nexbeat

Find music and request it from Lidarr with one click.

nexbeat is a small, self-hosted companion to Lidarr, built in the spirit of Nexview: accounts with invitations, per-user quotas counted by request, optional approval, and a discovery page that recommends artists based on what the library and each user already have.

Status: early. It runs against a real Lidarr, but it is a small side project: expect rough edges.

The screenshots show a throwaway instance with a few well-known artists as its library.

What it does

• Discover: "for you" and "because you listen to" rows from ListenBrainz similar-artist data, plus weekly trends. Artists already in Lidarr are left out.
• Genres: browse twenty main genres. A genre page shows the most played artists and albums of that genre and related genres to follow. Artists in Lidarr stay in the list, marked as in the library.
• Search artists and releases in MusicBrainz, browse discographies and similar artists, listen to 30 second previews.
• Request a single album, EP or single. Unknown artists are added to Lidarr with only the requested album monitored.
• Whole artists: one request for every studio album and future ones. Only offered when the metadata profile keeps Lidarr to official studio albums.
• Quotas count requests per day, week or month. Rejected and failed requests do not count.
• Accounts: invitations and password reset by email, or as a link to pass on when no mail server is set up.

nexbeat never changes Lidarr settings. It adds and monitors artists and albums and starts searches, nothing else.

Running with Docker

mkdir nexbeat && cd nexbeat
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/DerKezorm/nexbeat/main/docker-compose.yml
docker compose up -d

Open http://<your-host>:8030 and create the first account. It becomes the administrator. Then, under Settings:

1. Lidarr: address, API key, root folder, quality and metadata profile. If users should be able to request whole artists, pick a metadata profile that allows official studio albums only. nexbeat checks this and says why when it does not fit.
2. Mail (optional): for invitations and password resets. Without a mail server, nexbeat hands out the links for you to pass on.
3. Users: invite people, set their quota and whether their requests need approval.

The Lidarr tab also shows a webhook address. Entered in Lidarr, it lets nexbeat notice finished downloads right away; without it, nexbeat checks every two minutes.

• Updating: docker compose pull && docker compose up -d
• Backing up: the whole data directory, the database and secret.key together. Without the key, the stored credentials cannot be read.
• Images are built for amd64 and arm64. latest follows releases, main the current development state.

Run from source

cd backend
python -m venv .venv
.venv/Scripts/python.exe -m pip install -r requirements-dev.txt
.venv/Scripts/python.exe -m uvicorn app.main:app --port 8030

cd frontend
npm install
npm run dev

Open http://localhost:5182 and create the first account.

Data sources

MusicBrainz, Cover Art Archive and ListenBrainz (open data). Artist images and previews come from the public Deezer API and can be switched off.

Licence

GNU Affero General Public License v3.0.