to share my lib over the local LAN (it makes an iTunes/DAAP share). Firefly is also availible for Win XP or any other platform. As client you can use Songbird with daap addon. I use the nice app Fireflyclient that is written in Java, runs stabile and is quite pretty.
To put the music on my ipod i use floola, that gets access to the music via samba share on the NAS.
To have proper lib also on the ipod you need the have proper ID3 tags in your mp3 files (including album cover embedded in tag). Really good solution. It took me long to find and evaluate but I'm very happy now.1 Comment Add a comment
This is one of the best points
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Sounds like a interesting (and complex!) solution. I'll definitely check some of these out. -
Inappropriate?I think the simplest solution now would be to implement support for variables in the library database. For example, if most of my music is in a folder C:\Local Documents\Musica, save file locations like this:
file:///%%location1%%/Beck/Odelay/novacane.mp3
then have a menu where you can edit locations
%%location1%%
Win="C:\Local Documents\Musica"
OSX="/Volumes/WindowsDrive/Local Documents/Musica"
Linux="/mount/MicroSux/Local Documents/Musica"
%%location2%%
... you get the idea
now every OS should be able to find songs in the library, whether it's a local drive or network share and libraries should become much more portable. Move your entire library or sections of it to another folder, drive or NAS without having to rebuild the library.
5 people think
this is one of the best points
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This is one of the best points
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Thank you for the suggestion of the link. I will try sometime in the future after I get Songbird to put files on an ipod. (in fact, I have given up on it for a while and using other tools - I'll try again in 10 weeks when it is school holidays for us)
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Inappropriate?In the meantime, is there a solution for us 'simple' users so that both ubuntu and Vista can use the same library? I can handle some moving and rebuilding, but is it possible?
I’m excited about the possibility
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You can try creating a symbolic link between the mount point for your windows drive and a new folder called 'C:' in your root directory; "ln -s /mnt/windows/ /C:/". I tried this in OSX and was able to directly use my iTunes library.xml from windows. I had to keep loading the xml to keep the library synched so I gave up on the idea but if you can get it working with a songbird profile...
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Inappropriate?@2MNY:
* what do you mean with "save file locations like this: file:///%%location1%%/Beck/Odelay/novacane.mp3"?? should I edit all my mp3 files and change the store path?
* what do you mean with "then have a menu where you can edit locations"? Where/how should I set this menu?
* ln -s /mnt/windows/ /C:/ .... mmmm I haven't tried but sounds dirty
@songbird:
I think a dual boot lin-win (at first) and remote store (at second) should be supported out of the box without tricks .... especially for a product whose strength with respect to the other tons of similar application on the market (in my opinion) is being cross platform and firefox "like" (i.e. dual boot "able" I assumed ...) ... add in future (near future) release?
I’m frustrated
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@one71. The post using Novicane as an example was just a suggestion for how the songbird creators could implement a mobile library system with various files and folders in various locations that can be moved around without destroying a library and it's playlists, it isn't something that has been implemented in the current version of songbird but could exist in some form in a future release.
The symlink method is actually a pretty safe temporary fix. Creating a symlink won't alter your windows files in any way and if it doesn't work you can just delete the symlink. It basically creates a shortcut called "C:" to the place where linux mounts your windows drive. Any windows program that stores file locations using xml syntax (file:///directory%20path/file.extension) will be usable in Linux/OSX as long as you have read/write permissions for your windows drive. -
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Inappropriate?Oh PLEASE implement this. This is exactly what I am looking for, yet no product comes close
I’m frustrated
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Inappropriate?Also, make the server-side implementation do ALL the work, my little laptop starts to overheat when it has to do all the CPU work AND transfer ALL the data to/from my seedbox.
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Inappropriate?I need this. I just need it to sync my library changes. Mainly my playlist data. I use a sync tool to keep the two music folders synced on my LAN and then songbird auto-adds the songs, so the only thing that gets messed up is my playlists.
