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Software Stack

Install all the components on the Pi:

sudo apt install mpd mpc icecast2 nginx python3 sqlite3 -y

MPD — Music Player Daemon​

MPD is the playback engine. It reads your music files, manages a queue, and outputs audio. In this setup it streams to Icecast2 rather than playing through speakers.

After installing, stop the default service — you'll configure it before starting:

sudo systemctl stop mpd
sudo systemctl disable mpd   # we'll manage it ourselves

Icecast2 — Streaming Server​

Icecast2 receives the audio from MPD and serves it as an HTTP stream. Clients (browsers, music players) connect to http://your-pi:8000/radio.mp3 to listen.

During installation, the package will prompt you for passwords. You can set them now or configure them later in /etc/icecast2/icecast.xml.

sudo systemctl enable icecast2

Nginx — Reverse Proxy​

Nginx serves the web frontend on port 80 and proxies API requests to the Python server on port 5000. It also proxies the Icecast stream so everything is accessible on a single host.

sudo systemctl enable nginx

Python — API Server​

The API server is a plain Python 3 HTTP server using only the standard library — no pip, no virtualenv, no frameworks. It handles playlist data, song tagging, stats, and the programming schedule.

Python 3 ships with Raspbian. No additional packages needed.

SQLite3 — Database​

SQLite stores the song catalogue, play history, skips, and tags. The database lives at /var/www/radio/db.sqlite3. The sqlite3 CLI is useful for ad-hoc queries.

mpc — MPD Command-Line Client​

mpc is a lightweight CLI client for MPD. The scheduler and playlist scripts use it to control playback and manage the queue.

mpc status        # check what's playing
mpc ls            # list available playlists
mpc load Rock     # load a playlist
mpc play          # start playback

Directory Layout on the Pi​

/var/www/radio/
├── server.py          # Python API server
├── setup_db.py        # One-time DB schema init
├── db.sqlite3         # Song database
├── .env               # Runtime secrets
└── public/            # Web frontend (served by Nginx)

/usr/local/bin/
├── song_logger.sh
├── radio_scheduler.sh
├── create_playlists.sh
├── mpd_watchdog.sh
└── generate_stationid_hours.sh

/var/log/
└── radio_playlist.log   # One entry per song played (4 lines each)