Crate

Dig deeper.

Self-hosted music manager. Search for artists via pluggable providers (MusicBrainz, Deezer, or custom gRPC), watch their discographies, and automatically download via slskd (Soulseek). Optional Navidrome integration triggers library scans so new music appears immediately. Mobile-first UI.

     

Quick Start

Create a docker-compose.yml and run docker compose up -d:

services:
  crate:
    image: ghcr.io/theoutdoorprogrammer/crate:latest
    ports:
      - "6969:6969"
    volumes:
      - ./crate-data:/app/data
      - ./slskd/downloads:/app/downloads
      - ./library:/app/library
    environment:
      - CRATE_PORT=6969
      - CRATE_SLSKD_URL=http://slskd:5030
      - CRATE_SLSKD_API_KEY=your_api_key
      - CRATE_DOWNLOADS_DIR=/app/downloads
      - CRATE_LIBRARY_PATH=/app/library
      - CRATE_SCAN_INTERVAL=24h
    depends_on:
      - slskd
    restart: unless-stopped

  slskd:
    image: slskd/slskd:latest
    ports:
      - "5030:5030"
    volumes:
      - ./slskd:/app
      - ./library:/crate
    environment:
      - TZ=ETC/UTC
      - SLSKD_REMOTE_CONFIGURATION=true
      - SLSKD_API_KEY=your_api_key
      - SLSKD_SOULSEEK_USERNAME=your_soulseek_username
      - SLSKD_SOULSEEK_PASSWORD=your_soulseek_password
    restart: unless-stopped

Replace your_api_key (must match in both services), your_soulseek_username, and your_soulseek_password with your own values.

Open http://localhost:6969.

Features

• Pluggable providers -- search via MusicBrainz, Deezer, or custom gRPC providers. Switch providers on the fly from the search UI.
• Search -- find artists, browse their full discography with metadata
• Watch -- save artists, albums, or individual tracks to your library
• Download -- searches slskd (Soulseek), picks the best file from supported formats, downloads automatically
• Retry with backoff -- failed downloads retry with backoff (5m → 15m → 30m → 1h, gives up after ~2h). Failed sources are blacklisted per-user per-file so they're never retried.
• Manual search -- browse all slskd results for a track, see scores/format/queue info, and pick which one to download
• Quality upgrades -- configure priority-ordered quality tiers (e.g. FLAC > MP3 320 > MP3 256). Scheduler scans one artist per day and re-queues tracks that can be upgraded.
• Navidrome integration -- optionally trigger a Navidrome library scan after each download so new files appear immediately
• Organize -- moves completed files to library/{Artist}/{Album (Year)}/{nn} - {Title}.ext
• Metadata tagging -- writes ID3v2 (MP3), Vorbis comments (FLAC), and RIFF INFO (WAV) with artist, album, track, year, and cover art (MP3/FLAC)
• New release detection -- opt-in per artist, auto-adds albums released after the feature is enabled
• File integrity -- daily check that owned tracks still exist on disk; reverts to "wanted" if missing
• Activity log -- tracks all download activity (search, download, complete, fail) in a separate SQLite DB with configurable retention
• Relink -- reassign any artist to a different provider without losing your library data
• Scheduled scans -- re-queues wanted tracks and checks for new releases on a configurable interval
• Duplicate guard -- prevents duplicate artists, albums, and download queue entries
• Settings UI -- configure providers, slskd connection, Navidrome, quality tiers, library path, scan interval, and more from the browser
• Mobile-first -- responsive layout with bottom nav on mobile, sidebar on desktop

Roadmap

• Import existing library -- see DATABASE.md for schema docs to write custom importers

Configuration

Env var	Default	Description
CRATE_PORT	6969	HTTP port
CRATE_DB_PATH	./crate.db	SQLite database path
CRATE_CACHE_PATH	./cache.db	Provider cache database path
CRATE_ACTIVITY_PATH	./activity.db	Activity log database path
CRATE_SLSKD_URL	http://localhost:5030	slskd API base URL
CRATE_SLSKD_API_KEY	--	slskd API key
CRATE_DOWNLOADS_DIR	./downloads	Where slskd puts completed files
CRATE_LIBRARY_PATH	./library	Where organized files are moved
CRATE_SCAN_INTERVAL	6h	How often to auto-queue wanted tracks and check for new releases
CRATE_PROVIDERS	musicbrainz:./provider-musicbrainz:50051,deezer:./provider-deezer:50052	Provider configuration

Additional settings (default provider, slskd connection, Navidrome, quality tiers, library path, scan interval) can be configured from the Settings page in the UI.

Auth

Crate does not include built-in authentication. If you need to restrict access, put a reverse proxy with auth in front of it (e.g. Cloudflare Zero Trust, Authelia, or nginx basic auth).

Stack

• Backend: Go + Chi + SQLite (pure Go, no CGO)
• Frontend: React + TypeScript + Vite + Tailwind
• Providers: MusicBrainz + Deezer via gRPC (extensible)
• Tagging: ID3v2 (MP3), Vorbis comments (FLAC), RIFF INFO (WAV)
• Downloads: slskd (Soulseek client)
• Deployment: Docker (single multi-stage container)

Supported Formats

Format	Download	Metadata tagging	Cover art
FLAC	Yes	Yes (Vorbis comments)	Yes
MP3	Yes	Yes (ID3v2)	Yes
WAV	Yes	Yes (RIFF INFO)	No
OGG	Yes	No	No
Opus	Yes	No	No
AAC	Yes	No	No
M4A	Yes	No	No

All formats are downloaded, organized into the library folder, and tracked in the database. Formats without tagging support are still fully functional -- they just won't have embedded metadata written by Crate.