What is Airsonic?
Airsonic is an open-source, web-based media streamer and media server. It allows you to access your personal music and video collection from any internet-connected device. Airsonic is designed to be functionally similar to commercial products like Plex, Emby, or Logitech Media Server, but it is entirely free and open source.
Some key features of Airsonic include:
- Stream audio files like MP3, FLAC, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, Apple Lossless, WMA
- Stream video files like AVI, MP4, MKV, WMV, FLV
- Transcoding media on-the-fly to playback on mobile devices
- Support for uploading files from mobile apps
- Organization using media tags, albums, artists, genres
- User management and access restrictions
- Cover art support
- Apps available for Android, iOS, Windows, Linux
- Podcast receiver and player
- Internet radio streaming
Airsonic is written in Java and works on Windows, MacOS, and Linux. It uses a MySQL/MariaDB database to organize and index media files, album art, and metadata. The frontend is accessed through a web browser interface. Airsonic is self-hosted, so you'll need to provide your own server or rent hosting.
Overall, Airsonic is an excellent self-hosted alternative for personal media streaming, providing similar functionality to Plex and Emby, but without any subscription fees or usage restrictions.