Zeya: Music Server With HTML 5

HTML 5 is a new HTML standard for structuring and presenting content on the World Wide Web. One of the new feature standard of HTML 5 is media playback including video and audio. So to simplify it, now we can hear music or watch videos in our browser without install any plugins such as adobe flash, silverlight, java applets or etc. You just watch or play it as soon as the browser download or buffering it.

There are lot of music server, one of them is icecast. But icecast is kinda old and it need quicktime plugin or else to listen it from the browser. Or need audio client like winamp to hear it from the server. But now there are new music server that can work with HTML 5. It is called Zeya.

Zeya is a media player server that lets you listen to your music collection, from anywhere, using nothing more than Firefox or Google Chrome. Why only with Firefox or Google Chrome? Because it serve using HTML 5 standard. So you just need to install it to your server and load all your song, then listen it from your browser. Zeya also a free software under GNU Affero GPL, v.3.

The server component of Zeya has been tested in Debian testing (Squeeze); Ubuntu 9.04, 9.10, and 10.04; Fedora 12; and Arch Linux. Even it is still under development and not in use for production environment, Zeya is a great idea to bring us to new HTML 5 standard. And i like this idea and want to support Zeya by writing this article.

To install Zeya in Debian or Ubuntu is easy, it is already in repository:

apt-get install zeya

For other platform, you need to download it with git:

git clone http://web.psung.name/git/zeya.git

and follow the installation instruction in it.

To run Zeya:

./zeya.py --path=/path/to/your/music

After it running, you can point your browser to http://localhost:8080

Server requirements:

• Python 2.5+ (2.6+ recommended)
• oggenc
• mpg123 (optional— for decoding MP3 files)
• flac (optional— for decoding FLAC files)

Client requirements

• Mozilla Firefox 3.5 or later (3.6+ recommended) on GNU/Linux, Windows, and Mac OS
• Google Chrome or Chromium (recent builds, 4.0.223+) on GNU/Linux, Windows, and Mac OS
• Microsoft Internet Explorer 6, 7, or 8 on Windows with the Google Chrome Frame plugin

For you interest in Zeya development or want to know more information, visit their website here.