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Much of the music I play these days comes from Spotify but there are times when I’d really like to stream my music to some speakers on the other side of the house that are plugged into an Apple Airport Express.
A few months ago I found out how to do this, using a nifty piece of software from Rogue Amoeba, called Airfoil. For just $25, Airfoil will stream audio to other Macs and PCs running the Airfoil Speakers companion app or to an Airport Express, Apple TV or other supported receivers.
I did find a few gotchas along the way though:
- Airfoil will only recognise the same devices as iTunes and iTunes will recognise the same Airport Express as AirPort Utility. It took several reboots to get AirPort Utility to recognise my Airport Express (although things seem to have settled down since).
- When adjusting the volume/pause/play etc. there is a short delay before the changes take effect (due to latency in the network) – so this is unlikely to work for live DJing (it was fine for my 40th birthday party a few months ago though!).
Spotify has a nasty habit of duplicating itself when it upgrades, leaving a copy in ~/Applications as well as in /Applications. To resolve this, delete the old version of Spotify in /Applications and move the new version from ~/Applications to /Applications. Restart Spotify and Airfoil should, once again, be happy to take Spotify as a source application. This has happened several times now, each time Spotify release a new client app although it could be a side effect of me running as a Standard User and not an Administrator (as all users should!).