We’ve (finally) exchanged on our new house, and get the keys next Friday. Woo, and indeed hoo. We’re getting the whole place rewired and networked at the same time ‘cos, well, it seems daft not to.

I want to be able to stream music. I have tons of mp3s (mostly of CDs and LPs I own, before you ask!) sat on the PC, and I use Bandcamp quite a lot too. Not a huge fan of Spotify, I’d sooner pay music straight to the artists.

I was planning on getting a big ol’ NAS drive that I can put all my music on then stream that via phone / tablet / whatever on the WiFi to my big stereo (or headphones, or whatever). I could also use free Spotify the same way.

Is this the best way to do things, or would I be better off with Google Music or something?

I was planning on getting a big ol’ NAS drive

Why not just use cloud based storage? I use itunes match so all music always available on all my devices wherever I am. You can then stream via bluetooth to whatever speaker you’re using.

I can’t understand your dislike of Spotify…it would save you shelling out a chunk of money and also the time of copying anything.
Between using Spotify and Mixcloud, I very rarely have to buy any music (I do pay £10pm for the former, but that’s a bargain).

Yeah that’s why I was thinking of using Google Music, I can upload all my songs to that then get it anywhere, but I have a ton of music and I’m not sure what the limit is.

I don’t like Spotify because knack all music gets back to the artists. I’d much sooner spend a bit more on buying an album from Bandcamp (or on vinyl) and know that the band are getting a couple of dollars, rather than the 0.000001p they get when I listen to a track on Spotify. Plus a lot of the music I listen to isn’t on Spotify.

Sonos

+ive: idiot proof, control streaming and search from nas/spotify/google/radio all via one controller, no wifi related drop outs

-ive: expensive

Sonos is the way forward. If you can’t afford Sonos, you could get yourself a MicroServer, install LMS (Logitech Media Server), get some Raspberry Pi’s, install PiCorePlayer and you have a cheap mans Sonos! Sync is as good as Sonos. 😉

I’d much sooner spend a bit more on buying an album from Bandcamp (or on vinyl) and know that the band are getting a couple of dollars, rather than the 0.000001p they get when I listen to a track on Spotify.

But the band gets a royalty every time someone listens to a Spotify (or other streamed) track, but just the once when you buy a CD. Admittedly a small amount now, but this is sure to increase as streaming becomes a bigger force, and monthly subs increase (as they will!).

I love Spotify, and listen to far more music than I every used to.

Ours is all apple based. Mac mini connected to TV and hifi. The connection to the hifi is cabled but we mostly use an alternative wireless connection with airport express as its a bit more convenient. Music and videos are all stored on an external hard drive (not NAS) and controlled by the remote app from an iPad or phone. So it works for telly viewing and for music.

We chose this way of doing it because we already owned 80% of what we needed to set it up but if i was starting from scratch and was only interested in music then I would be taking a long hard look at Sonos. The only thing that puts me off that system is that I’d want to connect to my own amplifier and speakers and doing that with Sonos is stupidly expensive compared to their own powered speakers.

Setting the system up as we have does mean that iTunes match is an option for cloud based access. This gives you control of your music in the home and the benefit of streaming from anywhere else whereas my worry with cloud only offerings is that the companies running them can change the cost, terms or close the service down if the feel that it’s no longer beneficial to them which could be a right PITA.

Yeah I take your point, but it only works once a band attains a certain amount of popularity. You need a lot of 0.007 dollars (I checked!) before you can buy a Mars bar, and if there are only a few hundred people listening to your music you’re going to take an awful long time to make the same amount of money as ten of those people paying $5 for your album.

I don’t really like Spotify as a concept, it’s another step in the direction of music as industry rather than art. PLUS I still like to buy music physically every now and then, and a lot of artists I like aren’t on Spotify but are on Bandcamp.

I’ve looked at Sonos, but it seems awful expensive. Plus the Mrs’s dad has one, which makes me not want it.

*edit* Yeah I have a nice old amp and speakers that I want to use, which is another tick against Sonos.

Admittedly a small amount now, but this is sure to increase as streaming becomes a bigger force, and monthly subs increase (as they will!).

If the streaming service becomes a bigger force all that will happen is that service gains greater leverage to negotiate an even better deal for themselves. There was only one time for musicians to get a good deal from spotify and that was when it was a start up and needed them more than they needed it.

Plus the Mrs’s dad has one, which makes me not want it.

There’s no arguing with pure reason.

Think about networking… If you want to stream HD video as well as just music (DNLA stylee), then WiFi is just not going to cut it. Think CAT6 from the NAS to the TV/streamer.

Also consider the Rasperry Pi couple with the HiFi audio board and Volumio (http://volumio.org/) for your music player. Bloke at work has done this at his place and says it is amazing.

Can’t argue with that logic!

Thinking about it, I have a Macbook sat basically doing nothing with a 1tb drive in it and a battery that doesn’t work; maybe I’ll just plug that in near the stereo then I can have music locally OR off’ve the NAS. Why complicate things!

@flyingmonkey – have a search on here, lots of prior discussion on Sonos.

