L / 09Open lab

Lossless Music Streamer

Spotify-style web player serving lossless audio with playlists and JWT auth.

ReactNode.jsMongoDB

"A weekend study in what a streaming service feels like when nothing is compressed."

IOverview

Why it exists.

Most streaming services trade audio fidelity for bandwidth. If you've ever played the same track from a CD and from a streaming app, the difference is real — and on good headphones, it's not subtle.

This is a Spotify-style web player that serves lossless audio end-to-end. JWT-secured accounts, playlist management, search, and the standard playback controls you expect, all over a Web Audio API pipeline that doesn't lose information on the way to your speakers.

Built as a full-stack demo: React + Tailwind on the front, Node and Express on the back, MongoDB for persistence. The interesting work was on the audio pipeline — chunked streaming with Web Audio for gapless playback, a queue model that handles preloading without blowing up memory, and a UI that stays responsive while large files load.

IIWhat it does

The surface.

01

Lossless audio streaming

Uncompressed end-to-end via Web Audio API. No information lost between source and speakers.

02

JWT authentication

Token-based sessions. Secured user accounts with refresh on demand.

03

Playlist management

Create, edit, reorder, share. Persisted per-user.

04

Catalog search

Fast typeahead-style search across artists, albums, and tracks.

05

Real-time playback controls

Scrubbing, queueing, gapless transitions. Responsive UI that stays smooth while large files load.

IIIThe stack

Under the hood.

Frontend
ReactTailwindCSS
Backend
Node.jsExpress
Database
MongoDB
Audio & Auth
Web Audio APIJWT