Minstrel

A self-hosted music server that thinks for you. Smart shuffle, contextual likes, ListenBrainz-aware radio, and Lidarr automation — server-side, so every client (web, mobile, Subsonic third-party) gets the same intelligence.

State and intelligence belong on the server, not the client.

Highlights

• OpenSubsonic-compatible. Existing Subsonic clients (DSub, Symfonium, play:Sub, etc.) connect with no special configuration.
• Server-side smart shuffle. Track-similarity vectors, dual-like model (general + contextual), and session memory keep mixes coherent across devices.
• ListenBrainz radio. Session-aware "more like this" pulls from ListenBrainz similarity data, not a static genre tag.
• Lidarr integration. Triggered scans, request-driven album imports, and a quarantine flow when something doesn't fit — against a Lidarr instance you run and configure. Optional, and off until you supply a URL and API key.
• Built-in web SPA. Full-feature library, search, queue, playlists, and admin — no separate frontend container to deploy.
• Native Android client, shipped with the server. The signed APK is bundled into every image and attached to each release — sideload it once, then the app self-updates straight from your own server (no app store, no separate download to track).

Scope and responsible use

Minstrel serves music you already have. It is a library server: it indexes files on disk you point it at, and streams them to your own clients. It does not source, search for, or acquire content, and it has no opinion about where your files came from.

Concretely, Minstrel ships no indexers, no trackers, no torrent / Usenet / NZB client, and no DRM circumvention of any kind. There is nothing to point at a content source because Minstrel has no such subsystem.

The Lidarr integration is optional and inert until you configure it. You supply the URL and API key of a Lidarr instance you are already running; Minstrel then calls that instance's API to trigger scans, submit album requests, and reconcile imports. Minstrel neither bundles nor installs Lidarr, and configures no indexers on your behalf — Lidarr ships with none either, and any it uses are ones you added yourself.

What you put in your library, and what sources you configure in your own Lidarr, are your responsibility. Copyright law applies to your collection the same way it applies to any other software that plays a file. Please respect it, and respect the terms of any service you connect.

Minstrel is not affiliated with or endorsed by Lidarr, ListenBrainz, MusicBrainz, or Subsonic.

Quickstart

# compose.yaml
services:
  minstrel:
    image: git.fabledsword.com/bvandeusen/minstrel:latest
    ports: ['4533:4533']
    volumes:
      # Your music library. Point ./music at wherever your audio files
      # live. Mounted read-only — Minstrel never writes to your library.
      - ./music:/music:ro
      # Generated data: playlist cover collages, artist art, caches.
      # The path must match MINSTREL_STORAGE_DATA_DIR, which the image
      # sets to /app/data — keep this mount on /app/data or your cache
      # won't survive a container recreate.
      - minstrel-data:/app/data
    environment:
      MINSTREL_DATABASE_URL: postgres://minstrel:minstrel@db:5432/minstrel?sslmode=disable
      # Colon-separated library roots to scan; must match the container
      # path of the read-only music mount above (/music here).
      MINSTREL_LIBRARY_SCAN_PATHS: /music
    depends_on: [db]

  db:
    image: postgres:17
    environment:
      POSTGRES_USER: minstrel
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: minstrel
      POSTGRES_DB: minstrel
    # Postgres data dir — users, likes, play history, sessions, settings.
    # The one volume you must never lose; back it up with pg_dump.
    volumes: [pgdata:/var/lib/postgresql/data]

volumes:
  minstrel-data:
  pgdata:

docker compose up -d

First run

With the stack up, a handful of in-app steps get you to a working library. Use your own host in place of localhost if you're reaching the server over a LAN/VPN address (plain http:// is fine — no TLS required).

1. Create your admin account. Visit http://localhost:4533/register. The first account on a fresh instance is automatically the administrator; later users join through the same form or an invite token (step 5).

2. Let the first library scan finish. scan_on_startup is on by default, so Minstrel walks your mounted library on boot and imports artists, albums, and tracks — no button to press. Watch progress (and re-scan any time) on the Admin page (/admin); the scan runs in stages and is incremental, so later restarts only pick up what changed.

3. (Optional) Name the instance and wire up integrations. In admin Settings → Integrations (/admin/integrations), add a ListenBrainz token (scrobbling + similarity radio) and/or a Lidarr URL + API key (the request flow). These live in the UI and apply without a restart; the display name can also be set via MINSTREL_BRANDING_APP_NAME.

