Raspberry Pi Music Server

What You'll Build

Spotify rents you music: stop paying and your library disappears. This project flips that around. You'll turn a Raspberry Pi into a private music-streaming server that plays your own music files to your phone, laptop, and car — anywhere in the world — with no subscription and no ads.

We'll use Navidrome, a free, lightweight music server that runs happily on a Pi. It gives you:

• A clean web player (looks and feels like a streaming service)
• Albums, artists, playlists, favourites, "recently played", and smart playlists
• Support for dozens of phone apps with offline downloads (via the Subsonic API)
• On-the-fly compression so streaming over mobile data doesn't eat your plan
• Multiple user accounts for family members

How it fits together:

  Music files on USB drive
            │
            ▼
  ┌─────────────────────────┐
  │ Raspberry Pi            │
  │  └─ Docker              │
  │      └─ Navidrome :4533 │
  └─────────────────────────┘
            │  (home Wi-Fi, or Tailscale when you're away)
            ▼
  Phone app · Web browser · Desktop player

Time needed: about 1–2 hours, plus however long it takes to copy your music. Difficulty: Medium — you'll use the terminal, but every command is given.

Why Navidrome? (vs Jellyfin and Plex)

If you only want music, Navidrome is the lightest and simplest choice. If you also want movies, Jellyfin is the better fit.

What You Need

• Raspberry Pi 4 (2 GB+) or Raspberry Pi 5. A Pi 3B+ works for one or two listeners, but it's slow at scanning big libraries.
• Official power supply for your model. Cheap chargers cause random crashes and corrupted SD cards.
• microSD card, 32 GB or larger (A1/A2-rated), for the operating system.
• USB SSD or hard drive for your music (a 1 TB drive holds roughly 25,000 FLAC songs or 200,000 MP3s). If you use a spinning hard drive, give it its own power (powered USB hub or a drive with its own adapter).
• Ethernet cable (recommended). Wi-Fi works, but wired is faster and more reliable for a server.
• Your music files — MP3, FLAC, AAC/M4A, OGG, and Opus are all supported.
• A computer to set things up from. Basic terminal comfort helps: see Your First Commands.

The Build

Follow the steps in order. Every command is run on the Pi over SSH unless it says otherwise.

Step 1: Flash Raspberry Pi OS Lite

"Lite" means no desktop — perfect for a server, since it saves memory for Navidrome.

1. On your computer, download and open Raspberry Pi Imager.
2. Choose Device: your Pi model.
3. Choose OS: Raspberry Pi OS (other) → Raspberry Pi OS Lite (64-bit).
4. Choose Storage: your microSD card.
5. When asked to apply OS customisation, choose Edit Settings and set:
   • Hostname: musicpi
   • A username and a strong password (we'll assume the username pi below — use yours)
   • Wi-Fi details (only if you can't use Ethernet)
   • Your time zone
   • Services tab: Enable SSH with password authentication
6. Write the card, put it in the Pi, plug in Ethernet and the music drive, then power on. Give it 2 minutes for the first boot.

Step 2: Connect Over SSH and Update

From your computer's terminal (Windows: PowerShell):

# Connect to the Pi (replace "pi" with the username you chose)
ssh pi@musicpi.local

# Once logged in, bring everything up to date
sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade -y

# Reboot to load any new kernel, then reconnect after ~1 minute
sudo reboot

Step 3: Set Up the Music Drive

We want the USB drive to appear at the same folder, /mnt/music, every time the Pi boots.

3a. Find the drive

lsblk -f
# Look for your USB drive — usually "sda" with a partition "sda1".
# The FSTYPE column shows the format (ext4, exfat, ntfs …).

