Best Self Hosted Alternatives to MediaMonkey

Koel is a web-based personal audio streaming service designed for hosting and streaming your own music collection. It combines a modern web player with robust library management and supports multi-user setups.

Key Features

• Stream your personal music library via a fast, modern web interface
• Multi-user support with user accounts
• Favorites, playlists, and smart playlists
• Cross-device playback synchronization
• Library management: upload, delete, and edit track metadata and artwork
• Lossless audio support, equalizer settings, and visualizers
• Radio and podcast support
• Optional metadata enrichment integrations (e.g., MusicBrainz and Last.fm)

Use Cases

• Self-host a personal “Spotify-like” music server for your own library
• Provide a shared home or community music library with separate user accounts
• Stream music from a server while keeping a centralized, curated collection

Koel is well-suited for users who want a polished, developer-friendly music server with a familiar listening experience. It focuses on fast browsing and playback while keeping your library under your control.

Beets is a command-line music library management system focused on keeping large music collections consistently tagged and organized. It imports audio files, matches them to online databases (primarily MusicBrainz), and maintains a searchable local catalog.

Key Features

• Automatic tagging and metadata correction during import using MusicBrainz matching
• Local music library catalog with flexible querying and batch editing tools
• Plugin system to extend functionality
• Optional metadata enrichment such as album art, lyrics, genres, ReplayGain, tempo, and acoustic fingerprints (via plugins)
• Duplicate detection and missing-track checks (via plugins)
• Audio transcoding/conversion workflows (via plugins)
• Optional web-based browser/player interface to browse the library in a web browser (via plugins)

Use Cases

• Cleaning up and standardizing metadata for large music collections
• Automatically organizing imports and detecting duplicates or incomplete albums
• Building repeatable workflows for transcoding and library enrichment

Beets is a strong fit for users who prefer a scriptable, CLI-first approach to music collection management and want extensibility through plugins to tailor workflows to their needs.

musikcube is a cross-platform, terminal-based music player with a built-in audio engine, library scanner, and metadata indexer. It can also run as a lightweight streaming audio server, making it useful both as a local player and as a headless music hub.

Key Features

• Terminal UI (curses-style) designed for fast keyboard-driven navigation
• Local music library scanning and tag indexing backed by an on-disk database
• Built-in streaming server with remote API for clients and remote control
• Optional audio transcoding for streaming to clients
• Android companion app (musikdroid) for streaming and remote control
• Extensible architecture with a C++ core library (musikcore) and plugin support
• Designed to scale to very large libraries (hundreds of thousands of tracks)

Use Cases

• Run a keyboard-centric music player on desktop or over SSH
• Turn a Raspberry Pi connected to a DAC into a home stereo music hub
• Stream your local library to a phone on your LAN and use it as a remote

Limitations and Considerations

• The built-in server is not designed to be safely exposed directly to the public internet; it lacks native TLS and uses basic authentication mechanisms.

musikcube is a strong fit for users who want a fast terminal music experience and an integrated way to serve their library to other devices. It also provides a reusable C++ backend for developers building custom audio applications.

Black Candy is an open-source, self-hosted music streaming server that provides a web-based music library and player for personal use. It scans a mounted media directory, builds a browsable catalog from audio metadata, and serves audio to web and mobile clients.

Key Features

• Library indexing from a local media path (reads tags/metadata for artists, albums, tracks)
• Web player with playback queue, playlists and search
• Multi-user accounts and per-user preferences
• Mobile client support (Android APK / F‑Droid and iOS app available) and responsive web UI
• Docker images for easy deployment; supports environment variables for DB, media path and options
• Uses SQLite by default; optional PostgreSQL support for larger deployments
• Integrations: album/artist images via Discogs API; server-side audio handling via FFmpeg; image processing via libvips

Use Cases

• Personal cloud music server to stream your own music library across devices
• Small multi-user household or friend group music sharing with account separation
• Developers or hobbyists building features or integrations on top of a Rails-based streaming backend

Limitations and Considerations

• Default SQLite configuration may not scale well for very large libraries or many concurrent users; PostgreSQL is recommended for larger deployments
• Edge/master images are considered unstable and may contain breaking changes or data-loss risks; use stable releases for production
• Resource usage for large libraries (media scanning, transcoding with FFmpeg, image processing) can be significant and depends on host hardware

Black Candy is focused on delivering a simple, modern self-hosted music experience with mobile support and straightforward Docker deployment. It is suitable for personal and small-group use and can be scaled by using PostgreSQL and appropriate host resources.

Swing Music is a self-hosted music streaming server and web player for organizing and listening to your local audio files in a modern browser-based UI. It focuses on a clean library experience, discovery features, and fast playback without requiring a bundled desktop app.

