Back in January a couple of people I follow on mastodon were chattering about Navidrome and I read what it could do. It seemed interesting, a music server that can play your downloaded music and stream it to any android or iphone, with the help of a simple http server.

Back then I couldn’t find the energy and time to go on that journey, I was running Squeezebox / Lyrion for over 2 decades and am satisfied with what it produces. But remote access is not trivial with this software. Navidrome on the other hand is build with exactly that in mind, stream music to any hardware capable of playing streamed music. And that includes any phone running Android or iOS , and there are many clients (apps) available.

So on the first day of my leave I installed Navidrome, which remarkably runs on an ancient version of ubuntu. I followed the instructions, editted the configuration file, pointed it to my MP3 collection and off it went. Then I created the admin account, did some magic with Apache en configured a sub-domain so I could use a certificate and talk over https.

Of the many clients I choose almost randomly for Yuzic and it serves me well so far. So now when Bluetooth is around (Headphones, Speakers, Receiver, Phone) I can stream my MP3 collection. And our second hand Toyota has a reasonable audio installation and working Bluetooth. From Rotterdam to France no more searching on the radio, just press play and go!