MPD Satellite Android

I will show how, I setup my NAS for streaming music to my Android phone, and another computers on my local network. Why such setup? It allows me to stream music without transcoding to my devices.

NAS Side

My NAS is running Fedora Server Edition, so all instruction will be provided for this distro.

So let start with installing the MPD¹ which will serve as my music database, and NFS server which will allow me to stream music.

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sudo dnf install mpd nfs-utils

Next, I created base config for my MPD with:

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mkdir -p ~/.config/mpd
nvim ~/.config/mpd/mpd.conf

I tried to keep my config simple. With this config, we will never use it to play music, only have shared database between computers and Android.

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music_directory "/media/btrfs/Media/Music"
playlist_directory "~/.local/share/mpd/playlists"
db_file "~/.local/share/mpd/mpd.db"
state_file "~/.local/share/mpd/mpdstate"
auto_update "yes"
max_output_buffer_size "32768"

input {
        plugin "curl"
}

For another devices to be able to connect with our MPD server, we will need to add firewall rule.

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sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service mpd

Next, I created folders where MPD database and files will be stored, and run it, as systemd service.

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mkdir -p ~/.local/share/mpd/playlists
systemctl --user start --now mpd.service

We are nearly done with our setup on the NAS, now we need to make Music directory accessible from other devices. For it, I used the NFS share. I edited the /etc/exports file.

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sudoedit /etc/exports

In the file, I added single a share with read only permissions.

/media/btrfs/Media/Music 192.168.0.0/24(ro,insecure)

Next, export NFS shares, and run it:

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sudo exportfs -rav
sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service={nfs3,mountd,rpc-bind}
sudo systemctl enable --now rpcbind nfs-server

Android Side

For Android, we need two pieces of software which can be downloaded using F-Droid² or Google Play Store. First is just MPD version for Android available here³ and second is M.A.L.P⁴.

So let’s start with configuring MPD on Android.

We need to create mpd.conf file in the base of Android folder. My NAS have static IP, which is 192.168.0.113, so if you follow these guide, you will need to change it to IP of server with MPD.

music_directory "nfs://192.168.0.113/media/btrfs/Media/Music"
restore_paused "no"
max_output_buffer_size "32768"
replaygain "auto"

database {
    plugin "proxy"
    host "192.168.0.113"
}
audio_output {
    type "sles"
    name "Base Output"
}

I will advice to check following checkbox in MPD app on Android Prevent suspend when MPD is running (Wakelock). After that, click on button with MPD is not running, button should change it text to MPD is running and the notification will pop up.

So now we will configure M.A.L.P to connect with. Basic configuration is quite simple, just adding name to the profile, and providing IP of server, in this case 127.0.0.1.

Few quirks with this setup:

• Can’t access files from outside local network – can be bypassed by running VPN on phone, to connect to home network, I run wireguard as such, and will explain my setup in next tutorial.
• In case that music collection is in lossless format, we will stream a lot of data to phone. So you can quickly run out of your data plan. In such case, you can run transcoding server⁵ on NAS, and slightly modify music_directory variable on mpd.conf on Android.

Other computers on network

To access music on another computers, we will run MPD on them too, with following config:

music_directory "nfs://192.168.0.113/media/btrfs/Media/Music"
playlist_directory "~/.local/share/mpd/playlist"
log_file "~/.local/share/mpd/mpd.log"
pid_file "~/.local/share/mpd/pid"
state_file "~/.local/share/mpd/mpdstate"
restore_paused "no"
max_output_buffer_size "32768"
replaygain "auto"

database {
    plugin "proxy"
    host "192.168.0.113"
}

audio_output {
    type "pipewire"
    name "Pipewire"
}

And then start mpd.service

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systemctl --user start --now mpd.service

As for client to control music playback you can use something like mpc⁶ ncmpcpp⁷ or cantata⁸ mpc is great if you try to script, or remap your media keys to control MPD playback.