Install Subsonic Media Server on Ubuntu or Debian to Stream Music Through Your Linode

Updated Monday, February 4, 2019 by Linode Written by Alex Fornuto

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Install Subsonic Media Server on Ubuntu or Debian to Stream Music Through Your Linode

What is Subsonic?

Subsonic is an easy-to-use media streaming service with a user-friendly interface and the ability to share music and video with multiple users. It is highly customizable and includes features such as Chromecast support and file conversion.

This guide shows how to set up Subsonic on a Linode running Debian or Ubuntu. If you have a large music library, consider attaching a Block Storage Volume to your Linode to store your music files.

Install Java

You will need Java installed on your system to run Subsonic.

The steps in this section will install the Java 8 JDK on Ubuntu 16.04. For other distributions, see the official docs.

Install software-properties-common to easily add new repositories:
```
sudo apt-get install software-properties-common
```

Add the Java PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/java

Update the source list:
```
sudo apt-get update
```

Install the Java JDK 8:

sudo apt-get install oracle-java8-installer

Install Subsonic

The latest version of Subsonic (as of publication) is 6.1.3, and the most recent release can always be found on their download page. Download and install Subsonic onto your Linode:
```
wget https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/subsonic-public/download/subsonic-6.1.3.deb
sudo dpkg -i subsonic-6.1.3.deb
```
Subsonic runs as the root user by default, which is insecure. Create a new system user for subsonic to run as:
```
sudo useradd --system subsonic
sudo gpasswd --add subsonic audio
```

Open /etc/default/subsonic in a text editor. In this file you can change the user, the port Subsonic listens on, increase the amount of memory it can use, and encrypt your streaming traffic with SSL. Change the SUBSONIC_USER variable to the new subsonic user:

/etc/default/subsonic

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# Type "subsonic --help" on the command line to read an
# explanation of the different options.
#
# For example, to specify that Subsonic should use port 80 (for http)
# and 443 (for https), and use a Java memory heap size of 200 MB, use
# the following:
#
# SUBSONIC_ARGS="--port=80 --https-port=443 --max-memory=200"

SUBSONIC_ARGS="--max-memory=150"

SUBSONIC_USER=subsonic

Note
If you have a firewall set up, allow connections from the port Subsonic is listening on.

Restart Subsonic:
```
sudo systemctl restart subsonic
```

Configuration and Use

By default, Subsonic looks for music files stored in /var/music. Create this directory and change its ownership to the subsonic user. You can substitute another directory if you would prefer to store your music elsewhere.
```
sudo mkdir /var/music
sudo chown subsonic:subsonic /var/music
```
Open Subsonic in your browser by navigating to port 4040 on your Linode’s public IP address or domain name.
The first time you access your Subsonic server in your browser, you will see the following:
Use the default username and password (admin/admin) or the provided link to log in:
Create a password for your admin account. You can also set up any other accounts at this time.

Note
Passwords in the Subsonic database are stored in hex format, but not encrypted.
Click on the Media folders link and point Subsonic to where you will store your music. If you used the default directory (/var/music) above, you can skip this step. Once you’ve pointed Subsonic to the correct directory and uploaded your music, you can press Scan media folders now. Subsonic will then create a database of music files.

Next Steps

Subsonic can be configured to use SSL, or you can use an NGINX reverse proxy.

More Information

You may wish to consult the following resources for additional information on this topic. While these are provided in the hope that they will be useful, please note that we cannot vouch for the accuracy or timeliness of externally hosted materials.

Subsonic official site

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This guide is published under a CC BY-ND 4.0 license.