What is qm-music?

A private cloud music server built on the Subsonic protocol for self-hosting your music library. It provides a lightweight Docker deployment requiring only about 150MB of memory, making it suitable for Raspberry Pi and other low-resource devices. The server implements the Subsonic API, allowing compatibility with clients including Feishin, StreamMusic, Amperfy, substreamer, and music-assistant. Key capabilities include smart audio transcoding (libmp3lame/acc) to save bandwidth, multi-format support (MP3, FLAC, AAC, WAV), automatic library scanning with metadata parsing, multi-user accounts with playlists and favorites, and optional Spotify and Last.fm integration for enhanced metadata. The web admin interface runs on port 6688 with default credentials admin/admin (which must be changed on first login). Configuration is done via environment variables for timezone, transcoding, external API keys, and library refresh schedules. The project is licensed under Apache-2.0 and actively maintained with regular releases.

Should you self-host qm-music?

qm-music scores 51/100 on selfhost.directory (how scoring works) and ranks #20 of 59 in Music Streaming. It has 588 GitHub stars.

It shipped 11 stable releases in the past year. The latest, v2.5.0, came out on 10 September 2026. New versions land roughly every 9 days.

Setup is easy: most people get it running in one sitting. An official Docker image is available. It is Apache-2.0-licensed and written mostly in Java.

Its closest alternative on selfhost.directory is koel (75/100, 17 320 stars). It scores higher overall, so compare the two before you pick. See qm-music vs koel side by side.