Like @muppetWrangler I am all Apple with virtually indentical setup. I used the kit I already had (Mac Mini, sterio, tv – wired and wireless connections for streaming) and added Apple TV so I can stream video/music too direct from internet if I wish. I also agree with @muppet on what is going to happen to royalties as streaming grows, one reason touted for Apple’s purchase of Beats for $3bn was that Beats have negotiated an incredibly low level of royalty payments to artists

I guess the question you should ask yourself is do you want a multi-media solution or just music ?

EDIT: re HD streaming just put the NAS next to the TV/streaming device and connect it wired. I generally have no problems streaming HD to my Apple TV wirelessly but wired is more reliable

Video will be streamed slightly differently – stored on the NAS (which will be cabled) and streamed to the smart tellybox (which is currently wifi, but will be cabled in the new place).

*edit* At the moment, just music. I’m fairly happy with the video streaming we have set up, and to be honest don’t really watch that much. It’d be nice to have a clutter free way to listen to music through the big stereo downstairs is what I’m thinking at the moment.

Google music is ok, if you have less than 20k songs,and it’s free.

However I’ve found it buggy, the upload program doesn’t always upload everything, and if you’re using iOs then the official client isn’t that good IMO. The Android client is a little better but it has the feel of beta software as it still sometimes randomly pauses at the end of a song when using playlists.

I would be tempted to go the NAS route, no limits and an Apple TV makes a nice way of steaming if you have a decent quality sound system with an optical input.

However if you do ever get a problem with your NAS you risk losing everything, so I end up actually using google music in addition to a NAS, so I can listen to music at work or when out and about, and also have a backup.

@flying – just seen your post and yes that makes sense. You should think about backup solutions for the NAS, mate of mine went full mirroring/RAID after he lost all his stuff when his wife knocked the original disk over. Once you get a big collection re-building/re-ripping it is a major exercise.

“*edit* Yeah I have a nice old amp and speakers that I want to use, which is another tick against Sonos.”

Get a sonos connect. Then you stream to the connect and the connect is “connected” to your amp by a set of cables and plays through your nice old speakers. I have a 4 room sonos set up with spotify and also running itunes through it plsu digital radio etc.

the sonos speaker things such as the play 1 and 5 are great for living rooms, bedrooms etc and then just use the connect box straight to your amp for the big speakers in the lounge… easy. Mine was put through an arcam alpha 8/8p through some massive ms 4 way speakersand sounded amazing. unfortunately the wife didnt like the big speakers in the lounge so there’s a playbar there instead and the connect runs an old bose waveradio in the kitchen. connects are brilliant for keeping old non dab units such as the bose relevant. its not cheap but it really works well. i didnt believe it until i tried it.

Although I don’t directly use a NAS as part of the AV setup I do use one to back up the music. The mirrored raid array that I use for work has enough spare capacity on it that I can also back up all the music too. The actual CD’s are all in boxes in the loft.

Thinking about it, I have a Macbook sat basically doing nothing with a 1tb drive in it and a battery that doesn’t work; maybe I’ll just plug that in near the stereo then I can have music locally OR off’ve the NAS. Why complicate things!

Thats what I do in the dining room – I have a netbook connected to a raurk r2i, the raurk isn’t bluetooth enabled so I just connect the netbook into the aux cable and control that with iphone/ipad. The netbook wasn’t being used anyway. I play music through the TV soundbar via apple tv.

I have a buffalo nas with circa 60gb of tunes onboard, I first tried apple airplay on iTunes but found that it cut out when the wifi was used by other devices… so then I moved to Sonos and bought a few players, the advantage is that it uses its own section of the wifi bandwidth, sort of ringfenced, this maintains play with less, much less but still some, interuptions. The sonos is fab as it allows you to seperate or link up different players from yer iphone so you can stream in the whole house or just one room, or indeed different tunes in different rooms.

Just to say – good on you with Bandcamp. It’s a much nicer feeling to buy stuff direct from the artists (and get a little ‘Thank you’ email afterwards) 🙂

We’re getting the whole place rewired and networked at the same time ‘cos, well, it seems daft not to.

Network your house?? Seems daft to me. Why bother when you can use the ring main and as many Powerline adaptors you need. buy a pass through one and you don’t even lose a plug. Otherwise you have to put network plates everywhere you think you might need ethernet and think about future proofing.

There are a million ways to achieve this.
Here’s how I did it.

NAS – recent model Synology that can run Java and therefore run my favourite UPnP server: Minimserver.

iPad – browse all my local music. It’s also sorted for all the major music serving options (Spotify/Soundcloud/youtube/etc/etc).

Music streamer – connected to hi-fi. I do design work for a company that makes one of the current market leaders – LUMIN (cheapest model is £3500 currently, but there are other options).

UPnP gets used when playing locally ripped music (all the way to double-data-rate DSD and 382/24khz).
Airplay gets used when playing from the iPad/iPhone. As long as the volume on the iPad is at max, then the data sent to LUMIN is bit-perfect.

I have it all wired ethernet except the iPad. Ii can also operate it from PC using UPnP apps like Linn Kinsky. Apparently there are ways to use Airplay from PC, but I haven’t tried it.

