Globecom Jukebox

1. A Jukebox will place all your MP3 files in a central location. It's easier to catalog, locate and play the files from a single point of access if you use a dedicated Jukebox.
2. You can put the Jukebox in a closet and run it without a monitor. You can listen to your music even when your PC is turned off but can still control is from your PC when you want to.
3. You can have a single Jukebox serving music to the entire office or house.
4. You can put the Jukebox near the stereo and take the soundcard output direct to your high quality stereo amp.
5. The Jukebox runs on Linux. After your PC running Winamp crashes for the third time that day, you will appreciate a music system that runs for months or years without interruption.

Still not convinced ? Here are some more reasons.

Why use Globecom Jukebox

There are plenty of MP3 jukeboxen out there. In no particular order here are the features of GJukebox and the reason they're significant

• Web UI : The big limitation with Winamp et al and other Jukeboxen is that you're either tied to your desktop PC, or you need special software to control the Jukebox. Since the GJukebox UI is entirely browser based you can run it on a Linux box and control it over the network, without needing to install strange software on the desktop machine. This is obviously useful when the GJukebox is shared by multiple users in an office. It's also perfect for the average home user with a simple home network.

  A typical home network has multiple desktop PCs - usually Mac or Windows and a Linux box doing IP masquerade to give all desktop PCs internet access. Installing the Jukebox on such a Linux machine is perfect and all the desktop machines can use it without needing an X windows setup or other complex stuff.

• Themable UI : The look of the jukebox is customizable, from the wood look inspiring this page going through 7 different looks to the text only linx purist usable mode.

• Uses SQL database : All the information for the Jukebox is stored in a MySQL database. Other Jukeboxen use proprietary data stores or just rely on a hierarchy of disk directories to keep all the songs ordered. While it's true that a SQL database is probably overkill for a Jukebox, it has the benefit that it's simple to upgrade and future proof. If your playlists etc. are in a proprietary format you cannot easily switch to a different player. If your data is in SQL, it's easy to get it out and massage it into a different format should you ever wish to.

• Sophisticated selection of random songs If no songs are selected by users the GJukebox will start playing random selections of songs. The algorithms used to select songs are very sophisticated and are based on how often a song is requested by users ( ie it's popular ) weighted against how recently a song was played. The Jukebox learns what you like and and have heard recently and influences the choices, but not so much that it plays the same stuff over and over.

• Song groups and playlists Many MP3 players include playlists to permit a collection of songs to be played as a whole. Plenty go further and permit the contents of a playlist to be played in random order. GJukebox improves on this through the use of song groups. When selecting songs at random, Jukebox can be set to include songs in certain groups exclusively, non-exclusively or to exclude songs from a group. When organizing your songs you simply create groups to contain for example, Jazz and Blues. You can then play just Jazz, just Blues, both or neither ( ie everything else ). Instead of forcing you to tell the Jukebox explicitly what you want to hear, you can use the groups to define moods and occasions. It's simple, logical and powerful.

• Normalizes volume on tracks CDs are recorded at widely differing recording levels. Constant volume control twiddling is the bane of life for MP3 users because the tracks tend to be played in a very random fashion. Globecom Jukebox analyses the loudness for all MP3 files as they're added to the Jukebox and calculates a value by which the volume is to be adjusted on playback. You'll hardly need to touch that volume control.

• Integrated ripper Ripping the entire CD collection is probably the first thing a new MP3 user does. Globecom makes this simple with the integrated ripper that includes CDDB lookup to grab the song titles etc. The ripper is multithreaded so it can encode into MP3 at the same time that it rips data from the CD.

• Inherently multiuser Song voting through the web UI is simple and powerful. Different users can have different priorities, they can have their own playlist queue. Jukebox includes account and password administration. None of this gets in the way if you want to use Jukebox on your desktop machine, laptop or a home network. The anonymous user account takes care of these simple situations.

• Batch import of MP3 files Already have an MP3 collection with tags inserted ? A script included will import them all into the database quickly and easily.

• Supports streaming to a remote IceCast server : Globecom Jukebox can pipe the songs to the internal soundcard or to an Icecast server elsewhere on the network, or both. From a single Jukebox you can pump the MP3 data to different machines so in different rooms you can have individual music sources with unique song lists.

• Downloading between different Jukeboxen. Have a Jukebox at work, one in the laptop, and one at home ? No problem to transfer songs between them using the web UI.

• Written in Perl & PHP Want to change something in the UI ? No problem - it's written in PHP. It's simple to understand and change. The daemons that play songs and handle other tasks are written in Perl and are also easy to modify. Use the source, Luke.

Installation instructions