Music streaming server

LMS 8.4

It is unusual for a project such as LMS to survive quite so long. It started out as a boutique hardware/software music player solution at the dawn of digital music in 2001. It was then acquired by Logitech, who assimilated the neatly designed hardware players and their Perl-based server into its product range, the latter of which was released as open source. This being Logitech, the hardware was eventually dropped, but by then, open source software clients had replaced the hardware and were running on Linux desktops, NAS devices, and Raspberry Pis everywhere. What's most astonishing is that over 10 years later, in the era of multiroom subscription streaming, nothing can still beat that combination of Logitech Media Server and open source client, and both are still being developed and updated.

Logitech Media Server is now more commonly known as LMS, and version 8.3.2 was released in March 2023 by its community from its GitHub page. If you've ever used LMS, you'll first notice that new LMS looks exactly like old LMS – an austere mid-noughties web application that lets you add music libraries and configure plugins. A lot of effort is put into ensuring it still builds on modern hardware and distributions, but what makes LMS such an enduring solution, and so unlike modern streaming, is that almost every feature you can imagine is available. You can select and create playlists from a database that populates itself from your collection, but you can also browse your collection by folders – something which almost no other music streaming service allows. You then can stream audio without re-encoding, which means FLAC, surround, and high-resolution formats remain untouched for audiophiles. There's even a new Material Design web interface that can be installed as a plugin, and many other current plugins for Spotify, BBC, and service connectivity for countless others. It's a genuine alternative to streaming, and one whose age is providing distinct advantages from a bygone era.

Project Website

https://github.com/Logitech/slimserver

The best modern LMS setup has the server running next to your music collection Squeezelite client running on an embedded device or Raspberry Pi with a high quality DAC.

Distro builder