Forte

Self-hosted, music streaming platform

About the project

forte is a self-hosted music platform. You can either connect to a forte server or create your own server for your friends & family. However, it is also very convenient to use forte on your local machine as a stand-alone music player. Follow this guide to learn how to connect and how to build your own forte server.

Features

Add tracks and albums to your queue
Mark your favorite tracks, albums, artists, playlists
Endless listening with radio feature
Create playlists
Desktop / Mobile Player
Listen to TuneIn stations
Specialized context menus
Make fuzzy searches
Add friends
Playing controls
Keyboard shortcuts
Lyrics support
MediaSession API
Progressive Web App
Group Sessions
Admin dashboard
User profiles
Last.fm Scrobbling
Easy encrypted server via Greenlock

Built with

Documentation

Click here for the API documentation.

Usage

If you know a forte server and just want to connect to use the service, go to https://forte.buzl.uk. The webpage is hosted with GitHub pages and uses the latest forte version. Therefore, this is the recommended way to access forte services.

If you want to use forte on your mobile device, we suggest using the PWA version of the application. You can access the PWA version by going to https://forte.buzl.uk on your mobile device and clicking on the Add to Home Screen button.

However, Forte works best with the Chrome browser on your mobile device.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Logging in

Once you go to the website, you will be prompted with this dialog:

Here’s an explanation for the fields:

Forte server: The public address of the forte server.
Username    : The username given to you by the server.
Token       : The token given to you by the server.

If you are wondering about how to create accounts, this will be explained in the Creating your own server section.

Here’s an example for the authorization:

If you log in successfully, you will see the homepage of the application, where some track recommendations can be found. Now you can use the application and listen to some music.

Once you log in, your authorization parameters will be saved on the local session of your browser. However, if you ever want to reset these information, you can right click on the Profile button on the top right of the screen, you will see an option to Reset. This will clear the local storage along with your session storage.

Creating your own server

To build and host your own server you need a decent computer as we will be dealing with multiple users and streaming audio files to them. In the remaining of this section, we will be going over the steps of building the server.

Forte uses docker to build the server. Therefore, you need to have docker installed on your machine. You can find the installation instructions for your operating system here.

Building the server

To run the docker container, you need to have the docker-compose.yml file. Download the file here:

docker-compose.yml

Before running the file, you need to edit some fields:

environment:
  mode: local            # local or public, defaults to local
  forte_server: <server> # only if mode is public
  forte_email: <email>   # only if mode is public
volumes:
  - <library>:/library   # The path to your music library

Here’s an example for the docker-compose.yml file:

version: '3'
services:
    app:
        image: kaangiray26/forte:1.4
        ports:
            - "80:80"
            - "443:443"
            - "3000:3000"
        depends_on:
            - postgres
        environment:
            mode: public
            forte_server: forte.example.com
            forte_email: forte@example.com
        volumes:
            - /home/forte/library:/library
    postgres:
        image: postgres
        restart: always
        environment:
            POSTGRES_DB: forte
            POSTGRES_USER: forte
            POSTGRES_PASSWORD: forte
        volumes:
            - db-data:/var/lib/postgresql/data
volumes:
    db-data:

Using locally

If you want to use the server locally, you can edit the docker-compose.yml file and change the mode field to local. Then, you can run the following command to start the server:

sudo docker-compose up -d

Using publicly

If you want to use the server locally, you can edit the docker-compose.yml file and change the mode field to public. Also, you need to set the fields forte_server and forte_email. Then, you can run the following command to start the server:

sudo docker-compose up -d

Directory Structure for the Music Library

Here’s an example:

/home/forte/library
├── Antimatter - Leaving Eden/
│   ├── 01 - Redemption.flac
│   ├── 02 - Another Face in a Window.flac
|   ...
│   └── cover.jpg
│
└── Ayreon - 01011001/
    ├── CD1/
    │   ├── 01 - Age Of Shadows_We Are Forever.flac
    │   ├── 02 - Comatose.flac
    │   ...
    │
    ├── CD2/
    │   ├── 01 - The Fifth Extinction.flac
    │   ├── 02 - Waking Dreams.flac
    │   ...
    │
    └── cover.jpg

Put each album as a folder inside your library directory.
For each album folder, follow the format ARTIST - ALBUM.
For each track, follow the format TRACK_INDEX - TRACK_TITLE.FORMAT
Have a cover.jpg inside the album folder.
If the album has multiple CDs, create CD1, CD2,… directories inside the album folder and follow the same format for tracks.

Forte dashboard

You can access the forte dashboard by going to http://localhost:3000. The default login credentials are: forte and alternative.

While in dashboard, don’t forget to change the genius_token, lastfm_api_key, lastfm_api_secret fields in the Config tab for genius and lastfm extensions.

Also, please change the default password from the Password tab.

License

Distributed under the GPL-3.0 License. See LICENSE for more information.

Contact

Kaan Giray Buzluk – @kaangiray26 – kaangiray26 (at) protonmail.com

Project Link: https://github.com/kaangiray26/forte
Docker Image: https://hub.docker.com/r/kaangiray26/forte

Acknowledgements

Check out the following list of resources that I’ve used to build forte.

GitHub

View Github