There are many ways to skin this cat, the best way I have found is to hook a raspberry pi running pi musicbox ( http://www.woutervanwijk.nl/pimusicbox/ )to the hifi. Then you can stream to it from itunes on your pc/mac, from iphone and from your android phone (with a £4 app) or you can stream spotify playlists on it.

It’s also a UPNP server and can stream internet radio from its nice UI which you can access through any browser.

I can safely say it’s one of the few tech things that I use and think “this is so cool” every time.

Thinking about it, I have a Macbook sat basically doing nothing

What connectors does it have, assuming no HDMI out for £25 you could consider a mini-dvi out to HDMI and connect it to the TV or use normal VGA cable (plus jack cable for sound), you could experiment with streaming video content with that. help you decide about an Apple TV or similar. My Mini is often connected direct to the TV.

Network your house?? Seems daft to me

Yeh for me its something you’d have to be desperate to do probably from ‘my whole house has cat 6 points throughout’ perspective rather than anything else.

I have a lot connected to my broadband and its either done via wireless or powerplugs. I’ve never thought ‘I wish I could plug a cable straight into the network’.

Are powerplugs any good then? It seems daft not to pull some Cat6 through when we’re pulling the power anyway. It’ll only be to a couple of rooms, for the office PC / NAS / Tellybox / Xbox but none of those apart from the TV will work on WiFi.

if there are only a few hundred people listening to your music you’re going to take an awful long time to make the same amount of money as ten of those people paying $5 for your album

A couple of points:
1) The music streaming concept is going to become pretty much unavoidable in the near future. Rather than kill ‘CD’ sales it can help them as it gives people a chance to try before they buy.

2) From the [say] £8.00 purchase price of a CD the band will get £1

3) Google Play is basically just the same as Spotify (i.e. you can upload your music to both and stream ‘anything’ from both).

4) Streaming will become cheaper in the future, not more expensive.

5) The artists will probably receive similar or better revenue from streaming as their music will be heard by a far greater audience because it could be played automatically through features such as Spotify Radio – every play = revenue. Lots of little incomes is better than a smaller number of larger incomes.

Are powerplugs any good then?

Depends on your house – if it’s been extended a couple of times there is a chance that you have more than one consumer unit (like us) and some parts of the house may not link together.
Personally I like Cat6 and if I were you I’d be putting some in. I’ve used powerplugs here before and they were OK but not like the ‘real thing’. There’s room for Cat6, wireless and powerplugs TBH.

Sharkbait – agreed, kinda. But that still only applies to bands that have reached a certain threshold of popularity. DIY bands on DIY labels that sell through Bandcamp will see a much higher percentage of the sale money than those on a major or big indie. I’m not anti-streaming per se, I just think that for the music I listen to (and more importantly want to support) I’d much prefer to buy music outright. I always try to buy records from bands direct for much the same reason.

*edit* Quite a small house, with a single consumer unit. I still see no disadvantage to keeping the two separate though, If I’m gonna put a bunch of extra plugs in so I can use powerplugs I may as well whack in some Cat6. Helps having a mate in IT who’ll come and put it all in (along with a gigabit switch in the loft) obviously!

I see what your saying.

From a Bandcamp artist:

BANDCAMP – DIGITAL SALES
I actually hope you buy through BandCamp. There are fewer middlemen, and BandCamp is just an awesome service and company. Plus, I get to set my own pricing (it’s cheaper for you!).

The new album will cost you $8 at BandCamp. They keep 15%, so they pay out $6.80. PayPal then keeps 2.9% of that, plus 30 cents (per transaction), so in the end, I’ll make $6.30. Notice that’s actually less than I make per iTunes sale. That’s cool – I’d still rather you buy from BandCamp :). So, some numbers:

If you buy my album (digitally), I make $6.30.
10 people buy it: $63
100: $630
5000: $31,500
1 million: $6.3M

.Are powerplugs any good then? It seems daft not to pull some Cat6 through when we’re pulling the power anyway.

I agree. Why use a half-arsed network when you are in a position to easily put Cat6 in every room? I ran my Cat6 through conduit so that if ever something were to supercede it the new cable could be simply attached and pulled through.

Yep, that sounds like a pretty sensible thing to do.

It’s all to do with priorites.
Yes Cat6 fully wired with a gigabit switch and integrated faceplates is great but then it doesn’t cost £20 does it.

But if you’ve got money to burn on stuff like this to listen to some tunes and stream a bit of tv, fair dos.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/TP-Link-Powerline-Adapter-Through-Starter/dp/B00GZP6DPA/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

It costs surprisingly little when you have a mate who is head of IT at a school and currently replacing a lot of stuff. Plus, 200mbps? Pshaw!

Plenty fast enough to stream ANYTHING. Hands up who’s got a home ISP connection that is > 200mbs?

Not many in the UK I bet.

*Puts up hand*

But it’s not *just* streaming anyway – no doubt I’ll be copying files about, backing stuff up… Can never have too much bandwidth.

Ha, I did wonder if I needed a caveat at the end.

Haha, I know I’m in the minority.