7mo ago

What's the easiest way to host a music colletion (FLAC)?

I've tried a few options over the years, including SMB and NFS, XBMC as well as HTML with javascript I found online.

I don't have a large collection of music (fewer than 100 albums), so hand coding things was actually one of the quicker options to setup. That's despite then hassle of hand coding the URL to each FLAC file as well as the album art. But sometimes the javascript doesn't handle large collections of FLAC and each implementation I tried had different quirks so I've sunk a lot of time into that in other ways without a satisfactory result.

I've heard of Emby, Jellyfin, Plex, Roon and Servio. I just need something that's simple to set up and access. I don't need fancy features beyond the ability to play the music with a pleasant UI that can be accessed from the web (HTTP, not HTTPS). I'd be running this from a Raspberry Pi 3B which already has the lighttpd server running.

I'm also considering just getting a portable, 128GB FLAC player with a minijack connection and moving on with my life without getting involved in networking at all.

Any recommendations for an uncomplicated way to approach to doing this?

Edit: Thanks so much for the helpful and enthusiastic comments! I tried Navidrome and had it up and running in ten minutes thanks to this tutorial video: https://invidious.nerdvpn.de/watch?v=7V5UUJlSknY

I had to install docker-compose on the RPi. Then I got an error which turned out to be because I also needed a separate docker daemon which I installed following these instructions: https://www.simplilearn.com/tutorials/docker-tutorial/raspberry-pi-docker

In just 10+ minutes I had my music collection accessible from all my devices - thanks again!

57 comments

I use Navidrome, it's a single binary and gives you your own Spotify, kinda. It can be use with many other apps, in addition to the web interface, as it supports the subsonic protocol.
- I got Navidrome working on the local network quickly with docker compose thanks to this video: https://invidious.nerdvpn.de/watch?v=7V5UUJlSknY
  Once I forwarded the right port on my router I was also able to access the music from the web. Thanks for the recommendation, I'm very happy!
  
  Another tip, please be very careful when exposing ports to the public. With docker you're already mitigating your attack surfaces but an open port allows anyone to make a connection and there are lots of bots out there looking for open ports and vulnerabilities. A good alternative would be to setup wireguard and instead then connect through that or if you like simplicity check out Tailscale.
  
  I saw in your update you mentioned installing docker-compose. Modern docker has "compose" as a verb, and should work as docker compose. I haven't tested this on raspberry pi though.
- Seconding Navidrome. I stream from my Navidrome server to my phone, and then via DLNA from my phone to my HiFiBerry / stereo system. It's very nice.
- I tried navidrome but the issue I ran into is that it would not play individual songs or sort through them, it would just play my albums in alphabetical order.
  And I don't know as far as jelly fin goes, I like it as a video platform but for music I couldn't get it to just randomly display the songs and let me shuffle through them.
  I'm looking for a music server that can see all of my songs and music and shuffle them and play them. Does anything like that exist?
  
  I’m not sure when you were using it, but Navidrome definitely let’s you play individual songs and shuffle.
  
  Navidrome does that. I think you just used a bad frontend. Try Tempo if you're using Android. Or Feishin on desktop.

- I can vouch for Jellyfin - Nothing harder than setting up docker and connecting via Finamp. Been a very "set it and forget it" experience for me.
- Jellyfin + Symphonium as a client on android 💯

Plex is probably the easiest and most convenient, I think jellyfin is viable too, but I don't use it.
If you've got the money, Roon or Audirvana are the gold standard of self hosted music
If you want something similar, but free, look into things like volumio or subsonic based solutions.
- Seconding Plex / Plexamp if the use case involves streaming remotely. Probably the easiest to get up and running for remote access.
  I'm not sure about the capabilities of hosting on a Pi, but it should be straightforward to run a couple different apps in parallel to test and compare features (I'm currently doing exactly that with Plex and Jellyfin)
  
  If you already have a NAS, (since SMB was mentioned, I’m assuming there’s some sort of NAS setup going) then you may even be able to host Plex directly on the NAS. It likely won’t be powerful enough for things like video transcoding, but just audio should be fine.

I've been very happy with Navidrome. I have it accessible on a subdomain, so I can just use it from wherever I want. Feishin is a great frontend for Linux desktop, and Tempo is a great frontend for Android.
My friend uses Jellyfin instead of Navidrome, and he's also happy with it. Both the frontends that I mentioned work with Jellyfin as well.
- Second Navidrome. I use it with the android app Symfonium and have thoroughly enjoyed it.

