I wanted to move away from Spotify to have more control over my music and music-consumption experience. Without writing a line of code (I wouldn't know how anyway), I built a DIY music streaming services that anyone with a bit of tech savvy can build for their own personal use.

This post is a little long. If you want to go straight to the main takeaways, I suggest you scroll down and check out the following sections: Objectives and results; Cost; Get Started. But if you got time and are curious (hey fellow nerd 👋🏻), read away! Also, let me know if you have feedback on the streaming service I built—any suggestion to improve it is welcome!

Intro

I've been on Spotify since 2012. With Spotify, I've been able to easily discover new artists and tracks; keep my music at my fingertips whether I'm on my laptop, phone, or even someone else's device; and seamlessly share playlists with friends. Like most streaming services nowadays—Apple Music, YouTube Music, Deezer—Spotify is easy to use. It is seamless and extremely convenient.

But like most things in this world, when something is so convenient, there is a darker side to it. Spotify is a typical hyper-capitalist tech company: it barely compensates artists for their work; the money it makes goes to shareholders and executives, and gets reinvested in destructive companies and industries; and even for users who have become used to a convenient, seamless experience, the service is becoming increasingly enshittified with features we don't want and don't need.

Using a streaming service like Spotify also means we don't own our music: tracks we love at times become 'unavailable' due to copyright changes; we can't easily pack up our albums and playlists and move to a different service; and changes in the company's business priorities can just lock us out of a music library we've spent years building.

In general, I actually kinda like the idea of moving past ownership and instead sharing, borrowing, or renting the things we use (when it comes to physical goods, sharing, borrowing, or renting are the only ways we can meaningfully address the environmental crisis); but I'm not willing to rent my music when it is from a billion-dollar company that exploits those who make the music and reinvests in AI killing drones.

All of this to say: time to let go of our beloved streaming services.

It took me a few months of research and tweaking, but I managed to build my own music streaming service. This post describes the streaming service I built and explains why I made the decisions I made. Hopefully, it can help others build their own streaming service without having having to do all the research and testing I did. And to be clear, I don't code and I don't have the skills to manage servers. So the system I built should be accessible to anyone, even without technical skills. You just need to be comfortable with tech and be willing to put in a bit of time into it.

Alright, let's dive in.

Objectives and results

My objectives in building this music streaming service were to:

• Achieve more control and autonomy over the music I consume, including by owning the actual music files, so I'm not at the whims of the business models, copyrights battles, and algorithms of corporate streaming services.
• Support and compensate artists for their work—not with infinitesimal amounts paid out by corporate streaming services but with actual, tangible money.
• Be able to access my music from any of my devices, including without an internet connection, just like I've gotten used to with Spotify. I'm willing to lose some convenience, but accessing my entire library from any of my devices is the baseline requirement of the streaming services I wanted.
• Minimize my capitalist footprint and participation in surveillance capitalism by withdrawing my consent, personal data, and money from corporate music streaming services.

The solution I came up with:

• Accomplishes all four objectives outlined above.
• Requires a bit of time and energy to set up, and more generally a mindset shift in how we consume music. It's a bit less convenient than a corporate streaming service, but more importantly it is simply a different way of consuming music.
• Is only slightly more expensive than what I used to pay to corporate music streaming services. That's not a bad thing because it means that artists and software developers get better compensated for their work, and that I get a lot more control and autonomy out of it.
• Only falls short in one way: it's harder to share music with friends and relatives, which used to be a breeze (tap the “share” button and send the link to whoever uses the same service as you).

The setup

Below is a description of the streaming services I built. The list of components may sound like a lot, and it is a lot, but once you set up the system and get used to it, it becomes fairly seamless to use.

Also, because every part of the system is open, replacing one component with something you like better is easy (using a different music server; buying your music from a different store; selecting a different mobile app to stream your music; etc).

Music server

This is where the music files are hosted and what the apps you use (whether on mobile or on your computer) will connect to in order to stream or download music from.

