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!
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, keeping them separate from my organized files.
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 then swipe through music with at least some kind of logic to the progression. This is my main way to browse my library.
It works extremely well, with the exception of files that don’t contain many tags. Hence my main pursuit has been to find a good way too add at least some genre tags to ALL my files. I haven’t found a final solution.
For iOS support, look at Navidrome for the server and maybe SubStreamer for the client.
That is so dang clever I definitely have to steal the idea.