Using Supysonic

Now that everything is set up, there’s actually some more administrative tasks to perform before really being able to access your music. The first one being Adding users and next Defining and scanning folders. Then you can choose one of the many Clients and you’re good to go.

Adding users

One of the first thing you want to do is to create the user(s) that will be allowed to access Supysonic. The first user has to be created with the CLI (manpage here), if you set them as an admin this new user will then be able to add more users through The web interface.

Creating a new user and giving them administrative rights is done with the following two commands:

$ supysonic-cli user add TheUserName
$ supysonic-cli user setroles --admin TheUserName

The first command will ask for a password but you can also provide it on the command-line:

$ supysonic-cli user add TheUserName --password ThePassword

If you don’t want to set the user as an admin but still want them to be able to use the Jukebox mode, you can give them the right like so:

$ supysonic-cli user setroles --jukebox TheUserName

This last one isn’t needed for admins as they have full control over the installation.

Defining and scanning folders

Supysonic will be pretty useless if you don’t tell it where your music is located. This can once again be done with the CLI or the web interface.

Using the CLI:

$ supysonic-cli folder add SomeFolderName /path/where/the/music/is

The next step is now to scan the folder to find all the media files it holds:

$ supysonic-cli folder scan SomeFolderName

If The daemon is running, this will start scanning in the background, otherwise you’ll have to wait for the scan to end. This can take some time if you have a huge library.

The web interface

Once you have created a user, you can access the web interface at the root URL where the application is deployed. As Supysonic is mostly a server and not a media player this interface won’t provide much. It is mainly used for administrative purposes but also provides some features for regular users that are only available through this interface.

Once logged, users can click on their username in the top bar to access some settings. These include the ability to link their Last.fm account provided Supysonic was configured with Last.fm API keys. Once linked clients will then be able to send scrobbles.

Note

In the case of Android clients (this haven’t been tested with iOS) this could lead to scrobbles being sent twice if the official Last.fm application is also installed on the device.

Another setting also available only through the web interface is the ability to define the preferred transcoding format.

Admins got two more options accessible from the top bar: the ability to manage users and folders. But these have limitations compared to the CLI: you can’t grant or revoke the users’ jukebox privilege and you can scan folders you added only if The daemon is running.

Clients

You’ll need a client to access your music. Whether you want an app for your smartphone, something running on your desktop or in a web page you got several options here.

One good start would be looking at the list on Subsonic website but that list could be a bit out of date and there’s also some players that don’t appear here. Also disregard the trial notice there, Supysonic doesn’t include such nonsense.

Here are some hand-picked clients:

Note

The Subsonic API provides several authentication methods. One of them, known as token authentication was added with API version 1.13.0. As Supysonic currently targets API version 1.9.0, the token based method isn’t supported. So if your client offers you the option, you’ll have to disable the token based authentication for it to work.