Has anybody here managed to install Funkwhale using Portainer? I’ve already tried 3 times, first tried a template, but turns out the AIO container is deprecated, then tried modifying the default docker-compose and env files available on Funkwhale’s repo, didn’t work (couldn’t run the required commands to create a user). Then I spun up a brand new debian 12 LXC container on proxmox, ran their quick install script and failed (something related to snapd, even though it was installed).
Up until now I’ve been an avid Navidrome user, but since we’ve been cutting some costs, Spotify had to go. Too late I realised Navidrome has no library separation: Even though you can have multiple users, they all pull from the same library, making it a mess.
I’m just looking for a simple deployment I can use either within my LAN or via TailScale, just for me and a few family members.
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To anyone reading this, unless you absolutely must have the federation abilities of Funkwhale above your own sanity, it’s not worth it. Funkwhale is an absolute bear to setup by comparison to every other music server. I have been bouncing through them all spinning up containers for the same library and putting them through their paces.
Spinning up 4 Navidrome containers with 4 different domains for my user’s library preferences was quicker and easier than setting up one Funkwhale server for 4 users. It’s beyond absurd how clunky it is. And worst of all, 4 Navidrome containers are extremely faster, less resource hungry, and easier to maintain.
None of the local library importing works in the UI unless you’re the admin account. That means going into users to create libraries then spinning up an API container with a command to import the local files. But then it doesn’t watch them unless you include that flag and leave the detached container running.
On top of that, so few people are running it that you cannot just search the web for issues. It’s their lacking documentation only. You know something is obscure when you cant even find their own website by searching Funkwhale without going through the top result that links to it.
Funkwhale is just not ready for prime time compared to the other servers.
I have used Airsonic and then Airsonic-advanced for years after briefly using Subsonic. But recently as my more and more of my library migrated to FLAC I had issues with transcoding. Sometimes all transcoding would just start failing and when it did Airsonic would peg every thread it had available. (Heresy I know but when I or my users are on a mobile network I don’t want to chew through data in a few day long outings.) So that’s what led me down this path. I tried Navidrome and loved it except for the lack of library separation. I tried Funkwhale, and I tried Gonic. Gonic is wonderful in its simplicity but it’s almost too basic. It supposedly had library separation and has transcoding but neither was working out of the box so I just said fuck it and went with 4 Navidrome containers because copy and pasting is easy and everything about Navidrome just works. Most importantly, Navidrome is lightning fast loading in an app which is the only way my users interact with the server. It fires up transcoding so fast you almost cannot tell the difference between loading the native file and transcoding in terms of response. I swear there was at least one more server I looked at but passed over and I cannot recall the name.
Edit: FYI Navidrome said that they are currently reworking the entire server backend, but after that it will be easier to implement multiple libraries.
Holy crap thats genius, i’ll do just that!
I swear there was at least one more server I looked at but passed over and I cannot recall the name.
Maybe Jellyfin? It’s best at movies/shows but it also handles music (and more). The native music experience isn’t great but it works. For Windows/Linux/Mac you can use Feishin (I use and mostly recommend it, also you can use the web app version). Android has Symfonium I use and highly recommend it, also it works with FAR more than just Jellyfin). I don’t use iOS but I just looked for an iOS app and found AmpFin (not to be confused with Finamp).
You said your users have their own libraries. Jellyfin works great with this. Out each in its own folder, create a new library for each in Jellyfin (pointing to each folder), and you can choose which accounts can see which libraries (and optionally let them manage libraries too so they can delete songs or modify metadata for the libraries they have access to).
I’m a fan of Jellyfin if you couldn’t tell…
So, I posted this on a similar thread a few days ago, but plex and/or jellyfin do an amazing job of user/library seperation, music streaming, AND have apps for every relevant platform you’d remotely care about: phones, computers, browsers, widgets plugged into your tv, etc.
