Turn Android Device into Streaming MPD Music Server

mpd icon

Music Player Daemon is an extremely lightweight application originally written for Linux. You can remote control the music server using an Android device, iPod, Windows and OSX boxes. I had an old android device laying around and wanted to turn it into a wireless music player for my bedroom and control it with my phone. Now I stream music from a NAS through the Android MPD streaming music server which I control with my phone, pretty damn sweet!

I took my old Desire HD which I managed to root and install Cyanogen Mod 10.1 so it was compatible with aMPD.

There is already mpd for linux devices and luckily tguillem has ported mpd to android! The device must be running at least jelly bean (Cyanogen Mod 7 did not work with aMPD).

Android Music Server Setup

Installation

Grab the latest aMPD apk onto your android device through a browser.

Install it by browsing to a file manager.

Alternatively grab it from the Play store

Done!

Configure Storage

You have two options for storing your music

  • locally on an sd card or through a usb hard drive connected to your phone
  • remotely on a NAS or samba share

If your collection is not that large then a large enough microsd card will suffice, you can skip to the next section

If your collection is quite large and stored on a NAS or htpc, I suggest mounting the network share using Mount Manager

Configure Mount Manager

Go into settings first

mount manager settings

Change the following options to match the screenshot below

mount manager preferences

Tap back and now add the network share

mount manager add source

Type in your share path

//Ip.address/Sharename

Let the mount point stay default

Check Auto Mount

If you need a username and password to access the share press the green plus sign twice

Enter the username and password and press Ok

mount manager add mount

Now the mount should look like this

mount manager grey

Tap it and the greyed out checkmark should turn green

mount manager green

Configure aMPD

Change the options to match below but change your music directory to the local or mounted solution

mount manager final

If you have problems with skipping audio you can uncheck Use Mixer.

Try connecting using an mpd client (LINK) and start streaming music from your old android phone 🙂

If you get Out of Memory Errors or stuttering see my Mount Manager Out of Memory Fix