Melodarr

Melodarr is a self-hosted music discovery and request app for Lidarr. It gives users a friendly place to find artists, explore albums, get personal recommendations, and request new music without needing access to Lidarr itself.

Screenshots

Discover	Artist
Release Group	Linked Accounts

Feature highlights

Find and request music

Search MusicBrainz for artists and albums, browse full discographies and tracklists, then request an individual release or an artist's complete catalog through Lidarr.

Melodarr keeps an eye on pending requests, queued searches, and music you already own so you always know what is available and what is on the way.

Recommendations that feel personal

The Discover page brings together music related to artists you love, albums inspired by previous requests, and something new when you feel like exploring.

Connect ListenBrainz, Last.fm, or Plex to make recommendations more personal. You can also choose favorite artists, decide whether you want familiar picks or more discovery, and fine-tune the feed with More like this and Not interested.

See what is popular

Browse popular artists from Last.fm or check Apple Music's current Top 100 albums in the United States and Japan. Switch between recent releases and the full chart, while Melodarr filters out music already in your library or request queue.

Discover music from anime

Search AnimeThemes for openings and endings, see where each song appears in a series, and follow related anime. Melodarr matches those songs to MusicBrainz releases so they can be requested through Lidarr, with administrator review when a match needs a second look.

Know what is already in your library

Connect Plex to browse the artists and albums you already own, open them directly in Plex, and keep duplicates out of recommendations and requests.

Made for households

Each person gets a private account, personal recommendations, and their own request history. Administrators can invite new users, choose the defaults used for Lidarr requests, and manage the service from a built-in dashboard.

Fast, tidy, and self-hosted

Melodarr caches artwork and music metadata locally, refreshes the library in the background, and keeps its data on your server. It is designed to run with Docker Compose and works well alongside an existing Lidarr and Plex setup.

AnimeThemes resolver API

Authenticated clients can call POST /api/v1/animethemes/resolve with a MusicBrainz releaseGroupId, a recordingIds array, or both. Browser clients continue to use their signed-in session and CSRF token. Trusted automation can instead send the API key shown under Settings → Services → Melodarr in the X-Api-Key header; API-key requests to this endpoint do not need a session cookie or CSRF token. Melodarr generates and securely persists this key on first start. The response contains every unique higher-level AnimeThemes series linked to the supplied music. Release-group evidence takes precedence when the same series also matches a recording, and unknown MBIDs return an empty series array.

AnimeThemes does not assign every anime to a higher-level series. In that case, Melodarr returns the individual anime as an explicit fallback with animeThemesSeriesId: null, its animeThemesAnimeId, and fallback: "anime"; it never invents a series ID.

See the Melodarr API guide for authentication, request and response schemas, examples, errors, and the OpenAPI specification.

Environment variables

The included Docker Compose setup does not require any extra environment variables. By default, it keeps the main database and metadata cache under the persistent /app/data mount.

Backing up your data

For a consistent backup, stop Melodarr cleanly before copying the database and settings files. If the service must stay online, use SQLite's online backup API; do not make a raw copy of a live database because recent data may still be in its WAL file.

License

Melodarr is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0.