Hi everyone, I’m running a Proxmox server with a Docker LXC container and want to set up a music server. I’ve heard about many services, but I’m not sure which one fits my needs best. My goals:
A program that lets me play music with many client apps, ideally with offline playback for some tracks.
A tool that helps me discover and download music, similar to how I use Deluge, Prowlarr, and SABnzbd for my movie server.
A service that recommends music based on my taste and playlists, like Spotify does. This is especially important for me because I’m not very creative with my playlists—they tend to be short and boring.
I want to share the server with my girlfriend, who uses Apple devices, so the experience should be as smooth as Spotify for her.
What self-hosted music servers do you use in your homelabs? Are there any tools that can analyze my existing playlists and suggest similar music? Do you have any tutorials, blog posts, or Docker Compose files for easy setup?
I’m really excited to hear what you’re using and what you recommend!
I highly recommend a Navidrome/Slskd/beets[lyrics]/Symfonium setup!
I have a Navidrome server that serves music in a Library Folder (B), a Slskd server that serves a Soulseek web UI and downloads to a Download Folder (A), and beetbox beets program with the lyrics plugin installed via pipx that has config parameters set so that I can manually run it, it’ll detect and allow me to identify songs downloaded to Folder A, inject synced lyrics, and move them to an organised folder structure in Folder B.
- Navidrome doesn’t need organisation, I just do it to be neat.
- beets uses MusicBrainz and another I believe for song/album ID, and lrclib for synced lyrics
- I also have Lidarr set up to download from Soulseek with the Tubifarry plugin, get lyrics via lrclib and move to Folder B with the same structure as beets, but its metadata is heavily lacking and many images and artist song data is just nonexistent after about two months of “populating” (see below)
- You can use any Subsonic client but I find Symfonium to be incredible. Paying these devs is worth it!
I’m surprised to not see this suggestion, but Plex does music pretty well and they have an app dedicated for music/audio called “Plexamp”. Though I don’t think this app is on things like AppleTV/Roku(haven’t looked).
It’s so-so when it comes to playlist building…but the app on mobile works and I use it for audiobooks mainly, but I am starting to plan to use it switch off Spotify here soon.
Well, there is Mixarr. I believe it downloads and gives recommends. However, there is also a version if you just want recommendations: Mixarr Unleaded which the dev graciously modified just for me apparently. Thanks aquantumofdonuts!! So I feel obligated to recommend the unleaded version of Mixarr.
That’s a great service, thanks for sharing. Wild that they modified a version for you, one of the great aspects of the open source community.
one of the great aspects of the open source community.
Absolutely. I was quite humbled.
My current setup, is as follows:
Personally curated music I buy and organize using Picard into folder A.
Lidarr is configured with folder C, which is a mergerfs volume consisting of folder A and B. Folder A is read-only, and any writes on C go into folder B. This way Lidarr can “see” all my existing music, while any automated downloads go into folder B.
Lidarr actually works, because it is hooked up to Soulseek using Tubifarry with ytdl as a fallback. I also have an import list hooked up to my last.fm recommendations to automatically download new stuff I might like.
When I feel like it, I go through folder B using Picard, moving things I want to keep into folder A.
To access my music, I use Jellyfin, also through folder C. My clients are Feishin and Symfonium.
In Symfonium, I use smart playlists for discovery. These playlists populate based on stuff like “unlistened tracks” or “multiple plays without being favorited” and “recently added from favorited artists”.
My favorite feature however is the tag-based endless playback which allows me to pick a track to start with, and them swipe through music with at least some kind of logic to the progression. This is my main way to browse my library.
For iOS support, look at Navidrome for the server and maybe SubStremer for the client.
Lidarr is configured with folder C, which is a mergerfs volume consisting of folder A and B. Folder A is read-only, and any writes on C go into folder B. This way Lidarr can “see” all my existing music, while any automated downloads go into folder B, keeping them separate from my organized files.
That is so dang clever I definitely have to steal the idea.
I decided to go bare minimum effort to get the self-hosted music expirience, so I’m just hosting the music on NextCloud for the Symfonium app to grab. I downloaded most of the music from YT music using yt-dlp, since that’s what I’m quite familiar with and I don’t have the arr stack set up yet.
I’m planning to move to Navidrome or Jellyfin soon™
Happy to hear great suggestions in other comments
I too want the features you list, not sure how doable the recommendations would be on a local server for songs that are not on there already?
Well it must be a service that lists the downloaded or songs in a playlist and searches the web or a ecxsiting database for recommondations and those must be downloaded through the downloadpipeline of the service.
