Navidrome

Navidrome addresses the desire for personal music streaming without the compromises of commercial services where monthly subscription costs accumulate indefinitely, library availability depends on licensing agreements that remove albums without notice, and audio quality gets compressed to reduce bandwidth costs rather than preserve the fidelity that listeners who invested in high-quality recordings expect. By self-hosting music streaming, users maintain permanent access to purchased music, ripped CDs, and downloaded content regardless of licensing changes, service discontinuations, or policy modifications that affect commercial platforms.

Common Use Cases

Music collectors stream personal libraries of purchased albums, ripped CDs, and curated downloads from anywhere rather than being limited to listening at home where physical media or local files reside, accessing decades of collected music from work, during travel, or at friends' homes without carrying devices loaded with large music libraries. Audiophiles stream high-quality FLAC and lossless files that commercial streaming services don't offer at comparable quality levels, preserving the audio fidelity that premium recordings provide while gaining the convenience of streaming access without quality compromises from lossy compression or loudness normalisation that streaming services apply. Families share music servers where parents and children maintain separate playlists and listening histories while drawing from a common library, avoiding the multiple subscription costs that commercial services require for family plans while keeping everyone's preferences organised independently. DJs and music professionals organise working libraries of tracks organised for performance, accessing collections from venue sound systems, practice spaces, or mobile setups without transporting drives full of music files to each location. Podcast listeners organise downloaded episodes alongside music, using Navidrome's playlist features to queue content for commutes or workouts without relying on podcast apps that may discontinue, change features, or lose downloaded content during updates. International users access personal libraries regardless of geographic licensing restrictions that make content unavailable on streaming services in certain regions, maintaining consistent access to music collections during travel or relocation.

Key Features

• Web-based music player interface
• Subsonic API for mobile app compatibility
• Support for MP3, FLAC, AAC, OGG, OPUS formats
• On-the-fly transcoding for bandwidth adaptation
• Automatic metadata extraction and organisation
• Album art display and management
• Playlist creation and sharing
• Multi-user support with separate libraries
• Smart playlists based on criteria
• Scrobbling to Last.fm and ListenBrainz
• ReplayGain support for volume normalisation
• Lyrics display
• Star ratings and favourites
• Recently played and added views
• Genre and year browsing

Why deploy Navidrome on Hostinger VPS

Deploying Navidrome on Hostinger VPS provides music streaming from data centre infrastructure with reliable uptime and bandwidth that home servers behind residential internet connections cannot match, ensuring music remains accessible even when home networks experience outages, ISP maintenance, or the dynamic IP changes that disrupt self-hosted services on residential connections. Unlike cloud music services that analyse listening habits for advertising profiles and recommendation algorithms that prioritise promoted content over user preferences, self-hosted Navidrome keeps listening history completely private without any data transmission to third parties. The VPS deployment enables streaming to multiple devices simultaneously without the upload bandwidth limitations that residential connections impose when family members stream from different locations concurrently. Self-hosting eliminates the perpetual subscription costs of commercial music services that accumulate to significant amounts over years while providing inferior access to personal libraries compared to streaming services' rotating catalogues. For users with large music collections accumulated over decades of purchases and curation, VPS storage provides scalable capacity that grows with collections without the device storage constraints that limit local playback options. The Subsonic API compatibility means investment in mobile apps carries forward regardless of server changes, avoiding the lock-in that proprietary streaming services create when accumulated playlists and listening history become inaccessible after cancellation.