Im trying to put together a music pc. I have a spare, un-used pc with the following spec:

cpu 533MHz celeron
ram 256Mb
hdd 6gb

I was wondering if Gentoo is the best distro for this?

I have used several distros.
For Linux I prefer something Debian based. It is much easier to maintain and install packages since it resolves dependencies for you.
I am a big fan of FreeBSD. In many ways it is more stable and easier to admin.
(Steadies self for flames)

Although I have Fedora Core (x) on my computers, one thing to note is that it does not come with any mp3 or NTFS code, so you might find yourself running to sourceforge.net to fill those gaps every time you update to a new version.

Thanks for the comments, will be taking them into consideration!

I'm not much of a connoiseur of Linux distributions, but I can say that if you choose to install Gentoo on a slower box, you'll be spending a lot of time waiting for new software to compile and install. If you don't plan to be doing a lot of installs or upgrades once you've got everything set up, it would probably be okay, but if you think you'll be trying new stuff out a lot, you'd be better off with something that uses binary packages like Debian or Fedora.

hmm, now that's a valid point. Thanks

I may need to re-think this

FWIW if your music server isn't your only linux box, there's no reason you couldn't do your compiles on a faster machine and just copy the kernel or program over later.

Side note.. I've read that a tricked out IBM POWER4 box can compile a linux kernel in about 7 seconds... I ought to try it sometime.

Easiest way to fill in those gaps is to add the dag, freshrpms, etc. repositories and use yum to install it.

I love yum

I'd go with Debian unstable. It allows you to choose what to install, upgrade easily, maintaining it is a piece of cake, it has good performance, and the new Debian installer is very easy to use.
Another good option is slackware which is fast as hell but somewhat complicated to keep up to date.