For creative people, mostly, music is very important. It can help to get into the mood & concentrate on a project or increase your blood pressure, send more oxygen to the brain & cause you to design/code beautiful stuff .

pulpTunes is a free web server for iTunes which enables you to access your music collection from anywhere with a slick, Ajaxed web interface.

Music files are categorized just like iTunes, songs can be downloaded with a right-click & direct links to songs or playlists can be generated for sharing them easily with others.

pulpTunes is integrated with iTunes DJ, supports MP3 + AAC (M4A) files & can display cover arts.

For slower connections, buffer level can be easily adjusted & it works on Mac, Windows or Linux.

P.S. Although this resource is not directly design or development oriented, it is something that can be very handy for freelancers who may need to work from different locations time-by-time & for creative offices (where you can listen to music ) to keep all music files in one place & reach easily.

Audio Player is a tiny yet beautiful free Flash mp3 player that is used on many popular websites like Talkcrunch.

It is originally a Wordpress plugin but with the increasing popularity, the developer of the player, Martin Laine, has created a standalone version as well.

The Wordpress plugin can directly use the Wordpress media library which is great. The standalone version can be configured very easily too & they both have various features like:

• autostart
• loop
• animation
• remaining time
• volume control & more.

For a demo of the player, you can check TalkCrunch.

P.S. Audio Player is open source & source files can be found here.

Subsonic is an open source web-based media streamer application that helps sharing your music or listening it anytime/anywhere.

It allows streaming to multiple users & can handle very large music collections.

It is compatible with every audio or video format that can stream over HTTP, like AAC and OGG. Also, Subsonic works with any network-enabled media player, such as Winamp, iTunes, XMMS, VLC, MusicMatch and Windows Media Player.

It can integrate with various web services like Last.fm, Amazon (for cover art) & more.

And, considering media files are generally huge, it supports automatic zipping/unzipping while downloading & uploading them.

Simple Flash Mp3 Player is a minimalistic player from Flabell (who also created this advanced Flash mp3 player – see WRD post).

It is built with AS3, offers a play-pause button & a draggable volume bar. Once the player is initiated, it displays the song info to be played.

There is a sound visualizer at the backend which, besides the rhythm of the music, transforms with the level of sound too.

The music to be played is set via FlashVars in the HTML code. And, the player can be customized via XML files easily.

Sockso is an open source music server application that lets you share the music files easily with everyone.

With a very simple setup, just running an executable file, the environment is instantly ready.

The aplication is managed from a Java GUI. User can connect through a web-based interface and:

• create playlists
• listen to the music via a Flash-based player
• download tracks, albums or playlists
• upload new music files & more.

Sockso supports MP3, OGG Vorbis, Flac, and WMA files, If needed it can re-encode output streams to save bandwidth. To see all the features of the application, click here.

AjaXplorer is a free Ajax file manager with powerful features & an user-friendly interface.

It is built with PHP (4 & 5) & does not require any database to run. Just an upload & use solution.

Some great features of AjaXplorer:

• File/folder actions: rename/copy/move/delete/download
• Multiple file upload with progress bar
• Edit text files (syntax highlighting for js, php, html, java, sql & perl)
• Images can be previewed & viewed as a slideshow
• Mp3 files can be listened without downloading them
• Flash videos can be viewed
• ZIP files can be browsed & extracted
• Bookmark system for reaching to the desired files easier
• Multilanguage
• Recursive search & more

AjaXplorer has a multi-user environment. The admin can create new users & assign the permitted directories/rights to those users.

The application also offers a high-level of usability with drag’n drop support, keyboard shortcuts, list / thumbnails views & ability to select multiple file / folders.

XML Photo Album is a free Flash gallery application with multi-gallery support.

It can display images, audios (mp3), videos (flv) & switching between galleries or thumbnails is possible by hovering the app.

The gallery is managed by editing a XML file & that’s all it requires for configuration.

XML Photo Album comes with the .fla source which makes it possible to customize & improve further.

AudioPlay is a simple & free Flash mp3 player with only one button.

The "play" button, once clicked, starts playing the mp3 file & turns into a "pause" button. That’s all AudioPlay does.

The images used can be easily changed by simply updating the current image files.

The settings that can be configured from a xml file:

• background color
• mp3 file name
• loop (never, x times or unlimited)
• autostart

It also supports multiple instances on the same page.

To conclude, it is an ideal player to be used as a background music player.

NiftyPlayer is a tiny open source Flash MP3 player with a very simple interface.

It is lightweight (4kb) and usage does not require any Flash knowledge as the URL is mentioned in HTML.

The player can be easily controlled with JavaScript besides the Flash interface, like changing the file to be played, stop & start. With this feature, you can even bypass the whole Flash look.

Some other features are:

• Autostart capability
• Draggable/Clickable seek bar
• Simple operation with Play/Pause and Stop buttons
• Buffering with progress bar
• Buffering is stoppable! (through Stop button)
• Volume control

Dewplayer is a tiny & free Flash mp3 player with a very clean interface.

It comes in 3 sizes:

• Mini (160×20)
• Classic (200×20)
• Multi (240×20)

When play button is pressed, the mp3 player downloads & plays the file.

Multi version can play any number of files via a simple preivous & next navigation.

How to use it?

Usage is very easy. Defining the mp3 file to the HTML where the Dewplayer is inserted is enough. Just like:

<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="dewplayer.swf?mp3=test.mp3" width="200" height="20">
<param name="movie" value="dewplayer.swf?mp3=test.mp3" />
</object>

An online XHTML code generator for the player is also provided for easier integration