So my vote is for playlist sync.
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Inappropriate?I want to have the same Library between Windows and Linux too! It's boring to import the same songs two times and create the same playlists... And also set up song rating for rate-based playlists...
Is that possible to make a "root directory" who is different in the two OSs (= D:\My Music and /media/Documents/My Music) and another part of the path who is the same (= Artist/Album/file.mp3...)?
If no one can make it into Songbird, maybe it'll be possible with an add-on?
(sorry for the bad english)
I’m excited
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Inappropriate?Syncing Songbird with Songbird
The What:
What I'm suggesting is that Songbird have a way to communicate between multiple versions of itself to sync both songs and meta data.
Using myself as an example, I have a file server in my basement with 100 Gig's of MP3's on it. My laptop has significantly less storage then that. In fact I don't keep any songs on my laptop, Rhythmbox reads the MP3's straight off the server. Which works as long as I'm on my home network, but I'm screwed out of the house. Plus I have another machine hooked up to the stereo and (for now) the ratings/play count/etc are separate and a chore to try and keep sync'ed.
How I picture this working (once again from my example) is that either the file server or the stereo machine would run a copy of Songbird which would act as the "master" then my laptop could connect to the master similar to how you connect to a shared library but with the ability copy songs locally and update the stats as necessary.
The Why (for people other then just me):
People's music libraries are growing ever larger just at the same time as ultra portable laptops are becoming more and more popular. What this generally means is that people are often left with far more music then they can (currently) carry around with them.
Usually another computer will act as a main store and the laptop will only have a copy of a portion of that. Which leads to multiple libraries with separate meta data stats like play counts and song ratings.
This is obviously parallel to iTunes as the main store and the iPod as the portable. (Or Songbird and the DAP of your choice.) Which has been working pretty well for a few years now. However the rise of the ultra portable introduces a new class of "DAP" to the mix which has the power of the full client, just not the storage.
Think of it as Songbird needing a Nest to go home to.
This reply was created from a merged topic.
I’m just throwing this out there.
7 people think
this is one of the best points
8 Comments Add a comment
This is one of the best points
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<3 the nest analogy...and your points are great too.
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Would that be the same thing as iTunes server (if you're familiar with that)'? I think that would be awesome.
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If you're referring to an iTunes shared library, then yes - kinda of.
But more like a integrated seamless shared library.
One PC (or home server) with the music stored on it running the Songbird "master" sharing the music - every other desktop in the house would "blend" that library into it's own (if it has its own files, but it wouldn't need them, everything could be on the master).
That's similar to how iTunes shared library works now, except for the blending part, but I'd like it so that the "master's" files act if they were local. Play counts, playlists and ratings would be synced back to the master and if you plug in your iPod/PMP to one of the clients you can sync/load music to that as well.
But for laptops/netbooks/etc their Songbird client could copy music (whole library or in part) from the master to themselves automatically (maybe base it off rules "Store 2 gigs of the most played songs locally") for when they're off the home network/out of the house. Then when they come back they can sync up with the master just like they were a type of iPod.
Does that make things clearer?
One thing I'd like to stress, the master should have support for running more then one database for the music (or Sonbird be able to run more then one master instance). My music tastes and my girlfriend's are wildly different but all the music is in one place. And I don't need any fights over how a "New Kids on the Block" track should be rated. (Or those plays showing up on my Last.fm account. ;-)
(I use bracketed asides a lot (maybe too much)) -
Yes, it would be very awesome.
I however see a problem in files you want both local and on the server 'master'. How would songbird now they're both the same file and only show one (the local)?
You could check file size and song title-artist, but that's not really a clean solution. -
It's left as an exercise for The Pioneers of the Inevitable.
(That's why I'm an "ideas guy" and not a developer. ;) -
What about taking an md5 hash of each file and storing that along with it in the DB so that files on more than one computer but in the same collection will only show up once.