It’s a little odd nobody has bothered to do a really good multi user/library audio-only app, but plex+plexamp or jellyfin+finamp is a pretty great solution as it is.
tried jellyfin even before Navidrome: the problem with Jellyfin is that as good as it is tagging and managing movies and tv shows, it’s atrocious at music management. Even though I painstakingly tagged and sorted my music using MusicBrainz Picard, there are tons of albums misplaced, or entire artists catalogs set as a single album. Same music collection on Navidrome worked OOTB and was perfectly sorted.
Interesting, I haven’t had any of those issues with tagged media. I use beets for the tagging and sorting, and it’s been otherwise fine? I do \music\artist - album for the directory paths, though, so it’s already happily sorted and grouped correctly on the filesystem in a way that jellyfin seems to like.
Nice, I might give that a go. So instead of doing Artist/Album/songfile.ext you just have all albums in the same level? e.g. Band - Album1/song1.mp3 Band - Album2/song1.flac
If that’s so, I might be able to batch sort them to that structure and give Jellyfin another try
Yeah, they’re all a single-level deep. Multi-disc albums are also the same: artist - album/1-1, 1-2, 2-1, 2-2, etc.
I have it installed for a few years now. I started with the AIO but moved to the separate container install after AIO was deprecated. I imagine the install process is too complex for portainer. https://docs.funkwhale.audio/stable/administrator/installation/docker.html
I did steps 1-4 and skipped the rest because I already have a proxy server running. Don’t remember anything related to snapd though. Mine is running in a Debian 11 VM on proxmox instead of an LXC, but the process should be the same. Also they have a matrix channel for help https://matrix.to/#/#funkwhale-support:matrix.org
From what I remember it was relatively painless to install, but upgrading can be a chore, especially this last upgrade. My main interest in FW was the federation aspect as far as finding new music. If you don’t care about federation, maybe a simpler option would work better for you.
the problem with FW’s docs is that they are too opinionated, they expect a strict user and directory structure that should not be required for docker deployments. I modified the example docker-compose to use volumes instead of binding to host locations (except for the music:ro folder) and it didn’t like it at all. I get that they prefer using ansible playbooks over docker, but even when starting from a fresh debian 12 install it’d fail, even though I followed that guide to the tee.
As someone else said on the thread, it’s weird but there’s no much choice for multi-library music-centric servers. Guess I’ll have to wrangle Jellyfin into submission to tag my music properly.
I guess I don’t understand. You followed the docker installation directions correctly and it didn’t work or you modified the directions in a way that you prefer and it didn’t work?
I gave up on funk whale about 6 months ago and was loving navidrome, but hadn’t realised the lack of library separation. Thankfully that doesn’t bother me too much. I’ll give this another go and see how I get on though if I can find some time over the weekend
Yea, after another hour today I’ve decided that my time is better spent elsewhere, so I’m just going to stick with Navidrome and not worry too much about losing out on the federated music idea for now.
I’m currently in the market for a music server myself.
I want it all, I want something that will fire music at my Google home links, and also some raspberry pis with speakers, and also serve to my phone in the house and away from it.
I have Logitech Media Server running ATM and for a long time, but it is, and always has been a bit hot and miss.
I have a music file system in OMV which I can access on my LAN. This is the source of music for LMS. But I also have Plex pointed at it
This allows me to play the same music from any TV or phone with Plex on it. Plex even have an app called Plex Amp. I use Symfonic though, I liked it enough to buy it.
These apps give me the option to cast my audio to the Google Homes minis I have, I need something for my Pis.
Another advantage I recently found of adding my music library to Plex is I downloaded a program called MediaMonkey to stick music on my old iPod that I have in the car. It picked my Plex library up straight away, although to its credit, it also found my original music Share, it just didn’t advertise the fact.
I use Plex myself but there’s Emby and Jellyfin to look into too.
I wonder if mpd in a container with a front-end can solve your problems
