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!
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.
Thanks for that. I’ll look into tail scale (since you mentioned the magic word, ‘simplicity’). My domain doesn’t have any links to the pages on my server, and Navidrome is username and password protected. Would that be safe enough? I am using unencrypted http, though.
Especially with music, if any of this is plain HTTP (or any other plaintext, non-encrypted protocol) and you live in a lawsuit happy jurisdiction you might end up with piracy letters in the mail.
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.
You’re right. It’s just that the package to installed is called docker-compose (if I remember right. I’m on mobile now). So the command to install was: apt install docker-compose, and the command was: docker compose. Thanks man.
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 use Jellyfin in a way that sounds like what you want. You run a Jellyfin server wherever your FLACs are, access it via the web, and play things through your browser — or through Finamp on Android, in my case.
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.
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.