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@Kevin, best to just md5 the music portion of the file.
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@2MNY, good call, then changes in the meta won't affect the ID's in each SB instance.
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Inappropriate?I've been requesting this for a bit, but your example makes it MUCH easier to understand what we want/need for Songbird. Let's hope this catches on.
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Inappropriate?I believe this is exactly what I need!
I also have over 100 Gig of of mp3's on my HP Home Server and all my computers in the house play music from the server. The biggest problem with this much music is keeping it organized BUT I cannot figure out a way to get playlists and ratings to sync across the network and all computers.
I really like Songbird but if it could do this I would be a raving fan!!!!
I’m optimistic
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Inappropriate?@ carl
Have you tried Dropbox-ing your profiles.. If all your computers are the same OS, then it should work by pointing your dropbox folder to your Profile Folder... All you would have to worry about is make sure you are running the same Songbird version on all your computers...
I’m hmmmmm.......
4 people think
this is one of the best points
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Inappropriate?Here's a thought:
I was talking about mobile devices like netbooks with Songbird running on it and syncing with other versions of Songbird.
Well, when Apple released the iPhone 3GS they really pushed the concept of "this isn't just a phone, it's like developing for a desktop". This stuck in my head and while I was out for a walk I thought about the more open devices like the Pre and Android phones.
I don't expect there to be an Android version of Songbird any time soon, there's too much to do already, but if the protocol for "blending librarys"/syncing was open, then these "Fledgling" devices could access everything Songbird has to offer when on your home network and store files for when you're not.
Anything, and I mean *anything* that could play music should be able to sync the same way. Boxee, XBMC, Cell Phones, PMP's, PSP, Gameboy DS's, Wiget enabled TV's, etc....
This is an extension of another idea suggestion I've had: http://getsatisfaction.com/songbird/t...
But I never really thought about how similar the two goals are.
I just think it could be kind of cool to see Songbird have a open way for everyone to Sync with it. Right now, you're trying to support all these various devices, how about getting them to support Songbird instead.
Maybe instead of "Made for iPod" we could start seeing "Sings with Songbird".
I’m dreaming. Leave me alone. :)
2 people think
this is one of the best points
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I think that Wayne's last 3 or 4 posts hit the nail on the head as far as what I'm looking for here. Great writeup.
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"Sings with Songbird"
perfect. -
Re: Sings w/ Songbird....I know. I was a little mad I didn't come up with that one.
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Inappropriate?I was wondering if it is possible to synchronize only my (smart) playlists between two computers instead of kind of manually synchronizing my entire profiles. This is because I do not want all add-ons on both PCs. Also my settings may differ. Could someone tell me a way/add-on/file that solves this problem?
Thank you very much. Songbird is awsome :-)
This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
How do I synchronize smart playlists between two computers?. -
Inappropriate?This would be aweome: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w31de2...
This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
Access your songbird from other pc's.
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Inappropriate?I agree with the concept of sharing and with somehow using/accessing an outside database program/server.
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Inappropriate?Hi All
New to Songbird, played with it yesterday & today. Initially, I was very impressed, and thought "Thank goodness for Songbird, now I can at last throw away shiTunes, which since release 8 at least has forgotten all about QUALITY" - iTunes 9 is SO dire - it's unusable on any of my PCs, continually hanging and freezing.
Songbird, compared to that bloatware is a piece of fresh air!
BUT, then I went to switch on my Squeezebox...
... and of course, it's set to pick up my iTunes Library :-(
Sharing the library can't be difficult, after all even shiTunes allows me to have the library xml/itl on a NAS...
.. so for starters, could we at least have the functionality to specify where the Songbird library is stored: my iTunes library is on my NAS, so every PC in the house (and the Squeezeboxes) can all point to the one music store - if all my PCs could be pointed to the NAS Songbird, I'd wait for Squeezebox to catch up!
I’m frustrated
1 person thinks
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CHAMP
