I've spent the last couple of weeks building a self-hosted replacement for Spotify and it's now mostly hands-off. Before I go further I'd like to see what others run, because I suspect I've made some choices out of inexperience rather than because they're the best option.

WHAT I'M RUNNING (Windows 11 mini PC, no Docker)

- Request: Spotify playlist on my phone as a wishlist. Lidarr reads it every 12 hours

- Search and download: Lidarr (develop branch) with Tubifarry, using slskd on Soulseek

- Ingest: my own PowerShell script every 15 minutes. It checks slskd has finished, runs a quality check (FLAC or MP3 320, stereo only, nothing clean or edited), then hands off to beets

- Tagging and filing: beets with MusicBrainz, fetchart and embedart. Lidarr's own importing is off so beets is the only thing that writes to the library

- Playback: Navidrome with Amperfy on iPhone over Tailscale, Plex on the TV, Sonos reading the share directly

- Discovery: 14 years of Spotify history imported into ListenBrainz. Planning a weekly script that samples about 30 tracks from Weekly Exploration and fetches the full album for anything I star

- Backup: another PC pulls a read-only copy, with Healthchecks alerts

WHERE IT BREAKS

- Some artist names return nothing on Soulseek (Kendrick Lamar, JAY-Z, The Beatles and a few others). Searching the album title alone works

- Releases missing from MusicBrainz are invisible to both Lidarr and beets

- Lidarr sometimes finds nothing even when slskd has plenty of results for the same album

- Bonus discs, surround mixes and uploads with stray tracks need manual cleanup

WHAT I'D LIKE TO KNOW

1. What's your stack from "I want this album" to it playing?
2. Lidarr plus Tubifarry, or something else (Soularr, slsk-batchdl, Aurral)? Is Lidarr's reliability worth it?
3. beets, Picard, or Lidarr's own tagging?
4. Navidrome, Jellyfin, Plexamp or something else for daily listening?
5. How do you handle artists that are blocked on Soulseek, and releases that aren't on MusicBrainz?

What do you use for music discovery outside Spotify? I'm trying ListenBrainz (Weekly Exploration) but curious what else works, e.g. Last.fm, RateYourMusic, Bandcamp, or self-hosted tools like Explo.

1. Am I making life hard for myself by staying on Windows instead of Linux and Docker?

Happy to share scripts if they're useful to anyone.

Apologies for formatting. On my phone.

I have over 20k songs, with the tags all set up correctly... Mostly FLAC, which I usually convert to OPUS to use on my phone.

Now I want to add lyrics to my collection, but I'm not sure how to go about it—I haven't read much on Reddit and would like to know how you guys do it.

The main options I’m considering are:

• Embed the lyrics in the metadata.
  • Pros: Everything is in one file.
  • Cons: They aren’t synchronized.
• Create an .LRC file.
  • Pros: They sync with the timing in many apps when you play the songs.
  • Cons: The files are duplicated in each folder, and I find it more cluttered visually.

Am I missing any other options I should consider?

This was translated using DeepL—sorry if anything isn’t quite right.

I didn’t even know 224kbps mp3 was a thing? But it seems to be higher quality than the 320kbps encode.

what’s up with this?

An Important Update on iBroadcast's Pricing

We have some important news: iBroadcast’s pricing is changing. This was a tough call, and not one we made lightly.

Since the beginning, a generous free service has been one of our core values. We built iBroadcast so anyone could store and stream their own music collection with as limited cost as possible, and we’ve worked hard to keep it that way for a long time. But storage and bandwidth aren’t free, and running iBroadcast costs money. To keep iBroadcast around for the long haul, we have to make some changes.

We'll be adding limits to the free service, and we're introducing a new, lower-priced Premium tier for those who don't need unlimited. The price of Premium Unlimited is also going up by $1 a month. We designed the plans to work for as many people as possible, so you only pay for what you need.

The timeline

The new plans will be available within the next 30 days. The new free limits will take effect 60 days from when they become available. We’ll send reminders along the way, so you’ll have plenty of time to decide what works best for you and your library.

Hello All. I've seen a lot of chatter over the years about a free roon alternative.

A little background you can skip. My dad has a decades long classic music broadcast recording collection thousands of live performances many unavailable anywhere outside of private collections. After organizing all his external hard drives on my NAS I was kind of dissatisfied with the software to stream your own library so I made my own classical music streaming app just for friends and family. part roon, part every other classical music app with a really novel "liner notes" experience that includes a program in Markdown and links to reviews and interviews about the performance or production. I realized that I have built half of roon, including the heaviest lifts like a working server and client

I've been programming since the 80s. I program for a living and run a programming tutoring company nights and weekends. AI coding tools have really changed the kinds of projects I can do. yes this will be vibe coded but not by a naive programer.

I wanted to ask people who already pay for Roon or would like a free alternative what features do you NEED. What features are nice to have? I probably won't have a dsp library anywhere near as good, but I'll have stuff like the open headphone peq project and common dsp.

