Periscope Player

Subsonic provides an excellent service for streaming music over the Internet. Thanks to its web interface, you can play your own music from any computer. If you prefer a traditional interface, the solution is simple. Appropriately named Periscope Player (because subsonic's logo is a submarine), this simple application lets you stream your music further, from your subsonic server to a computer or laptop. Besides providing a desktop interface, the software makes it easier to play and manage your streamed music.

The setup file is about 17 MB and the installation wizard will not present any challenges. The entire process takes less than a minute and you will not have to restart your computer or make further settings. Periscope Player works on any Windows version, with .NET Framework 4.0 installed.

The interface is not overloaded with options, so you can get used to it in one or two minutes. Before using any functions, you will have to specify a Subsonic server address, a username and a password. Once the application is connected to a server, the upper half of its interface will be populated with all your Subsonic-streamed media files. You may click and drag any files to the lower part of the interface to compile a playlist or create and save new ones on the left side.

Your media files can be organized in a tree structure, by title, track, duration, genre and other criteria, by clicking and dragging the column headers to an area above the files list. If you stream new songs or create new playlists on Subsonic, you may click a Refresh option, located in the Tools menu, to update Periscope Player's library.

Playing streamed audio files can be a bit difficult with slower connections. This is why you may add any files to a local cache, by dragging and dropping them over a different list. This will relieve you from streaming the music to your computer each time you want to play it. The local cache can be cleared at any time, in the general settings menu, where you can also set a maximum cache size, define keyboard shortcuts, connect to social media and more.