What is Pi MusicBox?
The Pi MusicBox is a free and open source minimalist Linux-based jukebox platform specifically designed for the Raspberry Pi single board computer. It comes preconfigured with audio playback and streaming software to turn the Raspberry Pi into an always-on music server.
Out of the box, Pi MusicBox works with popular MPD music clients to provide easy remote control of music playback and queuing. It is built on the Mopidy MPD server and mopidy-MPD extension to interface with MPD clients. Mopidy at its core is an extensible music server that can connect with multiple sources like Spotify, SoundCloud, local files, etc. for unified music access.
Key features of Pi MusicBox include:
- Headless auto-starting MPD server ready out of the box for playing audio
- Mopidy base with mopidy-MPD extension provides a lightweight MPD server
- Designed for Raspberry Pi with optimized memory usage (~30MB at idle)
- Supports MP3, FLAC, OGG Vorbis, AAC and more audio from local files or streaming
- Easy control integration for MPD and Mopidy clients over WiFi
- Base system has Python and pip installed for adding other Mopidy extensions
The Pi MusicBox is built on Raspbian OS so it can leverage standard Raspbian packages. It requires only a Raspberry Pi hardware device with power supply and audio output to provide an out-of-the-box jukebox experience.