🎵 Listening to Music From My Tiny Server
📆 2026-03-23 10:40
My music doesn't live on my daily laptop. It lives on a tiny Ubuntu Server machine in another room. My Arch laptop just mounts it and plays. Simple.
🔗 How it's linked
My Tiny server runs [Ubuntu Server]. It stores my entire music collection and shares it on the network. It doesn't play anything. It doesn't have a desktop. It just holds files and gets backed up.
On my Arch laptop, I mount the share at: /home/sava/Music
One source of truth.
That's the whole library. One place. Which is easily mounted at startup with the help of /etc/fstab.
🎧 The Player (Arch Side)
On my laptop, I run MPD (Music Player Daemon).
MPD watches /home/sava/Music and handles playback locally. Audio goes through my laptop's sound device. The files travel over the network. Arch does the playing. Ubuntu just serves.
🎛️ I also use MPC, mpd-mpris, and playerctl with MPD to get smoother control and keybindings in my DWM setup.
🖥️ The Interface
Most of the time, I live inside ncmpcpp.
Screenshot of ncmpcpp playing my Music
- full-screen terminal UI.
- album browsing.
- queue management.
- playlists.
- clean music library view
- even lyrics ... but I don't care because I don't karaoke
It feels exactly right on Arch: keyboard-driven, fast and works in the terminal.
🛠️ Easy to Replicate
On Arch, you can install everything you need with:
And add the server share to your /etc/fstab to mount it automatically at boot:
With that, MPD can play your library as soon as you set the music directory:
🎶 The Feeling
There's something deeply satisfying about this setup.
A small Ubuntu server humming quietly. An Arch laptop on the desk. An NFS mount tying them together. MPD doing exactly one job. No cloud. No accounts. No subscriptions. No recommendations. Just files I choose.
Played when I ask. That's enough.