3b. (Optional) Format it as ext4

# Double-check the name with lsblk first! Formatting the wrong disk destroys it.
sudo mkfs.ext4 -L music /dev/sda1

3c. Mount it permanently

# Create the folder the drive will appear in
sudo mkdir -p /mnt/music

# Get the drive's unique ID (UUID) — copy the long UUID="…" value for sda1
sudo blkid /dev/sda1

# Open the file that lists drives to mount at boot
sudo nano /etc/fstab

Add this line at the bottom (paste your UUID and change ext4 to exfat or ntfs3 if you didn't format):

UUID=your-uuid-here  /mnt/music  ext4  defaults,nofail  0  2

nofail means the Pi still boots if the drive is unplugged. Save with Ctrl+O, Enter, then exit with Ctrl+X.

# Reload the list and mount everything in it
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo mount -a

# Confirm it worked — you should see the drive's size
df -h /mnt/music

# ext4 only: give your user ownership so you can copy music in
sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /mnt/music

Step 4: Install Docker

Docker runs Navidrome in a self-contained "container", which makes installing, updating, and removing it a one-line job.

# Docker's official install script (works on Raspberry Pi OS)
curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com | sh

# Let your user run docker without typing sudo every time
sudo usermod -aG docker $USER

# Log out and back in so the group change takes effect
exit
ssh pi@musicpi.local

# Test — should print "Hello from Docker!"
docker run --rm hello-world

Step 5: Create the Navidrome Configuration

# A home for Navidrome's settings and database
mkdir -p ~/navidrome/data
cd ~/navidrome

# Find your user and group ID numbers (usually 1000 and 1000)
id -u
id -g

# Create the configuration file
nano compose.yaml

Paste this in (change 1000:1000 if id printed different numbers):

services:
  navidrome:
    image: deluan/navidrome:latest   # official image, supports Pi (arm64)
    container_name: navidrome
    user: "1000:1000"                # run as your user, not root
    ports:
      - "4533:4533"                  # web player on port 4533
    restart: unless-stopped          # start again automatically after a reboot
    environment:
      ND_SCANSCHEDULE: "1h"          # look for new music every hour
      ND_LOGLEVEL: "info"
      ND_SESSIONTIMEOUT: "168h"      # stay logged in for a week
      ND_ENABLESHARING: "true"       # allow share links for songs/albums
    volumes:
      - "./data:/data"               # database + settings (back this up!)
      - "/mnt/music:/music:ro"       # your music, read-only so it can't be changed

Save and exit (Ctrl+O, Enter, Ctrl+X).

Step 6: Start Navidrome and Create Your Account

# Start Navidrome in the background (-d = detached)
docker compose up -d

# Check it's running — STATUS should say "Up"
docker compose ps

# Watch the logs as it scans your music (Ctrl+C to stop watching)
docker compose logs -f

1. On any device on your home network, open http://musicpi.local:4533
2. The first visit asks you to create the admin user. Pick a strong password — this account can manage everything.
3. You'll land in the web player. If your drive already had music on it, albums start appearing as the scan runs.
4. For family members: open the admin Settings → Users menu and click + Create, and give each person their own login so they get their own playlists and history.

Step 7: Add and Organise Your Music

Folder layout

Navidrome reads the tags inside each file (artist, album, track number), so good tags matter more than folder names. A tidy layout still helps you:

/mnt/music/
├── Artist Name/
│   └── Album Name (Year)/
│       ├── 01 - First Song.flac
│       ├── 02 - Second Song.flac
│       └── cover.jpg          ← album art is picked up automatically
└── Another Artist/
    └── …

Copying music from your computer

# Run this on YOUR COMPUTER (macOS/Linux), not the Pi.
# rsync copies only new/changed files, so re-running it is fast.
rsync -avh --progress ~/Music/ pi@musicpi.local:/mnt/music/

On Windows, use WinSCP (drag and drop over SSH), or unplug the drive and copy to it directly.

Fixing messy tags

MusicBrainz Picard (free, on Windows, macOS, and Linux) listens to each file's audio fingerprint, looks it up in a huge online database, and fixes titles, track numbers, and album art automatically. Run it on your collection before copying it to the Pi.

