Pi Music

Setting up headless Raspberry Pis for music streaming.

Pi

1. Flash your SD cards with Pi Imager and pick PiOS Lite

Sendspin Daemon

Modern Pis

1. Install dependencies
   • sudo apt install libffi-dev python3-dev libjpeg-dev zlib1g-dev
2. Per GitHub page, install with the below command:
   • curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Sendspin/sendspin-cli/refs/heads/main/scripts/systemd/install-systemd.sh | sudo bash
3. If using a non-default audio device (such as HDMI on a device with a headphone jack)
   1. sendspin audio-devices list
   2. sendspin --audio-devices 'hdmi'

Old Pis (like Pi Zero W 1)

1. use sendspin-armv2

Raspotify

1. Install dependencies
   • sudo apt install curl
2. Install Raspotify (from the github install script rather than waiting for the website to be updated)
   • curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dtcooper/raspotify/refs/heads/master/install.sh | sh
3. Tweaks for non-default audio device
   1. Update /etc/raspotify/conf with your alsa audio hardware index from aplay -l
      • LIBRESPOT_DEVICE="hw:1,0"
   2. You may need to change hw to plughw to have alsa convert the stream to a format your hardware can use
   3. sudo systemctl restart raspotify
4. Check error logs with journalctl -u raspotify -f

Last update: August 19, 2026