FAQ

▶︎ Can you add a browsing by folder option/mode to Navidrome?

While it is technically possible to add a browsing by folder option, doing so would require significant changes to Navidrome’s internal structures across most of its components. We have decided to focus on features that align with our vision of a music server that emphasizes tags. Implementing folder browsing would not only be a major undertaking, but it could also make supporting all of Navidrome’s current and future features more difficult and error-prone.

Here are a few situations where users might find folder browsing important, and how Navidrome plans to address them:

1. Grouping music by classification (e.g., genre): Navidrome already handle genres, you can browse by genres in Subsonic clients, and it will have a dedicated Genre view in the future. There will also be support for the multivalued grouping tag, with a dedicated view as well.
2. Having different releases for the same album: This will be supported soon.
3. Users who don’t have their library tagged: We explicitly do not support this, as it would make it very difficult to support all features Navidrome has and will have. We do not want to have code that “infers” that a folder with a bunch of MP3 files is an album, as this approach would make the code highly complex and error-prone.

If browsing by folder is an essential feature for you, there are alternative music servers that offer this functionality. We encourage you to explore these options if folder browsing is a priority.

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▶︎ I have an album with tracks by different artists, why is it broken up into lots of separate albums, each with their own artist?

Navidrome only organises music by tags, it will not automatically group a folder containing a bunch of songs with different artists into one album.

For a “Various Artists” compilation, the Part Of Compilation tag (TCMP=1 for id3, COMPILATION=1 for FLAC) must be set, for all tracks.

For a single-artist album with a different artist name for each track (for example “Alice feat. Bob” , “Alice feat. Carol”), the Album Artist tags must be the same (“Alice”) for all tracks.

Note if Scanner.GroupAlbumReleases is set to false (default, see available configuration options), an album might be split in different parts if the tracks have different date tags.

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▶︎ How can I edit my music metadata (id3 tags)? How can I rename/move my files?

With Navidrome you can’t. Navidrome does not write to your music folder or the files by design. It may have capabilities to change/add cover art for artists, albums and playlists in the future, but even then it won’t write these images to your Music Folder or embed them in the files.

The main reason for this is security: With an internet-facing server like Navidrome, users would only be one exploit away from all their music getting deleted.

There are many excellent “real” tag editors / music library managers out there to work with your music library.

Navidrome recommends: beets (Linux, macOS, Windows) and Musicbrainz Picard (Linux, macOS, Windows).

Others: mp3tag (Windows, macOS), ExifTool (Linux, macOS, Windows), Yate (macOS), Kid3 (Windows, macOS, Linux), foobar2000 (Windows, macOS), MusicBee (Windows), Media Monkey (Windows), Groove Music (Windows), Windows Media Player (Windows), Apple iTunes (Windows), Apple Music (macOS).

If you are new to organizing and tagging your library, take a look at this post about how to use Picard or beets with Navidrome: Organizing music with Musicbrainz Picard

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▶︎ Where are the logs?

To achieve maximum compatibility with a great number of platforms, Navidrome follows the Twelve Factor App methodology as much as possible. Specifically in the case of logs, Navidrome does not try to do any storage or routing of any log files, it only outputs all information to stdout, making it easy for the proper logging tools in each platform to handle them. Some examples bellow:

• Linux: if you installed Navidrome using the Systemd unit (as explained in the install instructions), you can see the logs using the journalctl tool: journalctl -u navidrome.service.

• Docker: you can use docker logs or docker-compose logs to retrieve/follow the logs.

• FreeBSD by default logs are writen to /var/log/debug.log

• Windows: depending on what you used to install Navidrome as a service, the logs will be in different locations by default:

  • if you used Shawl, just check the shawl_for_navidrome_*.log files created in the same location as the Shawl executable.
  • if you used NSSM, the location of the logs are specified by the AppStdout attribute.
  • if you used WinSW, the log file is in the same directory as the WinSW configuration file for the Navidrome service.

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▶︎ Which cloud providers help fund the project with a revenue share?

PikaPods has partnered with us to offer you an officially supported, cloud-hosted solution. A share of the revenue helps fund the development of Navidrome at no additional cost for you.