Before the advent of streaming services such as Spotify and the like, music was stored by fans on the hard drive, cataloged folder by folder, and with rigorously divided albums, so as to create a real musical collection of songs in MP3 (the format most widespread).
What if we wanted to transform our offline library into a personal streaming service so that we can listen to our music without time limits and without having to pay any subscription?
In this guide, we will show you in detail how to build a personal music server to stream music, so as to avoid having to move GB of music every time in the memory of our phone or tablet.READ ALSO: Create a server at home to share resources on the internet
How to create your own music server
The server in question will take care of cataloging all our music and making it available for listening in streaming, we will only have to open the right app and access the IP address of our line (properly prepared for the purpose).
The steps that we will find in the various chapters are not difficult to apply, but if we encounter difficulties it is better to ask for help from an experienced friend.
Create the music server with Emby
To index all our songs, we advise you to configure Emby as a multimedia server, which is provided free of charge and allows you to access all the resources (in this case the music) even remotely.
To start then we download Emby Server on our PC or we install on a NAS, so as to always be available on the network (a NAS consumes much less energy than a desktop PC, so it is advisable to evaluate this solution for a server running 24H).
Once Emby is installed on our device that will act as a server, let’s open it and, in the screen where we can choose the type of library to create, we choose Music in Type of content and add the folder where all the music tracks are present.
We confirm the addition by pressing at the bottom on OK. If the Emby server is already started and we don’t know how to add music, we can add new libraries by opening the server management web interface, pressing the gear symbol at the top right, and taking us to the side menu Libraries, so you can press on New Library.
Once the music has been added to our server, let’s go back to Emby’s settings (top right gear) and press on the side menu Password, so you can choose a new password for remote access to the contents.
After choosing the new password, click on Save; to request the password only for remote accesses, we expand the drop-down menu under the menu Local network sign-in mode, we select the item Don’t require a password on the local network, then press Save again to make the changes effective.
Without leaving the settings menu we open the side menu Network and put the checkmark on the item Enable remote connections to this Emby server.
We press the button again Save below to make the changes effective. In fact, the server is ready, we will only have to retrieve the remote connection port and the username used for the active profile.
To retrieve the username of the profile let’s go to the menu Users, while for a quick glance of the ports used by Emby to accept remote connections, just open the side menu Dashboard and check the address shown next to the item Remote access (WAN).
After preparing the Emby server, we will need to open the ports on our Internet modem or router, so that the connections from the outside point to the server. For the purpose it will be enough to open the configuration panel of the modem or router, find the menu Port Forwarding or similar, and add the port shown on the screen Dashboard, to point towards the local IP address of the PC or NAS where Emby is present.
If you don’t know how to open the ports on your router or modem, please read our guide How to open the router ports.
If our ADSL or fiber optic line does not have a static Internet IP address (so it changes every time the router or modem is restarted), it is better to use a dynamic DNS service like the one described in our article How to get a static ADSL IP address with No-IP.
How to access the server from a smartphone or tablet
Now that we have the IP address of our line, the Emby account credentials, and the server port number we can download the app on our smartphone or tablet Emby, available free for Android and for iPhone / iPad.
After checking that you are connected to the mobile data network, open the Emby app, press the button Add Server then we enter the IP address of our line, paying attention to the port number indicated below.
Once the data has been entered, click on Connect and enter Emby’s username and password; in this way, we will have access to the multimedia server, with which we can listen to our music even outside the home in streaming simply by pressing on the library Music created in the previous chapter.
Conclusions
Using a media server like Emby we will be able to index all our music collection in MP3 format and listen to it outside the home in streaming, by installing the Emby app, opening the library, and choosing the song to play. Since MP3 files tend to be very small, we will not have big buffering problems (2 Mega per second are enough in upload to support listening to any song) and we will not have to subscribe to any subscription for music streaming services.
To learn more about the use of a complete server like Emby we can continue reading in our article Guide to Emby, the universal media center for PCs, TVs, smartphones, and tablets.
If, on the other hand, we want to use alternative methods to listen to PC music on smartphones, we can read our in-depth analysis on how to Listen to PC music on Android via wifi or internet and on ways to use the Cloud for music, videos, photos, and various files