Hello everyone I’ve been looking for a solution to replace Spotify, for me and my family. I already self-host some services, such as Jellyfin and Sonarr/Radarr For music however, my actual setup is the following :

  • synchronize my music folder on my phone with my NAS
  • download on the phone or on my computer However, I struggle with finding new music and having an easy way to add music.

From what I’ve read, Bandcamp could let me buy some music and add it to my collection (however all artists aren’t on bandcamp) There also seem to be a consensus around Navidrome for a music server.

But how can I set it up so that each member of my family has a separate account (with different musics in it), still discover new songs and easily add them? I’ve looked into Lidarr (not a lot I have to admit) but it seems like it’s mainly for downloading full albums, more than just songs. Is that the case?

TLDR: What self-hostable services can I use to replace Spotify, so that each member of my family has its own instance, recommendations and downloads?

Thank you in advance and sorry for my English

  • malaknight@programming.devEnglish
    1·
    3 days ago

    So as you noticed there isn’t a one size fits all solution.

    You are correct in that bandcamp allows you to buy songs and albums from artists, but not every artist is on the platform. I cycle between Quobuz, HDTracks, or other alternatives (wink, wink)

    Navidrome is good for sharing one library, in my experience. It expects one library that a bunch of users can then interact with. This does meet your requirements of seperate stats and downloads per user however you will have access to your family’s music just like they will have access to yours.

    You could try out funkwhale, which is similar but expects multiple libraries. So you can have a library of just your music and same with your family members, this will allow duplicate tracks. I will caution that funkwhale is, in my experience, not easy to get setup. I would personally recommend navidrome as it is very easy to setup annd use. As others mentioned, it uses the subsonic api under the hood so any subsonic client can access your navidrome libary. I use Feishen on desktop and symphonium on mobile.

    You also mention syncing music folders between devices, this might get tricky. But you can setup a rsync services to ssh to your phone and then migrate tracks to your library. But personally I would recommend just trying to only download your music to your NAS so you can skip this annoyance. You can setup Lidarr which is sonarr/radarr but for music. However music piracy is not what it was 10 years ago, and I struggle to have lidarr autopull albums, but thats also because I try to use flac which is not as common either.

    Finally you mention recommendations, for me the only option is ListenBrainz. You can setup a musicbrainz account, it is an open source music metadata platform, and then use that login for ListenBrainz, which is a tracking and recommendation engine. You can directly plug in that api to navidrome to have it sync all of your listens.

    In summary, my recommendation is to only download music to your nas, setup navidrome for library sharing, (you can download from navidrome), and then setup lidarr for albums. Finally for individual tracks look into deemix, if you only want mp3 then it’s just free downloads.

    Please feel free to reply or message for any clarifications.