Self-Hosted Music Streaming Servers

Koel is a self-hosted music streaming server that allows users to stream personal audio collections from a private server to any web browser. It functions as a multi-user audio library, supporting independent user libraries and single sign-on authentication. The platform integrates cloud storage drivers to host and serve music files from third-party providers and utilizes a metadata aggregator to enhance local library data and track listening history via external services. It also includes a natural language interface for executing playback commands and navigating the music library. The system covers media library management, including playlist organization and the scanning of local audio collections. It manages data through relational metadata mapping and communicates between the backend and frontend via a structured API.

Beets is a command-line music library manager that automates the organization, standardization, and maintenance of digital audio collections. It functions as a relational database-backed system that identifies audio content through acoustic fingerprinting and retrieves accurate metadata from online databases to ensure consistent tagging and directory structures. The project distinguishes itself through an event-driven pipeline architecture and a modular plugin system, which allow users to intercept and customize library processing workflows. This extensibility enables the integration of external data sources and custom logic, supporting tasks ranging from automated metadata enrichment to complex file system operations defined by declarative path templates. Beyond its core management capabilities, the system includes tools for auditing library integrity by detecting duplicates and missing files. It also provides a built-in web server that enables remote browsing, searching, and streaming of the organized collection directly through a standard web browser, alongside integrated support for transcoding audio files between different formats.

MPD is a headless music server daemon that indexes audio libraries and streams music to local or remote outputs. It functions as a music library manager and network audio streamer, providing a remote audio control protocol that allows external clients to manage playback, playlists, and database queries. The system acts as a multiroom audio coordinator, synchronizing audio distribution across multiple networked clients and hardware devices. It supports a variety of remote management capabilities, including a dedicated control API and the ability to broadcast audio streams over network protocols. The server provides a comprehensive suite of audio playback and processing tools, including bit-perfect output, loudness normalization, and track cross-fading. Its content management capabilities cover metadata parsing, music library indexing, and persistent playlist management, while its hardware integration allows for flexible audio device routing and external mixer coordination. The project is implemented in C++.

Tauon is a cross-platform music player application and audio library manager designed for playing local audio files and streaming remote collections. It functions as a music metadata client that retrieves and updates detailed artist and track information from external databases to organize music collections. The application supports high fidelity audio playback of various codecs and tracker files, utilizing gapless transitions and cue sheets. It features visual music navigation through an image-based gallery for browsing albums and artists via cover art. The system provides tools for local music library management, including automated archive extraction, folder scanning, and the ability to track listening habits through play counts. Users can search music collections, build playlists, and manage album art. It also supports remote audio streaming from cloud servers.

Cider is a cross-platform music streaming application and desktop client designed for the Apple Music service. It serves as a dedicated media player for streaming high-quality audio and managing music libraries within a unified desktop interface. The application provides specialized controls for desktop music playback, enabling users to organize and access personal music collections across different operating systems.