Self-hosted music streaming with Navidrome

Navidrome is a self-hosted, open source music server and streamer. It gives you freedom to listen to your music collection from any browser or mobile device I heard about in the Linux Matters podcast.

I tried it on my little Kubernetes cluster and here are impressions so far.

The following deployment is based on the Navidrome Installing with Docker:

Kubernetes deployment: navidrome.yaml

apiVersion: v1
kind: Namespace
metadata:
  name: navidrome
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolume
metadata:
  name: navidrome-pv-data
  namespace: navidrome
spec:
  storageClassName: manual
  capacity:
    storage: 1Gi
  accessModes:
    - ReadWriteOnce
  persistentVolumeReclaimPolicy: Retain
  hostPath:
    path: /home/k8s/navidrome/data
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolume
metadata:
  name: navidrome-pv-depot-music
  namespace: navidrome
spec:
  storageClassName: manual
  capacity:
    storage: 100Gi
  accessModes:
    - ReadWriteOnce
  persistentVolumeReclaimPolicy: Retain
  hostPath:
    path: /home/depot/audio/Music
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
metadata:
  name: navidrome-pvc-data
  namespace: navidrome
spec:
  storageClassName: manual
  volumeName: navidrome-pv-data
  accessModes:
    - ReadWriteOnce
  volumeMode: Filesystem
  resources:
    requests:
      storage: 1Gi
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
metadata:
  name: navidrome-pvc-depot-music
  namespace: navidrome
spec:
  storageClassName: manual
  volumeName: navidrome-pv-depot-music
  accessModes:
    - ReadWriteOnce
  volumeMode: Filesystem
  resources:
    requests:
      storage: 1Gi
---
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  labels:
    app: navidrome
  name: navidrome
  namespace: navidrome
spec:
  replicas: 1
  revisionHistoryLimit: 0
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: navidrome
  strategy:
    rollingUpdate:
      maxSurge: 0
      maxUnavailable: 1
    type: RollingUpdate
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: navidrome
    spec:
      containers:
        - image: deluan/navidrome:latest
          imagePullPolicy: Always
          name: navidrome
          env:
          - name: ND_BASEURL
            value: "https://music.ssl.uu.am/"
          - name: ND_LOGLEVEL
            value: "info"
          - name: ND_SCANSCHEDULE
            value: "1h"
          - name: ND_SESSIONTIMEOUT
            value: "24h"
          ports:
          - containerPort: 4533
          resources: {}
          stdin: true
          tty: true
          volumeMounts:
          - mountPath: /data
            name: navidrome-data
          - mountPath: /music
            name: navidrome-music
          securityContext:
            allowPrivilegeEscalation: false
            runAsUser: 1008
            runAsGroup: 1008
      restartPolicy: Always
      volumes:
      - name: navidrome-data
        persistentVolumeClaim:
          claimName: navidrome-pvc-data
      - name: navidrome-music
        persistentVolumeClaim:
          claimName: navidrome-pvc-depot-music
---
kind: Service
apiVersion: v1
metadata:
  name: navidrome-svc
  namespace: navidrome
spec:
  type: NodePort
  ports:
  - port: 4533
    nodePort: 30533
    targetPort: 4533
  selector:
    app: navidrome
---
apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  name: navidrome-ingress
  namespace: navidrome
  annotations:
    acme.cert-manager.io/http01-edit-in-place: "true"
    cert-manager.io/issue-temporary-certificate: "true"
    cert-manager.io/cluster-issuer: letsencrypt-prod
    nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/websocket-services: navidrome-svc
spec:
  ingressClassName: nginx
  rules:
    - host: music.ssl.uu.am
      http:
        paths:
          - path: /
            pathType: Prefix
            backend:
              service:
                name: navidrome-svc
                port:
                  number: 4533
  tls:
    - secretName: tls-secret
      hosts:
        - music.ssl.uu.am

To use a configuration file, create a navidrome.toml config file in the /data folder and set the option ND_CONFIGFILE=/data/navidrome.toml. So far this has not seemed to be necessary.

Before running this deployment, create the required directory and local user, get its user id (1008) and plug it above:

# useradd navidrome
# mkdir /home/k8s/navidrome
# chown navidrome.navidrome /home/k8s/navidrome
# ls -lan /home/k8s/navidrome/
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 1 1008 1008   0 Oct 26 08:53 .
drwxr-xr-x 1    0    0 372 Oct 26 08:53 ..

Once everything is ready, apply the deployment and give it a few minutes to start the pods and get the SSL certificated ready:

$ kubectl apply -f navidrome.yaml
namespace/navidrome created
persistentvolume/navidrome-pv-data created
persistentvolume/navidrome-pv-depot-music created
persistentvolumeclaim/navidrome-pvc-data created
persistentvolumeclaim/navidrome-pvc-depot-music created
deployment.apps/navidrome created
service/navidrome-svc created
ingress.networking.k8s.io/navidrome-ingress created

After a couple of minutes the server's web interface is at https://music.ssl.uu.am/ and one can start by creating an admin user, then (optionally) more users (some of which can be admins too). In the meantime, the server will detect and scan music files and, as they are found, make them available for playback. The web player works doesn't look like much but works very nicely:

This web player alone already satisfy my first need, which is to listen to music while working, i.e. from a computer. For the use case of listening to music while on the go (i.e. from a phone), there are a few Subsonic-compatible Android apps available directly from Google Play:

GoSONIC	Symfonium	Ultrasonic

The jury is still out, and not in a hurry to come back, as to which of these players will win me over. Symfonium seems to be the only one that require payment, which likely won't help.

News

After a couple of months, I find myself always going back to GoSONIC. The main reason for this choice is just how easy, fast and reliable it is to start playing the most recently played playlist. This is essentially what I use every music player for, so this matters most for me.