Ever got frustrated by that Spotify ad that pops up every now and then!. Me too and there is away out.

Take your all music and listen to them ad free wherever you go with this little beast called Navidrome. It’s an opensource player that is loaded with all features that you will ever need. Never spend an other dime for stupid subscriptions.

The only requirement is that you must have a server of some sort either online or the local home server. Sounds complicated?. With the right tools you can be up running within minutes. So let’s set this up.

Docker will be required for this. Although you can go bare metal and install it from the source but docker makes things way easier.

Firstly install docker and setup docker compose

Make a folder for docker app, cd into it and make folder for Navidrome’s root

vim docker/navidrome/docker-compose.yml

Paste the below content to the config, change the music storage dir if necessary.

version: "3"
services:
  navidrome:
    image: deluan/navidrome:latest
      #user: 1000:1000 # should be owner of volumes
    ports:
      - "4533:4533"
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      # Optional: put your config options customization here. Examples:
      ND_SCANSCHEDULE: 1h
      ND_LOGLEVEL: info  
      ND_SESSIONTIMEOUT: 24h
      ND_BASEURL: ""
    volumes:
      - "/home/ubuntu/docker/navidrome/data:/data"
      - "/home/ubuntu/music:/music:ro"

Run this command from navidrome’s root folder so docker can pull the latest image and set it up. Give a couple of minutes.

sudo docker-compose up -d

Once it is done , run the following command to list the running containers.

sudo docker container ls

If it’s up and healthy navigate to the ip:port you have given in config.

ProTip: If you have an android device there is an app called Substreamer which can directly stream from your server. Give it a go.

Even though I prefer playing my music locally (I will share my local streaming setup soon ) this is definitely a way to go if you are on the move and don’t have personal devices with you.

Following this post I’ll be making a series on interesting self-hosted apps like this. Stay tuned. Cheers!