Best Self Hosted Alternatives to Apple Music (library management features)

Lidarr is an automated music collection manager that monitors artists and releases, then searches, downloads, and imports albums into your library using Usenet and BitTorrent download clients. It is designed to keep music libraries up to date by tracking releases and managing quality and naming consistently.

Key Features

• Artist and album monitoring with automatic searching and downloading of new releases
• Integration with Usenet and BitTorrent indexers via Torznab/Newznab and common download clients
• Quality profiles and cutoffs to control preferred formats/bitrates and upgrade behavior
• Automatic importing, renaming, and organization with configurable naming schemes
• Metadata and artist information powered by MusicBrainz (with artwork from common metadata sources)
• Lists support (e.g., follow artists from external lists) and release/album discovery workflows
• Web UI with calendar/activity/history views, manual search, and queue management
• Notifications and automation integrations (e.g., webhooks and third-party notifiers)

Use Cases

• Keep a home music library automatically updated when monitored artists release new albums
• Standardize and clean up a large existing music library via consistent naming and importing rules
• Automate acquisition workflows by connecting indexers, download clients, and notifications

Limitations and Considerations

• Focused on album/artist-based collection management; users needing full playback/streaming should pair it with a music server/player.
• Relies on external metadata providers (notably MusicBrainz); unmatched/rare releases may require manual intervention.

Lidarr fits users who want an automated, repeatable pipeline for acquiring and maintaining a well-organized music library. With profiles, integrations, and metadata-driven matching, it reduces ongoing manual work while keeping collections current.