Open-source Qobuz alternatives

Jellyfin is a media system built as free software, giving you control over how your media is managed and streamed. A dedicated server provides movies, shows and other media to end-user devices through multiple client apps. This repository contains the backend server and API, written in C# on .NET, and it is released under the GPL-2.0 license.

It positions itself against proprietary media servers, namely Emby and Plex. It descends from the Emby 3.5.2 release and was ported to the .NET platform for full cross-platform support. The team states there are no premium licenses, paid features or hidden agendas.

Documentation includes a downloads page, an installation guide and a quick start guide, and the server can also be built from source. Translation is handled through a Weblate instance and feature ideas go to a request hub. Jellyfin suits households and enthusiasts who want to host their own media library instead of relying on a commercial media service.

Spotube is an extensible, open-source music streaming app for desktop and mobile, written in Dart with Flutter. Rather than being tied to one service, it relies on plugins that supply music metadata, playlists and audio sources, so community-made or custom plugins can add support for different platforms. GitHub lists the license as 'Other'.

The README highlights freely downloadable tracks with tagged metadata, time-synced lyrics regardless of plugin support, a small installation size, low data usage and native performance. Playback control is done locally rather than on a server, and the project states it has no telemetry, diagnostics or user data collection.

Installers and packages cover Windows, macOS, Android, Linux through Flatpak, Debian, Arch, Fedora and openSUSE packages, and Homebrew, while iOS uses an IPA file that needs sideloading. New versions usually arrive every three to four months. It suits listeners who want a lightweight, privacy-minded music client they can extend with plugins.

Navidrome is an open-source music server written in Go. You point it at your own folder of audio files and it serves the collection through a web player and through mobile apps, much like a personal streaming service. It is compatible with the Subsonic API family, so many existing Subsonic and OpenSubsonic client apps can connect to it.

The project says it handles very large music collections and can stream almost any audio format. It is light enough to run on small hardware such as a Raspberry Pi, and its topics also mention Airsonic and Madsonic, older servers it can stand in for. A live demo is available so you can try the interface first, and the maintainers recommend using tagged releases rather than the unstable master branch.

Navidrome is GPL-3.0 licensed and installed following the instructions on its website. For people who prefer not to run a server, PikaPods has partnered with the project to offer an officially supported cloud-hosted option, with part of the revenue helping fund development. It appeals to music collectors who want to keep control of their libraries instead of relying on a commercial service.

Koel is a free, open-source music streaming server that turns a personal music collection into a web-based player. It is built on Laravel and Vue, scans a music library and serves it back through a modern interface that works in any browser.

Beyond playback, Koel supports playlists and smart playlists, scrobbling, podcasts and radio, integrations with Last.fm, Spotify and MusicBrainz, and an AI assistant that responds to natural-language commands. Koel Player is the official mobile app for iOS and Android, which avoids the limits of the mobile web version.

The core is MIT licensed and designed to be self-hosted, with install and upgrade guides in the official documentation. A premium edition, Koel Plus, adds multi-user libraries, collaboration, SSO, cloud storage drivers, custom themes and white-labeling for organizations that want to run their own streaming service. The author is supported through sponsors on OpenCollective and GitHub.

Strawberry is a music player and music collection organizer, forked from Clementine in 2018. It is written in C++ using the Qt framework and is designed for audiophiles and music collectors who care about how their library is organized and played.

Repository topics point to its focus on high-quality playback, including bit-perfect output, ALSA on Linux and formats such as FLAC and WavPack, as well as MusicBrainz and Last.fm integration. The project maintains a website, wiki, forum, translation project on Crowdin, and builds through the openSUSE Build Service and Ubuntu PPAs.

Strawberry is free software released under the GPL. Feature requests are not accepted on GitHub and are handled on the forum, and Flatpak packages are not maintained by the project. Development is supported through sponsorship and donations via Patreon, GitHub, Ko-fi and PayPal.

Ampache is a web-based audio and video streaming application and file manager that lets you reach your music and videos from almost any internet-enabled device. It presents an already organized collection in a useful way rather than reorganizing your files.

Its usefulness depends on extracting correct metadata from embedded tags or file names, and it assumes you manage your files yourself. It runs on web servers including Apache, lighttpd, nginx and IIS, with most testing on Apache, and a documented API supports clients. The development branch, Ampache 8, adds an opt-in Jellyfin-compatible API so third-party clients such as Finamp and Symfonium can browse and stream a library.

The project recommends the stable release 7 branch for most users, notes that the develop branch can be unstable and needs PHP 8.5 or later, and provides a Docker image, wiki and admin and user guides. Ampache is written in PHP and licensed under AGPL-3.0.

Gonic is a free-software music streaming server that implements the Subsonic server API, so it works with the many apps that speak that protocol. It is written in Go, which keeps it lightweight enough for devices such as a Raspberry Pi, and ARM images are provided. It is licensed under GPL-3.0.

You can browse your collection by folder, which keeps your directory tree intact, or by tags read with taglib for formats including mp3, opus, flac, ape, m4a and wav. It supports on-the-fly audio transcoding with caching through ffmpeg, the Subsonic jukebox mode for gapless server-side playback, podcasts, multiple users with their own playlists and preferences, and scrobbling to last.fm and ListenBrainz. Artist biographies and similar artists come from the last.fm API.

A web interface handles configuration, such as connecting last.fm, managing users and starting library scans. The project lists tested clients including DSub, Symfonium, Amperfy, Tempus, Strawberry and Ultrasonic. Installation is possible from source, with Docker or with systemd, and the default login is admin, which you should change after the first sign-in.