Where to get music you own

• Rip your CDs — Sound Juicer or Asunder on Linux, fre:ac or Exact Audio Copy on Windows. Rip to FLAC to keep full quality.
• Buy DRM-free downloads — Bandcamp (artists get a large share), Qobuz, and 7digital sell files you keep forever.
• Old iTunes purchases — songs bought since 2009 are DRM-free AAC files and work as-is.

New music appears within the hour (the scan schedule). To scan right away, open the web player, click the activity icon in the top bar, and start a quick scan. (Or restart the container: docker compose restart.)

Step 8: Install the Phone and Desktop Apps

Navidrome speaks the Subsonic protocol, so any Subsonic-compatible app works. Good picks:

In any of these apps, add a server with:

• Server address: http://musicpi.local:4533 (or the Pi's IP, e.g. http://192.168.1.50:4533)
• Username / password: your Navidrome login

At this point everything works at home. The next step makes it work everywhere.

Step 9: Listen From Anywhere (Safely) With Tailscale

Tailscale creates a private, encrypted network between your own devices. Your phone can reach the Pi from anywhere, but the Pi is not exposed to the public internet. It's free for personal use.

# On the Pi: install Tailscale
curl -fsSL https://tailscale.com/install.sh | sh

# Connect the Pi to your Tailscale account — open the link it prints and log in
sudo tailscale up

# Show the Pi's Tailscale address (starts with 100.)
tailscale ip -4

1. Install the Tailscale app on your phone and log in with the same account.
2. In your music app, change the server address to http://musicpi:4533 (Tailscale's MagicDNS name) or http://100.x.y.z:4533.
3. Turn off Wi-Fi on your phone and hit play. If music plays over mobile data, you're done.

Step 10: Save Mobile Data With Transcoding

A FLAC song can be 30–40 MB. Navidrome can shrink songs on the fly to a much smaller format while streaming, without touching your originals. The Docker image already includes the ffmpeg converter it needs.

1. Most apps have a "max bitrate on mobile data" setting — set it to 128 or 160 kbps. The app asks Navidrome to transcode, and it does.
2. Navidrome comes with MP3 and Opus transcoding already set up. Opus gives the best quality per MB. (Want to edit the formats yourself? Add ND_ENABLETRANSCODINGCONFIG: "true" to the environment list, restart, and a Transcodings page appears in Settings.)
3. For Wi-Fi at home, leave it at "original" for full quality.

Getting the "Spotify Experience"

Keeping It Running

Update Navidrome

cd ~/navidrome
docker compose pull      # download the newest version
docker compose up -d     # restart on the new version (your data is kept)
docker image prune -f    # delete the old version to free space

Update the Pi itself (monthly)

sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade -y

Back up the important parts

Your music is the big one — keep a second copy on another drive or computer. Navidrome's own data (users, playlists, play counts) is tiny and lives in ~/navidrome/data:

# Run on your computer: copies the Pi's Navidrome data to a local backup folder
rsync -avh pi@musicpi.local:~/navidrome/data/ ~/Backups/navidrome-data/

Troubleshooting

• Web page won't load — Run docker compose ps in ~/navidrome. If it isn't "Up", check docker compose logs for the error (usually a typo in compose.yaml).
• Library is empty — Check that the files are really there: ls /mnt/music. If /mnt/music is empty, the drive didn't mount — run sudo mount -a and re-check /etc/fstab.
• "permission denied" in the logs — The user: numbers in compose.yaml must match the owner of the files. Fix with sudo chown -R 1000:1000 /mnt/music ~/navidrome/data.
• Songs show as "Unknown Artist" — The files are missing tags. Fix them with MusicBrainz Picard, then rescan.
• Pi reboots randomly or the drive disconnects — Almost always power. Run vcgencmd get_throttled; anything other than throttled=0x0 means under-voltage. Use the official PSU and a powered hub for hard drives.
• Streaming stutters away from home — Lower the mobile bitrate in your app (Step 10), and use Ethernet on the Pi.

What's Next?

• Harden the Pi like a real server (SSH keys, firewall, fail2ban) →
• Monitor disk space and logs →
• Windows apps and their Linux alternatives →