Soundcloak

What it's good for#

SoundCloud is full of music you won't find anywhere else: mixes, demos, small artists. Its own site wants you signed in, plays adverts and tracks what you listen to. Soundcloak is a plain, quick front page for the same tracks, playlists and artists, run from your server. You search and listen; SoundCloud only sees your server asking.

It's for listening. There are no accounts, no likes and no uploads.

Using it#

Open it with the Web Interface button and search for a track, an artist or a playlist. SoundCloud links work too: Soundcloak keeps SoundCloud's addresses, so swap soundcloud.com in any link for your Soundcloak address and the rest stays the same.

Preferences, on the main page, sets things like the player and the audio quality. They're kept in a cookie in your browser, and the bottom of that page can export them to a file and import them in another browser.

Two more things are handy. There are no accounts, so to keep up with an artist, add /_/rss/<username> on your Soundcloak address to a feed reader (Thunderbird works well). And with the Restream player on, tracks have a download button, with their details kept.

Keeping your devices out of it#

Three settings decide how much goes through your server (they're in its config file; see Settings below). All three start on, and that's the private way to run it:

• Proxy Artwork and Proxy Audio load the cover art and the music itself through your server, so the browser never contacts SoundCloud's servers at all. Turning them off is lighter on your server's bandwidth, but then each visitor's browser fetches the audio from SoundCloud directly, which defeats most of the point.
• No-JavaScript Player offers a second player, called Restream, that works with JavaScript switched off in the browser. It's also what makes the download button appear.

Things it can't do#

• Some tracks won't play. SoundCloud protects some tracks with DRM, and no alternative player can play those.
• SoundCloud limits requests per address. If lots of people use your Soundcloak, SoundCloud may start refusing it for a while. Keep it private if it's just for your household. As with Redlib, the Network Mode setting can send its traffic through Gluetun's VPN instead of your own address.

Good to know#

• It's our own build. Soundcloak's author doesn't publish a ready-made image, so LibrePortal builds one from a specific version of the source and publishes it. Soundcloak is AGPL-licensed, so the exact source of that build is published alongside it, on git.libreportal.org.
• Updates wait for you. Each version is a build we make, pinned by its tag. A newer build in a later LibrePortal reaches new installs; pressing Update on an installed Soundcloak only fetches the build it already has.
• Nothing to back up. Soundcloak stores nothing on the server, so it's left out of backups.
• It runs locked down: on a read-only filesystem, with no extra permissions.