Some months ago, I searched for a new music player yet again. A little history: When I started with linux, I was started using XMMS as my default music player. After a while I heard that Beep-media-player was the improved version of XMMS and even had Winamp skins support. This just had to be the player I was searching for… and it was.
After my iPod nano purchase, I made a habit of using Banshee for all my iPod related transfers. Although I do not like .Net and therefore Mono, I give this application the benefit of the doubt, since it gets the work done. I still was not completely satisfied with my regular music player though.
A friend of mine suggested using MPD and Sonata and it is a total bliss. Imagine hearing your music play, even when your X.org is down! MPD is the music daemon, to whom the Sonata client connects. If you do not like Sonata, you can use another MPD client, there are several available in the repository.
You can even easily extend MPD to include Icecast, so you can stream your music. This is quite cool though. If you are on a remote location and connect to your MPD server with an MPD client and connect to your icecast stream, you can control the playlist and listen to your music everywhere. That is, if you have sufficient bandwidth of course.

Note: You will need one MPD client to control the remote playlist and a music player to listen to the stream

1. Install the needed software

   sudo apt-get install mpd icecast2 sonata

2. Setup icecast2

   Edit /etc/default/icecast2 and change this to ‘true’:

   ENABLED=true

   Change at least the <authentification> and <hostname> section of /etc/icecast2/icecast.xml :

   <authentification>
   <source-password>foobar21</source-password>
   <relay-password>foobar54</relay-password>
   <admin-user>admin</admin-user>
   <admin-password>foobar532</admin-password>
   </authentification>
   
   <hostname>foobar5126</hostname>

3. Setup mpd

   Edit your /etc/mpd.conf and edit the ‘audio_output’ section:

   audio_output {
   type            "shout"
   name            "Icecast2 stream"
   host            "foobar5126"
   port            "8000"
   mount           "/mpd_stream.ogg"
   password        "foobar21"
   bitrate         "192"
   format          "44100:16:1"
   # Optional Paramters
   user        "source"
   description "Music"
   genre       "misc"
   }

That is it. Enjoy your music stream either on the server or on any client that listens to your icecast stream!