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How to Stream Android Music / Audio to Ubuntu over WIFI

Last updated: December 12, 2014

stream audio from android to ubuntu

Want your Android Phone’s music plays out of the Ubuntu machine’s speaker over WIFI? Well, here’s step by step howto using DLNA/UPnP. Tested with Ubuntu 14.04 and LG E960 (Nexus 4).

First take a look at result. Android phone plays music, and sound comes out of my Ubuntu laptop’s speaker.

Steam music from Android to Ubuntu

To get started, first do below steps in Ubuntu machine:

1. Open Terminal from the Dash/Menu, run below command to install rygel, PulseAudio Preferences, and Volume Control utilities.

sudo apt-get install rygel rygel-gst-launch rygel-tracker rygel-playbin rygel-preferences wavpack paprefs pavucontrol

Type in your user password when it asks and answer yes to confirm the install process.

Install PulseAudio Preferences utility

2.Open PulseAudio Preferences utility from the Unity Dash or Application Menu. When it opens, check to enable every option under Network Server tab.

Setup DLNA/UPnP server

3. Finally start the rygel service by running command rygel in terminal window so that your Android phone can see Ubuntu machine.

Start Rygel Service in Ubuntu

Leave the terminal window open as long as you want to stream the music plays.

Now do below steps in Android device:

First you need a music player with DLNA/UPnP support. Here I installed the BubbleUPnP from Google Play.

1. Open the DLNA/UPnP player/client and select Ubuntu machine as audio renderer. In my case, it’s Audio/Video playback on trusty (see the picture below).

Select Renderer

Restart Ubuntu machine and start the rygel service if you don’t see it in the drop-down list.

2. Now browser music from library (Both local and remote libraries are OK), add to playlist and play them. Depends on the required bandwidth, there might be a time delay before music starts playing.

Here the sound from Ubuntu machine’s speaker? If not, make sure you have selected the right output from Ubuntu’s sound setting utility.

Select Sound output

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    6 responses to How to Stream Android Music / Audio to Ubuntu over WIFI

    1. zebul666 December 13, 2014 at 11:47 pm

      rygel crashes with:

      *** Error in `rygel’: double free or corruption (fasttop): 0x00007f3814007920 ***
      Abandon

      • Rickt January 4, 2015 at 12:35 am

        I get an error also I think it has to do with the amount of files
        *** Error in `rygel’: double free or corruption (!prev): 0x00007fecdc50d020 ***
        Aborted (core dumped)

    2. Bradley December 16, 2014 at 5:57 pm

      Nice tutorial!, works smoothly on ubuntu 14.10 and LG L BELLO, thx!

    3. Ma January 23, 2015 at 7:40 pm

      Thanks for this tutorial. It would be AWESOME if you could write one that goes the other direction….

      That is, a tutorial to play sound FROM your Ubuntu machine TO an Android device. This would let folks use their Android as a WiFi receiver for music from any app (Pandora (Pithos); Rythmbox; Clementine; FireFox; whatever!).

    4. mojo May 14, 2015 at 1:37 pm

      @Ma there’s info on going the other direction here: http://askubuntu.com/a/485753/79981

    5. stilllit December 12, 2015 at 3:31 pm

      Works perfect on Ubuntu 15.10