The solution I recommend is Navidrome. There are other good solutions out there (Jellyfin is the main one that comes to mind), but Navidrome came on top for me because it focuses exclusively on music (other solutions often support all media types, including films and tv shows) and because it can be installed and managed without technical skills. Navidrome is open-source and is very actively being developed, so we see improvements released on a regular basis.

Navidrome is free and open-source, and can be supported with monthly donations.

Host

The beautiful thing about a music server like Navidrome is that you can install it anywhere: on your computer, on a server at home, or on a remote server.

To me, it is important to have uninterrupted access to my music: I want to be able to listen to it at any time and from any device. This is why I opted for installing Navidrome using a professional hosting service. This way, I don't want to have to worry about whether my home's internet connection is good enough or if the server is up and running. Using a professional service is also more energy-efficient than having a single server running from home.

This has some privacy drawback: people working for the host can access my music if they really want to; but it's just music so I don't mind. Plus, it's still a significant step up in terms of privacy, given that corporate streaming services like Spotify collect an enormous amount of data and sell it to advertisers, like most hyper-capitalist internet companies.

PikaPods is the best solution I found for this. In just a few clicks, without any coding, you can install Navidrome on a server only you have access to. Every time Navidrome releases an update, PikaPods takes care of upgrading to the latest version. And if you want to get fancy, you can connect your own domain. My server is at https://music.raphmim.com.

PikaPods is cheap: I pay $4 per month. And it has a profit-sharing agreement with Navidrome, so part of what I pay goes to Navidrome developers!

Music stores

Buying actual music files (good'ol mp3!) hits two birds with one stone: it gets me the ownership over my music library, and it gets artists much higher compensation that from streaming services.

Any new song I discover and like, I buy from Bandcamp, which is a platform entirely dedicated to supporting artists. If I can't find a file on Bandcamp, I'll buy it from Qobuz's music store. Each track is anywhere between $1 and $2. Looking at my usage of Spotify over the past few years, I usually add to my library between 5 and 15 new songs per month. So with an average of 10 new songs per month at an average of $1.5 per song, that's just $15 per month.

The difference in artist compensation is drastic. If I stream a song 50 times on Spotify, the artist will get paid about $0.15. Yep, that's just 15 cents of a US dollar for 50 streams. And that's for songs I listen to a lot. Most songs I will never listen to 50 times in my entire life. By contrast, if I buy the file on Basecamp for $1, the artist or label gets about 0.80 cents. Pretty good deal.

Personal music library

It's technically possible to store all music files directly on the music server, but I find it much easier to instead store my library on my computer and once in a while, sync my library with the server. This way, I only have to do any work on the server once every few weeks.

So I simply have a library folder on my computer where I store all my music files. It is important to keep those files organized, or at least properly tagged. These tags (like artist , title , genre , album , etc) make it possible for an app to organize your files and make them easily findable. A well-tagged library is pretty important to make it easy and seamless to navigate your music. Tagging hundreds of songs or albums can be a time-consuming so apps like MusicBrainz Picard can automate the process. I donate $2 per month to MusicBrainz Picard.

And to sync your library from your computer with the music server, tools like FileZilla do a great job. FileZilla lets you connect to the server and upload your files through a relatively accessible user interface—no command-line work needed. To make things even smoother, I suggest buying a FileZilla Pro license, to be avoid having to re-upload the entire library each time and instead only uploading files that were recently added to the library or files of which tags were recently updated.

So once it's set up, managing your library only means 1) adding newly purchased files to your library folder 2) ensuring the new files are properly tagged and 3) syncing the library from your computer to the music server.

Clients

Now that we have a well-organized music library on our computer and that we regularly sync it with our music server, the only missing piece are the clients we'll need to actually listen to the music: mobile and desktop apps.

