3d ago

Been seeing a lot of posts about replacing Spotify and such, so I wrote up a guide on how I did just that

blog.nfreak.tv Replacing Music Streaming Services with a Self-hosted Stack

Replacing TV and movie streaming services is pretty trivial, and typically one of the first projects for any new self-hoster, but music streaming services are a whole different beast. There's a growing need to replace the likes of Spotify, but there's no one-size-fits-all solution, and maintaining a...

Full disclosure, I'm pretty new to selfhosting myself, and I haven't written a guide like this before, but hopefully this scatterbrained writeup is enough for someone out there lmao

This is just what works for me and how I set it up. Always open to ideas for improvement as well.

Technology @programming.dev

Replacing Music Streaming Services with a Self-hosted Stack

blog.nfreak.tv /music-stack/

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153 comments

What am I missing? Whats wrong with Spotify?
- Closed non-federated streaming platform; requires an Internet connection.
  Requires a subscription for a lot of basic functionality.
  Even though it requires a subscription, they barely pay artists - the only ongoing benefit to using a non-pirate setup.
  The increasing amount of "Perfect Fit Content" & LLM-generated music in playlists to avoid said payments.
  They provide a guaranteed platform to political podcasts.
  Audio quality is not only dependent on the subscription, but even the top-tier is generally subpar and can vary based on how they throttle you that day.
  As a platform for mass appeal, discoverability is, loosely speaking, crud.
  Pick any of those you like.
  
  All the above points are valid except for this
  requires an Internet connection.
  You can easily download for offline listening with spotify. Even piracy will require internet connection for later offline consumption, and getting music from physical media is way more work than most realistically want to do today.
  
  Whats the pirate discover ability fix? I miss last.fm from back in the day... Always finding great small artists.
  
  https://listenbrainz.org/
  
  Discoverability is a difficult challenge in a pirate context, imo. Last.fm still exists, so do bandcamp and soundcloud. Pandora, Soma.FM, and both terrestrial and internet radio can still work if you find the right genre. The other options include going to your local library, and your local media store of choice.
  Another one that works is finding out the songwriters, producers, and engineers on your favorite songs/albums and tracking down their discography. Often enough, you'll find similar-sounding music by tracking the tech guys.
  
  Soulseek
  
  Complain about paying artists yet the article is about how they automate piracy lol
  
  I mean, I did offer it as one of over a half-dozen reasons. And my opinion is just that you shouldn't go halfway. If you're going to pay a subscription, the artists and staff ought to get paid. Otherwise, go full pirate and if you want to support an artist, find a way to do so directly, without platforms or labels.
  
  What's wrong with just buying their album on like bandcamp?
  
  That not everyone is on bandcamp
  
  Yeah but the person I replied to said not to go halfway and I simply don't understand why one shouldn't use sites like bandcamp where available.
  
  Do we really need a federated streaming platform??
  Musicbrainz is also not federated, neither is wikipedia.
- Hope you like face ID!

153 comments