12 Raspberry Pi Music Projects You Need to Know About

The Raspberry Pi is a wonderful little thing. You can turn it into almost anything you can think of. And so did some of our musically inclined tinkers. From a fantastic music player to a complete audio workstation, these Pi Music projects will blow your mind.

For all of this, you will need a Raspberry Pi starter kit. together with additional details according to the project. None of these are overly expensive, but some may require you to fiddle with bits of code and solder.

Beginner: Pi Musicbox and RuneAudio

Raspberry Pi music box

The music box is a favorite of the online Pi community for creating a music player from the Raspberry Pi. And you can see why when Pi Musicbox makes it so easy. Anyone who has never used a pi before can do it.

There is a quick guide on the Musicbox site, but if you want more detailed step-by-step instructions, follow this CodeProject guide. Soon you’ll be able to use the Pi to stream Spotify, Google Play Music, or whatever else you need. And it doesn’t need a screen after setting up. Heck, if you want, add an old speaker for the standalone player. You can manage everything from your phone, tablet or computer.

And Apple fans have good news. Musicbox supports Airplay, making it probably the cheapest Airplay receiver there.

raspberry pi rune audio music

A similar project, RuneAudio advertises itself as the best option for audiophiles. To be honest, there doesn’t seem to be much of a difference, and Pi Musicbox supports more services. However, try both. I liked the RuneAudio interface more, but ended up going back to Musicbox because of Google Play Music.

With either choice, you can also add a touch screen to the Pi. customize touch screen and control your music directly from it. In this case, it’s also a good idea to download a lot of songs to a USB drive and stick it in the Pi so that Musicbox or RuneAudio will read it.

Newcomer: YouTube Party Jukebox (No Longer Available)

raspberry pi party jukebox

The partytube jukebox is a great party idea. Based on YouTube, the end result is a QR code that anyone can scan to connect to the band’s playlist. Once they are logged in, they can add any song from YouTube to the playlist.

The actual assembly is surprisingly easy too. All you need is a Pi with Raspbian and some simple scripts that you can download from Github. If you wish, the guide will also tell you how to add NFC support, but you can skip this step. This is a lot of unnecessary work.

Beginner: Play one song and only that song

What’s the point of having a cheap Pi with you if you’re not going to do something stupid with it? PSSP (Pi Single Song Player) is the perfect project to annoy your friends or celebrate something cool.

As the name suggests, this thing will play one song every time you start it. Of course, you can choose a song in advance. It requires almost no work in the terminal to install, so go ahead, give this weird one a whirlwind — it’s not even in the top 10 weirdest projects of weird projects. we saw.

Beginner: Learn to Code with Music

The Sonic Pi is one of the oldest and best starter projects for kids and adults This essentially helps you learn how to code with music. The idea is to «create» or write music with sounds.

Using samples, scales, chords and other musical sounds, operators must put together a melody. But it all happens through code, so you learn basic programming language skills on the go.

Newbie: Turn the Pi into a Cheap Audio Station

It’s not a project, it’s an add-on gizmo, but the PiSound is a wonderful device for amateur musicians. This €99 ($117) add-on turns the Pi into a complete audio workstation with MIDI and stereo ports.

PiSound also has one button that can be coded to do whatever you want. The idea is to turn the PiSound into a headless device for musicians (that is, without a keyboard, mouse, or monitor). But hey, you might just want to check out some of these free Linux music creation tools Linux music creation Linux music creation

Medium: Sonos-like multi-room music player

Raspberry Pi multi-room speakers

The Sonos music system has a great (albeit expensive) idea. Install wireless speakers in different rooms of your home and all will play the same music. With Raspberry Pi, you can do it at home.

There are quite a few guides online for this, but user Piney from Instructables offers the best in our opinion. Don’t be overwhelmed by the amount of code that appears in the tutorial. The whole point is to copy it to the terminal window. In fact, the most difficult part of the article is setting up a static IP and SSH, which is quite simple.

Intermediate: Private streaming music player with subsonic

raspberry pi music subsonic

While Spotify and Apple Music are great they don’t have everything for everyone. If you have a large collection of your own music files, you can set up your own streaming music player. All you need is a Raspberry Pi and a Subsonic Premium subscription.

It’s essentially your personal Spotify, but a little better. You will need to download all the music to your Pi, so maybe plug in a large portable hard drive After all, you can share music with your friends and create collaborative playlists. It only costs one dollar a month, so it’s worth it.

Optional: Broadcast your own radio station

raspberry pi radio station

This is one of the more advanced projects on this list and requires a bit of soldering and coding. Well, the code is going too far, it just changes a few lines in the text file.

After you have built and connected the antenna as shown in the manual everything becomes easier. In fact, because of the size of it all, you can carry it around with you. Imagine being able to stream your own FM radio station from anywhere in the world.

Optional: Pi Music Player with Gesture Control

When you can manage your Windows PC with Kinect manage your Windows PC with Kinect manage your Windows PC with and your Mac with Leap Motion what’s stopping you from swinging your arms to control the Pi’s music player? This gesture-controlled «Wavepad» is also surprisingly easy to set up and use.

Look, it’s no wonder you’ll need a bit of soldering in this one, but the end result is worth it when you watch the video. With a wave of your hand, you can skip forward or backward, and increase or decrease the volume. So cool!

Optional: Play theme music when entering a room

Why do WWE wrestlers have to have fun? John Cena may be the champion of the world, but you are the champion of your house. So give yourself a grand entrance theme to your abode with this project.

It’s surprisingly difficult, but we have clear guidelines on how to do it. It’s a good way to put on one of those old Pis or even Pi Zeros. to better use than to collect dust in the corner of the drawer.