4. Install the Android app. Open Settings (/settings) and use the Install the Android app card to download the APK that ships inside this server image, then sign in with the same account. From then on the app self-updates straight from your server.

5. Invite the rest of the household. From admin Users (/admin/users), generate an invite token (or enable open registration). Each person gets their own account, so likes, play history, and recommendations stay per-user.

For the full configuration surface, see config.example.yaml.

Configuration

Most operators only need the env vars in the quickstart above. A few extras worth knowing:

• MINSTREL_BRANDING_APP_NAME — rename the instance ("Family Jukebox", "Office Music"). Surfaces in the header, browser tab, and OG share previews.
• MINSTREL_STORAGE_DATA_DIR — where generated artefacts (playlist cover collages, artist art, caches) are written. The container image sets this to /app/data, which is why the quickstart mounts the minstrel-data volume there.
• MINSTREL_LIBRARY_SCAN_PATHS — colon-separated list of music library roots to scan. Supports multiple roots (/music:/podcasts).

ListenBrainz integration (per-user scrobble + similarity tokens) and Lidarr integration (URL + API key) are configured through the admin Settings UI rather than env vars or yaml — per Minstrel's "config in UI" rule, integration settings live where operators can edit them without restarting.

Most operational keys have a MINSTREL_<SECTION>_<FIELD> env override. Recommendation and events tuning are yaml-only. See config.example.yaml for the authoritative surface.

Updating

Image tags (git.fabledsword.com/bvandeusen/minstrel:<tag>):

• :latest — the newest blessed image. Moves on every main push and every release. Recommended for most operators.
• :vYYYY.MM.DD.HHMM — immutable release tags, never moved or deleted. Pin one for a deployment you don't want changing under you. The tag is the build's own version name with a v in front, derived from the tagged commit's UTC timestamp, so two releases can never collide and a re-cut is simply a new tag.
• :main — the rolling post-merge tip. Same image as :latest at push time; choose it if you want to track main explicitly rather than the release line.
• :dev — the rolling test channel, rebuilt on every push to dev and carrying its own freshly-built Android APK. Run this when you want to try something before it ships. It moves constantly, has no per-commit tag to pin, and its only recovery path is forward — if a :dev image is broken, the fix is the next push, not a rollback.

Every :latest, :vYYYY.MM.DD.HHMM and :dev bundles a signed Android APK, so the in-app update channel is always live. All of them are signed with the same key, so a phone can move between the stable and dev channels without uninstalling — point it at a :dev server and the in-app updater offers that channel's build.

The app reports which channel it is on alongside its version, and decides whether an update is available using the build's ordering key rather than its displayed name — the same value Android installs by, so an offer it makes is one the platform will accept.

Database migrations run automatically at startup; rollbacks require restoring a Postgres dump.

Releases before 2026-09-10 use the older per-day :vYYYY.MM.DD shape. Those tags still exist and still work — they are simply not extended.

Specs

Authoritative scope lives under docs/:

• Server spec — current implementation focus.
• Client spec — Flutter companion app.

Development

Two concurrent dev processes:

1. Backend: docker compose up — Postgres + Minstrel on :4533.
2. Frontend: cd web && npm install && npm run dev — Vite dev server on :5173 with HMR. The Vite server proxies /api/* and /rest/* to :4533 so session cookies work.

Testing

• Unit + race (no DB): make test-short.
• Full suite incl. integration tests: make test-integration. This runs against a dedicated minstrel_test database so a test run never truncates your dev minstrel data (admin user, library, likes). It brings up the compose Postgres and creates the test DB if missing.
• CI runs both: a fast go test -short -race gate plus an integration job with its own ephemeral Postgres (.gitea/workflows/test-go.yml).

Production build

docker build -t minstrel . runs the SvelteKit build inside a node stage, copies the output into the golang stage, and //go:embeds it into the final binary. The container serves the SPA from / alongside the API surfaces; no separate static-file server is required.

Branches

• Day-to-day work happens on dev (or feature branches merged into dev).
• main is protected — changes land via PR from dev.
• Releases are cut by tagging v* off main; the release workflow builds and pushes the container image to the Gitea registry.

Task and milestone tracking: Fable (Minstrel project, id 12).

License

See LICENSE.