this post was submitted on 26 Feb 2025
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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

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[–] tuxec@infosec.pub 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Lidarr, SpotSpot, Jellyfin (Symfonium for listening to music on my Android phone).

I use Spotify (web version) or Lidarr to look/search for the name of the albums for different artists and then download it with SpotSpot (consider pairing it with Gluetun). For me, this is perfect!

Edit: While on my computer, I'm using Feishin to listen to music from Jellyfin. I usually create the playlists from there.

[–] i_uuuh_what@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

edit: if anyone sees this, the update with the last.fm recommendation playlist support is available and I also added basic documentation to the readme

Spotify replacement? Oh, hey, that's me.

I'm working on Tapesonic, a subsonic-compatible self-hostable streaming service. It won't stream your local library, but it can import stuff from YouTube and Bandcamp (and probably other sites yt-dlp supports, but I didn't bother testing) and stream those. Started making it because Lidarr can't download basically anything and also can't manage anything that's not in MusicBrainz even if you download it yourself.

As for discovery - Tapesonic can scrobble your listens to ListenBrainz and, since a couple of days ago, last.fm. Those in turn provide recommendation playlists.

  • ListenBrainz playlists are already incorporated, but Tapesonic can only match the songs you already have in your library - everything else is ignored; completely useless for actual discovery and the recommendations aren't great anyway to be honest
  • last.fm recommendations are pretty good and I'm actively working on importing those; last.fm provides a YouTube URL for each track and Tapesonic can import YouTube URLs - you see where this is going, yeah? I expect to push a somewhat working implementation in a couple of weeks as I already have a prototype that works surprisingly well

Caveats:

  • Tapesonic is still in it's "prototyping phase" (what do you mean it's been more than a year since I started it...) - everything gets changed all the time, only core features get implemented, UI sucks, all that jazz
  • breaking changes anytime - expect having to completely wipe everything and start anew at any moment
  • no multi-user support for now and I have no idea when it'll come; you can host multiple instances I guess

Want to give it a try?

  • docker run --rm -p 8080:8080 -e TAPESONIC_USERNAME=user -e TAPESONIC_PASSWORD=pass ghcr.io/sibwaf/tapesonic
  • http://localhost:8080/, username/password from the previous command ("user"/"pass" in this case)
  • "New tape" -> paste any Bandcamp album URL -> "Import" -> "Add all" -> "Next" a couple of times
  • Connect a subsonic client (Feishin, Sonixd, Ultrasonic for desktop, Tempo for Android) to the same address, same credentials
  • Enjoy!

Any other configuration parameters, persistency, stuff like this - sorry, you'll have to study the code. No docs and no support for now.

[–] general_djoka@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago

I used to live Spotify. Now it’s algorithms and podcasts being pushed. Their app has gone to shit.

Good luck doing a simple thing like… shuffling by artist. Such a mess.

Love Plexamp though.

[–] malaknight@programming.dev 1 points 2 weeks 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.

[–] neatobuilds@lemmy.today 0 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I used lidarr to sync my followed artists from spotify and then just use plex and plexamp for music, all my plex users have access to it also but I think most people still have spotify so it's just mainly me using it

[–] jacksilver@lemmy.world 0 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Plex and plexamp is the best music hosting setup I've found too. Users can have their own playlist and there is some smart playlist generation.

They also had (maybe still have) tidal integration.

However, you'll still be relying on other services (probs spotify/etc.) to find new things.

[–] Undaunted@feddit.org 2 points 1 week ago

They dropped the Tidal integration and I'm still heartbroken. It was the best setup for music discovery. Haven't found a replacement yet.

[–] non_burglar@lemmy.world -1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

From my experience with sonarr and radarr, I thought lidarr would be great, but it's garbage.

Bandcamp isn't what it used to be, apparently there's a better service for music now, I'm sorry I can't recall the name.

Navidrome should serve you well for Spotify replacement. It uses the subsonic api, so you can use any app that supports that, and there are many.

Regarding sync phone with server, you might want some thing like synching or nextcloud with a local player on your phone. My music collection is 1.5TB, so I simply stream and have only a few select albums downloaded locally on the phone.

[–] const_void@lemmy.ml 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

What’s garbage about it? It works great for me.

[–] non_burglar@lemmy.world 1 points 6 days ago

Well, you're certainly in the minority.

If you follow lidarr's methods on cataloguing your music, sure. But most of us have developed our own way to organize music and lidarr blows at handling these:

  • concert albums
  • bootleg
  • international releases with different track listings than north american version
  • custom mp3 fields
  • certain artwork
  • playlists
  • cddb tagged music (yes, even pulling the music directly from a disc.)
  • flac album-year and album-artist tags
  • multi-disc albums
  • electronic music
  • vinyl music tagged with picard

And god forbid you give lidarr free reign on your collection, it will start renaming, re-downloading and replacing music, essentially destroying your collection.

The problem is that there really isn't a standard way to categorize music, but lidarr wants to impose one.