Key Features

• Browser-based music player UI for listening from any device on your network
• Library management with metadata normalization and duplicate track handling
• Album versioning (for example Deluxe or Remaster) to group releases consistently
• Discovery helpers like related artists and related albums
• Folder-based browsing for libraries organized by directories
• Playlist management, collections, lyrics view, and listening statistics
• Daily mixes generated from listening activity
• Multi-user support and optional Last.fm scrobbling
• Silence detection support (requires FFmpeg)

Use Cases

• Build a private “bring your own music” streaming server for a home NAS library
• Provide a multi-user household music library with personal stats and playlists
• Stream your local music to a browser (and optionally an Android client)

Limitations and Considerations

• Some features (such as silence detection) require external dependencies like FFmpeg
• Platform support may vary by release (for example macOS availability may depend on version)

Swing Music is a strong option if you want a lightweight, good-looking web player for your own collection while keeping control of your files. It’s designed to be simple to run via binaries or containers and pleasant to use day to day.

LMS (Lightweight Music Server) is an open-source music streaming server that provides a browser-based interface to browse, search and stream audio collections. It exposes a Subsonic/OpenSubsonic-compatible API, supports rich metadata and includes a built-in recommendation engine.

Key Features

• Web-based user interface with a media player and keyboard shortcuts
• Subsonic/OpenSubsonic API compatibility for third-party clients
• Multi-valued tags and detailed artist/release metadata handling (MusicBrainz identifiers supported)
• Recommendation engine and "radio" mode that fills play queue with similar tracks
• Audio transcoding for compatibility and bandwidth optimization (uses ffmpeg)
• Multi-library support, playlists (m3u/m3u8), podcasts and lyrics (lrc/txt/embedded)
• ReplayGain support and tracking integration with ListenBrainz (scrobbling and loves)
• User management with multiple authentication backends and administrative settings
• Lightweight filesystem-based artist image and disc image discovery; configurable scanner

Use Cases

• Provide network-available playback for a home or small office music collection via browser or Subsonic clients
• Run a low-footprint music streaming service on modest hardware (Raspberry Pi or small server) with on-the-fly transcoding
• Power a small internet/local radio-style "autofill" stream using the radio/recommendation features

Limitations and Considerations

• The tag-based recommendation engine can noticeably slow the user interface on very large libraries or on low-end hardware; it can be disabled if performance is impacted
• Audio transcoding (for compatibility or bandwidth reduction) relies on ffmpeg and increases CPU usage during transcoding operations
• Some features depend on external services (MusicBrainz, ListenBrainz) for best metadata and scrobbling functionality; network access is required for those integrations

LMS is a feature-rich option for managing and streaming personal music collections with emphasis on tags, metadata fidelity and interoperability through Subsonic-compatible APIs. It is suited to users who want a compact, configurable server with transcoding and discovery features.

Metadata Remote is a lightweight web app for directly editing audio file tags on servers without a desktop environment. It focuses on fast, safe, file-first editing via a browser, without requiring a full music library management ecosystem.

Key Features

• Edit standard and extended audio metadata fields, including custom field create/delete
• Bulk apply changes to individual files or entire folders
• Smart metadata suggestions based on filenames, folder patterns, sibling files, and MusicBrainz lookups
• In-browser audio playback and real-time search/filtering
• File and folder renaming from the UI
• Album art upload, preview, delete, bulk apply, and automatic corruption repair
• Extensive undo/redo history for up to 1000 operations, including bulk changes
• Keyboard-first navigation and editing workflow

Use Cases

• Cleaning up and organizing music libraries on NAS or headless media servers before Jellyfin/Plex scans
• Bulk metadata normalization for large collections and mixed formats
• Ongoing tag and artwork maintenance from any device without transferring files

Limitations and Considerations

• Edit history is stored in memory and is cleared on container restart
• Designed for internal network use; deploy behind an authenticated TLS-enabled reverse proxy if remote access is required

Metadata Remote is well-suited for homelab and server setups where you want a focused, fast metadata editor with minimal operational overhead. It combines direct file editing with practical tooling for bulk changes and tag inference.

Roon is a music playback ecosystem centered around a “Core” server that manages your library and streams audio to one or more players (“Outputs”) across your network. It unifies local music files with supported streaming services and presents your library with rich metadata and discovery tools.

Key Features

• Centralized Core that manages library indexing, metadata, and multi-room playback
• Rich artist/album credits, biographies, reviews, lyrics, and interconnected browsing (“music discovery”)
• Multi-room audio to many endpoints (Roon Ready, AirPlay, Chromecast, and other supported devices)
• High-resolution playback with bit-perfect output where supported
• DSP features (device-dependent/plan-dependent) such as EQ, upsampling, convolution, and headphone crossfeed
• Remote control apps for desktop and mobile to browse and control playback
• Zone grouping, synchronized playback, and per-zone signal path inspection

Use Cases

• Run a home music server that streams local hi-res files to multiple rooms
• Combine local library with streaming catalogs and explore music via credits and recommendations
• Centralize playback control for a mixed ecosystem of network streamers, PCs, and mobile devices

Limitations and Considerations

• Not an open-source project; Core and clients are proprietary and require a subscription/license
• Streaming service integration depends on Roon’s supported providers and their regional availability

Roon is best suited for users who want a single, metadata-rich library experience and synchronized playback across many devices. Its Core-based architecture makes it a powerful hub for whole-home audio and high-quality playback when paired with compatible endpoints.