I used Plex for a long time but moved to Jellyfin after reading about the general direction Plex is going (trying to commercialize it, partner up with industry, make it more than just a self hosted media service).
Both have what you're looking for.
I would say Plex is slightly easier and has the benefit of PlexAmp (available for Linux, Windows, and mobile).
That being said, Jellyfin is about the same ease to get set up, but it's just a tad less polished, but in sort of a nice way. It feels more like "yours", if that makes sense.
For both, I recommend hosting them in Docker, using Docker Compose, and using the LinuxServer version. LinuxServer maintains updated software, packaged in an easy to install format and they help you out with sample Docker Compose files and explanations to get things running.

Currently I use Jellyfin and found it simple enough to setup. My personal setup is https on the public internet using Caddy as a reverse proxy to handle the https part, but you can set it up for local network access only using http.
Jellyfin itself is not the greatest music player ever, (UI is more setup for movies and tv) but there are music-centric apps that use it as a backend that are really good, for most platforms. On my phone and tablet, I really like Finamp, and on the desktop I use Sonixd.
I’m also considering just getting a portable, 128GB FLAC player with a minijack connection and moving on with my life without getting involved in networking at all.
I used this setup for the better part of 20 years. Nothing wrong with it, my music collection simply expanded to the point where it simply wasn't feasible to store all of it on my iPod anymore and from day to day I never really know what I'm going to be in the mood to listen to. Setting up a streaming service made more sense for me.

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters	More Letters
HTTP	Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the Web
IP	Internet Protocol
NAS	Network-Attached Storage
Plex	Brand of media server package
SMB	Server Message Block protocol for file and printer sharing; Windows-native
VPN	Virtual Private Network

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I use Plex (Plexamp) and I can not complain. I don't really access via the web browser however, I use the app for dedicated music playback.

ReadyMedia (formerly MiniDLNA) works fine for me as a container via podman on a raspberry pi.

podman run -d --name=minidlna \ --net host \ -v dir/to/music:/media/audio \ -e MINIDLNA_MEDIA_DIR_1=A,/media/audio \ -e MINIDLNA_FRIENDLY_NAME=Music \ --restart on-failure:3 \ --platform linux/arm64 \ docker.io/vladgh/minidlna:latest
No http interface though for playback. Still very simple and does the job for me.
- That looks quick to get going

I'm using Jellyfin, but navidrome worked just as well when I tried it

Jellyfin should work fine for what you're looking for. I haven't run it on a Pi but it should work on that. You'll be able to play music using the web ui as well as mobile apps if that's your thing. It can also transcode on the fly so if your current browser/device/whatever can't play .flac directly it'll automatically transcode the playback to .mp3 or whatever it needs to be.
There are some other self hosted music/streaming projects you could take a look at that are much more built out for music playback specifically. Look into Airsonic-Advanced or Navidrome for example - I've been meaning to check them out myself but haven't gotten around to it yet.

I'm using a Jellyfin server with Symonium on android. It's almost as good as plexamp, but sadly not available on other platforms. Symfonium will work with any media player that uses subsonic. My current jellyfin implementation is http with a VPN for external use.

I prefer Airsonic-Advanced over Navidrome when using the web interface. Airsonic-Advanced and the Substreamer android app are a nice combo. You can run both severs side by side if you are setting up docker containers.
- Thanks. I’m happy enough with Navidrome but if I can try ASA in parallel I might give it a try sometime.
  I really like the turntable effect in the Navidrome web app, though :)

I have a RaspberryPi with a Plex container sitting upstairs. Works like a charm

Looks like you may have made a decision already, but wanted to give Polaris a mention. Been using that on my home server, has a nice Web-UI and a mobile app on F-Droid as well.
https://github.com/agersant/polaris

Plex was easy enough to set up. I use plexamp on my phone but can access the Plex server via a browser, which includes my music

Jellyfin or funkwhale

Streaming my own music was the reason I got into self-hosting in the first place and I’ve been satisfied with Navidrome for over a year now. My preference is to stream via an app on my phone but I’ve made accounts for a couple friends and they stream happily on multiple devices using the browser interface.

I recently learned that Strawberry has native built-in streaming capabilities
Repo
Licensed under: GPL-3.0
not sure if this is what you're looking for but it's an option that might be useful for you🤗

Ampache, good web interface and subsonic client support.

I'm also considering just getting a portable, 128GB FLAC player with a minijack connection and moving on with my life without getting involved in networking at all.
Yeah, I'd say that this is definitely the way to go. My .mp3 player only has something like 8 gigs of storage, but it takes a MicroSD card. With a 1 tb card, I can carry all the music I want (and realistically, given that your collection is pretty small, you could get away with a whole lot less than that).

Why would you stream flacs? If you download lossless is to hear directly with ASIO or WASAPI .

Plex is moving in the app direction... So Plex is probably moving away from what you want despite being one of the easiest options.
It would probably be helpful to know what you're trying to accomplish beyond "what". Like, why do you want to host your music and play it via a web browser.