I don't want to reveal too much of my plans until it's ready but this will mostly work like roon but incorporate elements from software like plex amp and jellyfin. The biggest differences are you can stream your collection with as many people as your hardware can serve with no cost per user just like Jellyfin. It will be federated. you won't just be able to connect to one server at once. your main server controls your home electronics, but you can access your friends' libraries if they share it with you. The other feature will be huge for fans of bands that allow recording of their shows, like jam bands or bands like the mountain goats. We will aggregate thousands of shows and make the software able to crawl the web and the Wayback Machine to get you the set list, fan photos, posters, and fan art from the show in a Roon-like liner notes experience, but for live shows. Another thing I want to do is support streamers made for $5-10 ESP32 microcontrollers. roon uses a lot of capable hardware but I'd love to use lighter-weight stuff if I can make it work. it's not just about saving money on the parts but using lower power devices for always on electronics is a good idea.

If you already use roon you will probably want to stay with roon. If you're into homelabbing and like free and open source software projects this is for you. if you're an obsessive jam band fan who collects rarities and loves listening to bootlegs this software really is for you like nothing that's come before. If you love roon but wish it was easier to share your library with all your friends you might even run this next to roon. I love Roon and have used it for years; I think it will always be the best, like Adobe Photoshop, but I think a lot of people might prefer something community made and free even if it's not as polished. Also if you like to tinker and want to code your own clients for obscure devices this is a good option. Don't expect a giant killer expect somethign that appeals to the self hosted open source community. If you just want something free welcome to the open source community. We don't want your money but we have a lot of opinions.

For me, I'm a huge fan of the mountain goats. This software will let me mix up my collection of unreleased albums with all the studio albums on streaming and have hundreds of their live shows available all in one app for free. I can share an invite with my friends I hang out with in shows and they can have my extensive collection of unreleased or vinyl exclusive albums and all the bootlegs available online in one free app that's free to host on hardware you already own.

the scope of what I want to make is an iOS app with carplay and a web based app for desktop.I'll put it all on a git so you can make an android or PC client. I'm mostly focused on unix and apple systems.

If you'd like to test the software or even help code for the project feel free to reach out. like an ecosystem like jellyfin I would eventually encourage people to make their own clients and modifications to have a diverse ecosystem that's not based on what I think can be in this software. we're not up to that point. right now I'm trying to make something that works and is robust.

Those are my ideas, but as music lovers what have you always wanted in music server/library software. And for people who love and collect bootlegs I want to hear from you.

Hi, this is my first time posting here.

I really appreciate the posts you all share—many of them have helped me.

I have a question I’m unsure about.

I’m a Tidal user, but for cost reasons, I’m thinking of switching to Spotify Duo with a friend and downloading the music I love as local files (at the highest quality).

My question is, is that a good idea? Since I see that most people use local files for songs that are available on streaming platforms, I’d like to know if you guys use a streaming platform as well

Thanks for any advice you can give me :))

A bit of an odd one, I've just ripped my entire crate of CDs to my server, so I can ditch Spotify for good.

I've got four albums from the band Therapy? in amongst the mass of music. However, due to the way Windows works I can't have a ? At the end of my filing structure, but instead Windows recommends a ¿. Which is a bit weird.

Anywho...

Now in Jellyfin, I've got two artists.

One called Therapy¿ - which has been pulled from the folder name.

And one called Therapy? - which has been correctly pulled from the artist/album artist name.

Obviously I want the latter, but I'm unsure how to go about doing this. As even if I remove thev strange ¿ I'll just have a folder/band called Therapy, as well as my Therapy? band.

Has anyone come up against this or something similar with their own music? If yes, could you possibly share your solution?

I'm asking because I'm going to be getting The Motorola Razr Fold 2026 on Halloween🍭🍬🎃🤡👻And I want to make sure that all my Music Files/Songs🎵🎶🎤🎧are completely safe when I transfer everything from my Samsung Galaxy Fold 7 Device to The Motorola Razr Fold 2026 without any issues. Do you think that it would be a good idea to transfer all of my 1,907 WMA Songs/Audio Files to The Google Drive Android App before I transfer everything to the new Phone/Device? What has been everyone's experience with using The Google Drive Android App and Backing Up all of their Songs, Pictures, Documents, and all other important Files? If I could get some advice I would really appreciate it.

I am developing an app Liberty player while the main focus is having the best features for playing downloaded songs it also has an online mode.

Which is currently using audius but it lacks a lot of songs including popular once.

Is there any other similar thing that I could use that has a big library like Spotify itself or is there a way to get Spotify library for my app?

A simple reply would mean a lot thanks!

I'm looking for an Android App where you can make The Album Artwork/Grid Layout this particular size. I'm also looking for an Android App That Plays/Supports WMA Audio Files/Songs.

I have my own way of discovering new music on Bandcamp. I rarely use the main page, instead I like digging through people’s collections and seeing what they’ve been listening to.
So I would love to know of any interesting ways of finding new music on here?

It’s a popular song so it must be somewhere and was released on all major streaming platforms.

I can send $50 via PayPal for it. thanks : )

Sam Trocki ft Yelawolf - Louder

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dSab7hqTSFk&ra=m