I use Radarr and Sonarr for my movies/shows, and Spotify for music, but I do know there’s another *arr app for that. The question is, is it worth setting up and how easy is it to discover new/similar music as opposed to Spotify, given that Spotify isn’t expensive at all. And how do you fellow crewmen go about it?
Worth noting that for new releases far from everything gets released online, and overall the arr focus is on lossless which is the gap in the market. So if you’re a (digital) Audiophile with high-end DACs and Headphones then yeah sure, but if you’re not and just want to listen to music then no, it’s not worth it in my opinion. It’s harder to share a banger with a friend, you’ll be late to the party when someone new is discovered and you’ll need to curate your own playlists all the time. Not to mention filling up your drive with album tracks you’re going to listen to once at most.
This here. I download high end versions of albums that are going to last forever, but day to day music I use Qobuz, better artist profit share and more high quality music. Better music selection too imo.
Lidarr is not a Spotify replacement. There is no way to play music, just like you can’t play movies in Radarr.
There is no way to discover new artists, it only knows the artists you tell it about.
My setup is exactly the same, actually. I love last.fm and scrobbling, been doing it for 15 years probably.
I was trying to say that Lidarr isn’t a silver bullet. There are lots of ways to discover music, but OP seems happy with Spotify.
I use Tidal instead of Spotify. It’s not perfect, but it integrates with Plex, which I use to host local files as well.
I use Plex’s app Plexamp for daily driver listening, but also will sometimes flip over to Tidal, which has really good stations including a daily one for discovering new artists. I use this when I feel like something new.
My local files are a mix of ripped CDs from when owning those was a thing, Bandcamp purchases (which are still my default way to obtain music if it’s possible), and Tidal files pulled via Tidal-DL (when there’s not a quick/easy way to purchase the music permanently).
Over time, I’ve moved from streaming full time from Tidal with local files to fill the gap of more obscure stuff to streaming full-time from my own collection while occasionally using Tidal directly just for discovery.
To replace Spotify for finding new music, I switched to subscribing to radio stations in a podcast app. Free. I can send donations directly to radio stations I like. I can add tracks, albums, or artists to a list to search out further and support them directly through media and merch purchases.
Plenty of combinations, I’m sure, but I use Podcast Addict; it has a section specifically for subscribing to radio stations. From there I’m subscribed to WFUV out of New York, WXRV out of Boston, WBRU out of Rhode Island, KZCR out of Minnesota, and a few others. It’s not as easy as searching a genre or song and getting a custom Spotify playlist instantly, but I have enjoyed finding DJs I like, tuning in when they’re on air, and effectively getting a recommendation song list from a knowledgeable person. And it isn’t even piracy.
I found radio station recommendations online and also by the search function in Podcast Addict that has some ability to search by genre.
If anyone else does similar and has radio stations recs, I would love to hear them.
Once I discovered the Ad-Free patch for Spotify I shutdown my Lidarr. Much less hassle, and it freed up a solid 300GB of space on my NAS.
I ran into issues with availability on Lidarr. Maybe I just didn’t have the right trackers but it almost never pulled complete discography.
Lidarr works best with usenet. There are good dedicated private torrent trackers for music though.
That would be why then! Any recommendations for music trackers to look at?
You can interview for either Redacted or Orpheus. You will need to study for either of them, it’s not something you can just wing.
I’ll definitely give them a look once I’ve finished moving! I’d given Orpheus a look a couple months ago, but was hesitant to jump through all the hoops without knowing if there was actually any content on the other end.
There is more content at Redacted but Orpheus is easier to get into.
I would rate radarr/sonarr with 10/10 and lidar 5/10. I dont think its bad, its probably too early stage or too hard to accomplish with music what radarr/sonarr can do with movies/shows. There are many artists/albums that dont exist in lidarr database and sometimes bad imports happen with wrong tracks. Yeah, and there is no jellyseer for music. I dont use it much, but I love it
The Lidarr database is just MusicBrainz. I’ve taken to just editing in whatever I need.
I use lidarr to manage my existing library and use airsonic to listen to it. For me it works great and I can import tracks from my Spotify playlist. But yeah, it’s more of a nice to have, for me personally. I use it mainly to keep things tidy.
I’ve tried it before but found it to be too cumbersome. I went back to just doing it all manually. Music isn’t pirated and organized in the same way TV and movies are.
