Shanty is a self-hosted music management application. It searches MusicBrainz for artists and albums, downloads music from YouTube, tags and organizes files, and serves your library over the Subsonic protocol for streaming on any device.

Features

Search MusicBrainz for artists, albums, and tracks
Watch artists or albums to track their full discography at the individual track level
Download music via yt-dlp with YouTube Music search
Tag files automatically using MusicBrainz metadata
Organize files into clean directory structures with configurable templates
Stream your library to any Subsonic-compatible music app
Playlists generated from similar-artist data (Last.fm), with drag-and-drop editing and M3U export
Monitor artists for new releases, automatically added to your watchlist
Web UI built in Rust/WASM for managing everything from your browser

Quick Start with Docker

This is the recommended way to run Shanty.

1. Create a file called docker-compose.yml:

services:
  shanty:
    image: git.rcjohnstone.com/connor/shanty:latest
    ports:
      - "8085:8085"
      # - "6080:6080"  # Optional: expose if YouTube login iframe doesn't load
    volumes:
      - ./config:/config
      - ./data:/data
      - /path/to/your/music:/music
    environment:
      - SHANTY_WEB_BIND=0.0.0.0
    restart: unless-stopped

2. Replace /path/to/your/music with the directory where you want your music library stored. The ./data directory will be created automatically and stores the database, downloads, and any imported MusicBrainz data. If you plan to use the local MusicBrainz database, put this on an SSD.

3. Start the container:

docker compose up -d

4. Open http://localhost:8085 in your browser. Create an account on first launch.

5. Search for an artist, click Watch All, then click Set Sail to start downloading.

Quick Start from Source

For developers who want to build and run locally:

# Prerequisites: Rust (edition 2024), yt-dlp, ffmpeg, Python 3, ytmusicapi, Trunk
git clone https://git.rcjohnstone.com/connor/shanty.git
cd shanty

# Build frontend
cd shanty-web/frontend && trunk build --release && cd ../..

# Build and run
cargo run --release --bin shanty -- -v
# Open http://localhost:8085

Documentation

Getting Started -- step-by-step setup guide
Configuration Reference -- all config options and environment variables
API Reference -- REST and Subsonic API documentation
Feature Guides:
- YouTube Authentication -- higher rate limits with cookie auth
- MusicBrainz Local Database -- instant metadata lookups
- Subsonic Streaming -- mobile and desktop playback
- Playlists -- generation, editing, and export
- Monitoring -- automatic new release detection

License

MIT