Support for a private local music library

Answered
Hans

I would like to be able to add a Music Service in BlueOS that works on a private local music library.

I have a private local music library and I add new music to this library on a regular base. The only way I found to add this library to BluOS was by moving my library to a NAS and then use an SMB share to index the music files in BlueOS.

For a static music library, this works fine. The search feature is not extensive/rich enough, but I get to the music I want and in general, I'm pleased with the functionality.

The problem comes in when adding music. Adding music requires rebuilding the index. This rebuild takes quite some time (there are thousands of music files to index) before the new music files are indexed and available in the BluOS controller app.

I understand this is a side-effect of indexing a share. Therefore, I'm looking for an alternative. For instance, I could install Plex on my NAS (Synology), but Plex is not supported by BluOS neither.

Are there plans to support Plex in the near future? Is there an alternative available?

Or do you have solutions for this, which I might have missed?

Thanks

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Comments

9 comments

Date Votes
  • Official comment
    Tony W.
    Product Support Manager

    Thanks for the tip Hans;

    For those having slow re-indexing of a music library stored on a NAS, I was able to improve my re-indexing performance drastically by specifying a more explicit share/folder on the NAS.

    So, previously, I was just pointing to my global share on my NAS (e.g. \\server\share), but this share contains more than just my music files. It also contains copies of thousands of other files.

    I now point in BluOS to a more explicit path (\\server\share\music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Music). Re-indexing performance has improved immensely since then. It make sense if you think about it, I know, but in 2019, I expect things to "just work", fast. I should have known better :-)

  • Frans R

    Hi Hans,

    What helps in my case:

    only put one folder.jpg with max 600x600 pixels in the root and move all the other artwork to a subfolder called artwork. In that way the impact on memory and speed is limited.

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  • Hans

    Hey Frans

    Thanks for the tip!

    I'm in the process of adding a cover.jpg in all my album folders (due to BluOS not always picking up cover art stored inside the music files -- but that is another story).

    What indexing performance improvement can I expect?

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  • Hans

    For those having slow re-indexing of a music library stored on a NAS, I was able to improve my re-indexing performance drastically by specifying a more explicit share/folder on the NAS.

    So, previously, I was just pointing to my global share on my NAS (e.g. \\server\share), but this share contains more than just my music files. It also contains copies of thousands of other files.

    I now point in BluOS to a more explicit path (\\server\share\music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Music). Re-indexing performance has improved immensely since then. It make sense if you think about it, I know, but in 2019, I expect things to "just work", fast. I should have known better :-)

    Still lacking the automatic re-indexing when something changes to my library.

    I think most music library software have their own database file or files (e.g. for iTunes, it is an XML file). Can BluOS just not monitor this file for any change (say check the modification date of this file every 5 minutes), and when a change is detected, just perform a re-index? This way, BluOS can be agnostic about the music library software, and thus supporting potentially all/most of them, and provide a near-seamless integration for its customer base?

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  • Hans

    Is there any update on this or can you provide me with an answer on the questions asked?

    • Are there plans to support Plex in the near future?
    • Is there an alternative available?
    • Or do you have solutions for this, which I might have missed?

    Regards,
    Hans

    3
  • Tony W.
    Product Support Manager

    Hi Hans

    We have no plans at this time to make changes to how we support local music collections using our Local Library. We have yet to find a method as reliable in playback over multiple players within our extremely tight synchronisation thresholds over tens of players and extended periods.

     

     

    -2
  • Hans

    I do not really understand why it would be hard to add support for eg. Plex.

    If you look at the API of Plex, they provide you with an API to get information about the contents in that library, much like an API of Tidal looks like. Once you have that, you can display the available artists/albums/genres/songs.

    When the user then selects a song, you can access the stream to the media, same like a Tidal integration. 

    Since you guys already nailed support for Tidal streams for "multiple players within your extremely tight synchronisation thresholds over tens of players and extended periods", I do not see a big difference in a stream provided by eg. a Plex Media Server.

    2
  • Robert Brugman

    Hello tony,

     

    there are I guess a lot of users like me... adding new music to a shared network folder is something i do a lot too. How much time should it take before bluesound sees this music? Its a pity to see that this feature also seems to be very hard for the product team. In the months I am using bluesound now, I didn’t see any improvements or enhancements to the app. Makes me wonder what you are working on. Maybe you could share a software roadmap,  so we users can see what we can expect! Thx. 

    2
  • quinten1333
    • Edited

    Hi All,

    I just had this problem as well during a side project to automatically download, split and play youtube 1 hour mixes whenever I copy a youtube url.

    So there is a surprisingly easy solution: Play the songs using the "Play Internet URL" feature. For this to work your music library or "internet radio" needs to be accessible via a web server. (note: if you do not port forward this web server it will only be available in your local network). The downside is that you will have to play each song manually because the player does not have a way to know what song to play next.

    To solve this issue something I think something like could be used to create a local "radio" and then control what the radio plays, essentially bypassing the bluOS app. The BluOS player will just infinitely play whatever the "radio" streams.

     

    Apparently this is added to support a feature of TuneIn: https://support1.bluesound.com/hc/en-us/articles/217463777-Save-an-Internet-Stream-as-a-Custom-Station-in-TuneIn

    The option is also present in the Control Panel, which is how I found it. Here is how to play an URL via the web Control Panel:

    • Look up the ip of your player and browse to it (on the default port 80).
    • Select "Play Internet URL"
    • Insert an URL to a music file

    Shortcut for developers:

    Do a POST request to port 80 with the path /playurl and payload { url: <url> }

    OR

    By doing a get request to the API server (located on port 11000) with url /Play?url=<url> where <url> is the url encoded version of the url you want to be played.

    And if you are interested in controlling the player via the API, checkout this github project.

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