Melodia

What is it?

Melodia is a Music Manager framework to manage a music archive. This includes:

• Music archiving -

  • Backup and restore
  • Tagging completion and maintenance
  • Music archive re-organization

• Music player -

  • Web music player
  • Playlist management
  • Playlist download - download the songs in a playlist

• Other features to come as deemed necessary. Some ideas:

  • Local music player
  • RSS support and archiving

The name comes from the Portugese for "melody." Plus, I just needed a catchy name. Python Music Manager is just very non-descript.

Why do this?

Melodia was created for a number of different reasons. I needed a project to keep myself busy, and wanted to learn Django. Beyond that, I've maintained a personal music collection on a hard drive, and have had a sufficiently hard time trying to keep it organized, keep it centralized, ensure tags were all filled out, etc. Plus, that was only one archive. What if I wanted to keep another archive of music in addition?

On this note then, I wanted to create a music system that could be used in place of a standard local program. This way, I can have one copy of my music across the network, and use it everywhere else.

Why not MPD? XMMS2? Other server music players?

Good question. Besides just wanting to learn Django, there are some good reasons to create Melodia:

• Music archiving isn't very good. I haven't found software that I can use to manage the archive.
• Making one library available to multiple network locations is problematic. You can use something like IceCast with XMMS2, but that lets only one person control the song choice. I needed something a decent bit more flexible.
• Managing multiple archives is problematic, especially when you want to keep backups.
• Creating a web-enabled music player is also important. XMMS2 only allows you to work through IceCast, and enabling something like a socket to XMMS2 concerns me. Just doesn't seem very secure.
• Using a server architecture isn't the only thing happening. If I just wanted a local music server, I'd use MPD. I want a full music player available, frontend, everything.

Questions? Comments? Concerns?

Let me know!

Development

In order to help develop for Melodia, the following packages will need to be installed (needed for audiotools, hopefully will eventually remove dependency):

• libcdio-cdda
• libcdio-paranoia