Because Navidrome is an open app that uses open standards (specifically the open Subsonic API), there are dozens of apps that can stream music from a Navidrome server. All you have to do is go through the list of compatible apps, test a few, and pick the one you like best.

As my Android client, I use Symfonium. It's a $5 one-time payment, but there is a trial period to see if it's a good fit for your need. Symfonium is great because it lets you completely customize the app's interface.

And for desktop, I use Strawberry, a super old-looking music player that's nonetheless very powerful and, once you get used to the outdated interface, does the job perfectly. It's free for Linux but costs $5 per month for Mac and Windows.

Discovering new music (optional)

One of the drawbacks of this personal music server outlined above is music discoverability. Streaming music services make it easy to listen to new artists, albums, or tracks, and this has been a key way for me to discover new music. I now discover music through two channels:

1. Internet radios: because all the apps and tools outlined above are built to be part of an open ecosystem, many of them include the option to stream internet radios directly from inside their apps. So you can add the radio stations you like to your Navidrome server, and if your client supports it, you'll have access to these radio stations directly from your mobile or desktop app. That's a great way of discovering new music.

2. Ethical streaming: internet radios are great but they don't solve the “I wanna check out this artist's work before buying it” problem. So I signed up for Qobuz's basic streaming plan ($10/month). Qobuz pays artists four times what Spotify pays per stream, so it's an acceptable option, and it lets me do everything expected from a normal music streaming plan. I only use it to discover new music, and not to build playlists or listen to my library, because I still prefer owning my music and controlling my streaming service.

Cost

So looking back at the whole streaming service, the cost for each component is:

• Hosting the server (PikaPods): $4/month
• Music server (Navidrome): included in the server host cost
• Purchasing music files (from Bandcamp or Qobuz): $1.5 per song on average. In my case, that's $15/month.
• Tagging music files (MusicBrainz Picard): $2/month (optional donation)
• Syncing with the server (FileZilla Pro): $50 for 5 years, so $0.83/month (strongly recommended)
• Mobile app (Symfonium): $5 one-time payment (optional: other mobile apps available for free)
• Desktop app (Strawberry): $5/month (optional: other desktop apps available for free)
• Discovering new music (Qobuz): $10/month (optional)

Total cost: $20 to $37/month

Getting started

If you're looking to build the system I described for your own usage, here is how to get started:

1. Create an account on PikaPods, add some money, and install Navidrome. If you have your own domain, you can even connect it (my music server is at https://music.raphmim.com!)

2. Create your library on your computer with music files you already own or by purchasing albums or songs on Bandcamp or Qobuz. If you want to transfer your library from a streaming service, it will take a bit of work but it's doable (you can use a service like Tune My Music to transfer your songs to YouTube Music, and then download from YouTube Music using yt-dlp; if you do that, consider buying some merch or albums from your favorite artists on Bandcamp).

3. Tag your library using an automatic tool like MusicBrainz Picard or manually using Strawberry.

4. Sync your library from your computer to the Navidrome server using FileZilla or a similar solution.

5. Install a mobile or desktop app that supports the Subsonic API and connect it to your Navidrome server.

6. Enjoy your music, free from capitalist exploitation and algorithmic manipulation!

Concluding thoughts

• It took me a lot of time to research, test, and tweak things to build this. Hopefully this guide saves you all this time and you can move straight to the 'enjoying music' part.
• There are still gaps in the system. For example, I haven't found an easy way of sharing my music and playlists. Navidrome lets us make playlists public, which means anyone can listen to them from a URL; but they can't easily add those playlists to personal music library. I'll continue think about this and research solutions, and update this guide if I find something.
• My hope is to iterate on this streaming service as new technologies become available and as this open ecosystem of apps and tools grows. I'm hoping this DYI streaming service becomes simple and accessible enough that it can be installed and managed by folks who aren't tech savvy.
• Let me know if you have some ideas on improving this streaming service! Anything to remove a component to make it simpler, or fill in a gap in the system, or use a more accessible or performant solution for any of the components.