How to stream your own music with Navidrome

Streams your music collection to any device, including Subsonic phone apps. Cresdock runs it on a server you own, from a catalogue, with no Docker and no reverse proxy to configure.

What Cresdock does for you with Navidrome

• Its configuration is written before the container ever starts — including the web address it lives at, so Navidrome generates correct links from the first page load instead of half-working behind a prefix.

• Given its own web address, with its own login seeded in advance. Navidrome can't live under a shared path, and apps like this are reached by clients that don't carry a browser session — so it gets a real password rather than being left open.

• Your Downloads and Media folders are already mounted, and they are the SAME folders your other apps see — so files land where the rest of your setup expects them, with no path mapping to work out.

• If your library lives on cloud storage rather than the server's own disk, this app can read it from there.

• Reachable at your own panel address the moment it's installed, behind your panel login.

• The same account also signs in to Subsonic-compatible phone apps (Symfonium, DSub, play:Sub and others) — one login, every client.

• Albums Lidarr files away turn up in Navidrome by themselves — it plays whatever is in your music folder, so there's nothing to connect.

Why run Navidrome yourself

Streaming services remove things. A film you paid to watch last year can simply stop being there, and nothing tells you in advance. Running your own means the library is whatever you put in it, and it stays.

It is also how you retire a music streaming subscription — one line in replacing cloud subscriptions, app by app.

What kind of server Navidrome needs

A media server is the one category where the hardware matters. Direct play — where the app hands the file straight to your TV or phone — costs almost nothing, and 2 GB of memory is plenty. Converting on the fly for a device that can't play the original is what gets expensive; if you expect that often, a machine with hardware video support pays for itself immediately.

Cresdock itself is undemanding — it runs on a small rented server, an old desktop or a mini PC, on Ubuntu or Debian. Everything it installs shares that machine, so the honest question is not "will this app run" but "how much am I going to put on here in total".

Where to run Navidrome

Navidrome runs wherever Cresdock runs, and the choice is about the machine, not the app:

• At home, on hardware you already own. A mini PC, an old desktop or a NAS that can run Debian. Cresdock works behind a home router with no port forwarding and no domain, so Navidrome is reachable on your own network first and from outside only if you choose.
• On a rented server. A small VPS is enough for most apps and is the usual answer when Navidrome should be reachable from anywhere. The setup guide covers the specs and the one-command install.
• Through a provider that runs Cresdock. Hosting companies deploy Cresdock workspaces for their customers, so Navidrome can come with a server you rent rather than one you set up — ask your provider, or see how providers offer it.

Installing Navidrome

1. Put Cresdock on a server

   One line on any Ubuntu or Debian machine — a rented VPS, a spare PC, a home server. It sets itself up.

2. Pick Navidrome from the catalogue

   Click Install. The panel pulls the image, writes the configuration, gets a certificate and starts it.

3. Open it from your dashboard

   Its address and any login details are on its card. Start, stop, update, roll back or remove it from the same place, any time.

What's left for you to do

Cresdock does not pretend to do the parts that are genuinely yours to decide. After it's running:

• Open Navidrome and create your account. Do this now: the first visitor becomes the owner.

What this replaces

Doing it by hand means writing something like this, then keeping it working:

services:
  navidrome:
    image: deluan/navidrome:0.63.2
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "4533:4533"
    environment:
      - PUID=1000
      - PGID=1000
      - TZ=Etc/UTC
    volumes:
      - ./navidrome/config:/config
      - ./downloads:/downloads
      - ./media:/media

And that is the easy half. Still to do:

• Install a reverse proxy and write a server block for it

• Get a TLS certificate and set up automatic renewal

• Create the folders above with the right ownership, or it will not start

• Point a DNS record at the server, because Navidrome cannot run under a shared path

• Repeat all of it for the next app, and again on every server rebuild

On Cresdock, Navidrome is one click and none of the above exists.

Looking for what Navidrome itself can do? That lives in its own documentation — this page is only about running it.

Pairs well with: Overseerr  ·  Plex  ·  Nextcloud  ·  how Navidrome connects to your other apps

Before you start: where to rent a server  ·  what it needs to run  ·  Cresdock vs CasaOS