Copyright (C) 2011-2024 Kevin André

Party Music Player, abbreviated as PMP, is a multi-user client-server music system. The server is responsible for playing music, and a separate program, a 'remote', is used to connect to the server and instruct it what to do. PMP has an advanced file tracking mechanism; it can deal with moved/renamed and duplicate files without any problems.

PMP is designed to be portable software and should be compatible with most popular operating systems in use today. Only Windows has been tested recently. Linux has been tested in the past. Others like Mac OS X, BSD... have never been tested but should work as well.

This is alpha quality software. Existing features can still be incomplete. Certain 'essential' features that can be found in most music player software might (still) be missing. PMP might contain lots of bugs. Use at your own risk.

Contents of this file:

1. Features
2. Dependencies
3. Running PMP
4. Building on Linux
5. Building on Windows
6. Caveats / limitations
7. Planned features
8. More information

• Client-server
  • Server executable without graphical user-interface
  • Client executable to connect to and control the server
  • Multiple clients can be connected to the same server at the same time
• Multi-user
  • Creation of user accounts on the server
  • Authentication with username and password when connecting to the server
  • Each user has their own playback history, track scores, and preferences
  • Scrobbling to Last.fm for each user independently
• Advanced file tracking
  • Tracks are identified by file contents, ignoring irrelevant bits like metadata
  • Known tracks are still recognized after moving or renaming files
  • Duplicate files (created by a file copy operation) are recognized as being the same track
• Queue-based
  • Tracks to be played are added to a queue
  • The top entry in the queue is the next track to be played
  • Breakpoints can be added to the queue, to stop playback when they are reached
• Dynamic mode with track repetition avoidance
  • Dynamic mode adds random tracks to the queue
  • Tracks with a higher score are more likely to be selected
  • Avoids adding tracks that were played recently
• Auto scoring based on playback history of each track
• Distinction between personal and public mode
  • Public mode allows playing music for someone else without affecting your personal track scores

• Qt 5 (at least 5.14)
  • modules: Core, Gui, Multimedia, Network, Sql, Test, Widgets, Xml
  • database driver for MySQL/MariaDB
• TagLib 1.12 or higher

• C++ compiler with support for C++ 2017
• CMake 3.21 or higher

Building on Windows is done using vcpkg.

• MySQL/MariaDB client library (libmysql/libmariadb)
• Codecs
• OpenSSL

PMP currently uses MySQL for storing its data. MariaDB is probably a valid replacement, but this has not been tested yet. The MySQL server should be configured as a developer installation (it uses less memory that way) and should be set to use Unicode (UTF-8) by default. Default storage engine should be InnoDB.

Windows users will need to install the Xiph codecs or some other more generic codec pack if they need support for FLAC audio.

Linux users may need to install a GStreamer plugin to get support for MP3 files.

OpenSSL is required for Last.fm scrobbling.

First make sure MySQL is installed and running.

Run the server so it can generate an empty configuration file:

1. Run the server executable (PMP-Server)
2. Kill the server (use ctrl-C)
3. Edit the server configuration file (see below)

On Windows the configuration file can be found here:

  C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Party Music Player\Party Music Player - Server.ini

On a Unix platform the file should be in your home directory with a similar path and filename.

Open the file with a text editor of your choice. You will need to configure the connection to your MySQL database server. And you will probably need to configure the path(s) where your music is located.

An example configuration for Windows:

    [database]
    hostname=localhost
    username=root
    password=mysecretpassword
  
    [media]
    scan_directories=C:/Users/myname/Music, C:/Users/Public/Music

All other configuration parameters are optional and can be left alone.

After configuring the server you can run PMP for real:

1. Make sure MySQL is running
2. Make sure the PMP server is running (PMP-Server)
3. Run the PMP desktop client (PMP-GUI-Remote)
4. Log in; create a new user account first if necessary

Building PMP on Linux and other Unix-like operating systems should be relatively simple:

1. Make sure you have installed a C++ compiler and CMake
2. Install development packages for MySQL, Qt 5 and TagLib using your package manager
3. Download and unpack the PMP sourcecode
4. Open a terminal, change current directory into the 'bin' directory of the PMP sourcecode
5. Run the following commands:
   cmake ..
   make

These instructions might need some tweaks, as they haven't been tested (at least not recently).

Make sure CMake and Git are installed.

These build instructions use vcpkg to build PMP's dependencies. A 64-bit build is necessary because libmysql does not support a 32-bit build. Install Visual Studio if you want to use the x64-windows triplet like in the build instructions listed here. It may be possible to use MinGW instead, but this has not been tested.

If you do not have vcpkg installed yet, open a CMD terminal and run the following commands:

> mkdir C:\src
> cd C:\src
> git clone https://github.com/Microsoft/vcpkg.git
> .\vcpkg\bootstrap-vcpkg.bat

Then install the dependencies of PMP. Open a CMD terminal and run the following commands (these may take a long time):

> cd C:\src\vcpkg
> vcpkg install taglib --triplet x64-windows
> vcpkg install qt5-base[mysqlplugin] --triplet x64-windows
> vcpkg install qt5[essentials] --triplet x64-windows

Finally you can build PMP itself. Run the following commands in a CMD terminal. Adjust paths and VS version as needed; change Debug to Release (in both lines) if you prefer:

> cd PMP\bin
> "C:\Program Files\CMake\bin\cmake" -G "Visual Studio 17 2022" -D "VCPKG_TARGET_TRIPLET:STRING=x64-windows" -D "CMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE:FILEPATH=C:\src\vcpkg\scripts\buildsystems\vcpkg.cmake" -D "CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE:STRING=Debug" ..
> "C:\Program Files\CMake\bin\cmake" --build . --config Debug -j 2

Some features usually found in music player software are still missing. Existing features may be incomplete or have some limitations.

• File formats supported: only MP3 and FLAC
  → each (new) file format requires its own implementation of file tracking
• MySQL database is required for the server, SQLite is not an option
• Playlists are not supported yet
• No auto-detection yet of new/modified/deleted files while the server is running
• Limited queue manipulation in the clients: only move/delete/insert of single items
• Dynamic mode does not support custom filters yet
• ...

Only a list of ideas. No promises!

Effort is a rough estimate. Priorities can still change.

Rudimentary project website: https://hyperquantum.be/pmp/

GitHub repository: https://github.com/hyperquantum/PMP

You can contact the developer here: hyperquantum@gmail.com