Recently I had been playing around with MPD (Music Player Daemon) on my two separate box (Windows + OSX) and they both work wonderfully. I am very impressed with how lightweight mpd is. In case if you are wondering, the entire concept of mpd is based on server and client architecture. So you can be assured that there is a bunch of flexibility. Imagine that all the music is controlled by mpd and you can use any client as the frontend for communicating with mpd. I, for one, had adopted ncmpcpp as my front end. The best part of mpd is that you can stream it into multiple outputs, including http stream thanks to the httpd output!

Here is the basic flow on how mpd and mpd client works:

1. mpd runs on the server (local) with the server ip and using the default port 6600. By default it will listen and accept for any connection that attempts to communicate with that port.
2. On the remote client, a mpd client such as ncmpcpp is run to communicate with mpd. ncmpcpp is essentially a front-end that present a graphical user interface in the terminal. Any actions (such as creating playlist, playing song, stopping song, searching song, etc.) is sent to mpd via commands. By using ncmpcpp, this routine is simplified as ncmpcpp will automatically create the command for you. If you were to use mpc, you will have to type command such as mpc play to play a song.

Just a setting example of mine. I have mpd running on my Window 7 box and my OSX box running ncmpcpp to control mpd.

Here are some of the fun things that you could do with foobar!

• Adding random pool of soundtracks from your library into your playlist. Fully customizable. Thanks to foo_random_pool.
• Adding search function to VGMdb by right clicking on an album.
• Have the song title spoken to you.

Good news guys!

I am happy to announce that VGMPulse (a music streaming site) is open for beta registration now! What are you waiting for? Click on the logo below for more information! Don't forget to share it among your friends!