Show HN: Groovebox – self-hosted music library integrated with Discogs and Tidal

A developer released Groovebox, a self-hosted, local-first music archival engine that consolidates physical media from Discogs collections and wantlists with custom playlists into a portable SQLite database, featuring full-text search and a mobile-first web interface. The Go-based tool uses a pure standard library server, SQLite via modernc.org/sqlite, and FTS5 search, and supports Tailscale VPN for remote access. It provides REST APIs for managing playlists, tracks, artists, albums, and syncing with Discogs.

Screen.Recording.2026-08-21.at.9.32.05.PM-1.mov A self-hosted, local-first music archival engine that consolidates physical media Discogs collection & wantlist and custom playlists into a single portable SQLite database with instant full-text search and a sleek mobile-first web interface. Backend: Go net/http , pure standard library server Database: SQLite via modernc.org/sqlite Pure Go, CGO-free, portable single binary Search Engine: SQLite FTS5 Porter stemmer + unicode61 tokenizer for instant full-text search Frontend: Vanilla HTML5 + CSS3 Glassmorphism dark mode with Blueprint BP5 + Vanilla JavaScript Features: Collapsible sidebar, creation date playlist sorting, 2x2 grid collage playlist covers, Library view switching All Songs, Artists with avatars, Albums grid, Dedicated Album & Artist pages , clickable track rows navigating to Album pages, SVG cover art fallback error handling, and Discogs + Qobuz store master release search links. Networking: Localhost & Tailscale VPN ready Build binary go build -o groovebox . Run Web Server defaults to port 8080 ./groovebox -port 8080 ./groovebox -sync-discogs Access the UI locally at http://localhost:8080 . GET /api/stats - Total tracks, canonical albums, and playlists count. GET /api/playlists?sort= date desc|date asc|name asc|name desc - List playlists with track counts, creation dates, and 4 cover art URLs. POST /api/playlists - Create new internal playlist {name, description} . GET /api/playlists/:id - Get tracks inside a specific playlist. PUT /api/playlists/:id - Update playlist title and description. DELETE /api/playlists/:id - Delete playlist and its track associations. POST /api/playlists/:id/tracks - Add track {track id} to playlist. DELETE /api/playlists/:id/tracks?position=X - Remove track at position X from playlist. GET /api/tracks - Browse all songs in the library. POST /api/tracks - Add a new song to library {title, artist, album title, duration ms, spotify id, cover image url} . GET /api/autocomplete - Local database track/artist autocomplete. GET /api/autocomplete/online - Live global iTunes API autocomplete for auto-filling metadata & cover art. GET /api/artists - Browse all artists aggregating albums & tracks with cover art avatars. GET /api/artists/:name - Get dedicated artist detail view with albums grid & tracks. GET /api/albums?filter= collection|wantlist &q=:query - Browse canonical master albums. Optional filter by collection in collection=1, owned in Discogs; sorted by most-recently-added-to-collection first or wantlist in wantlist=1 . Optional q searches title/artist. GET /api/albums/counts - Get {all, collection, wantlist} album counts for UI badge display. GET /api/albums/:id - Get dedicated album detail view Discogs pressings table with thumbnails & tracklist . GET /api/search?q=:query - Instant FTS5 full-text search across songs, artists, and releases. POST /api/sync/discogs - Trigger async Discogs collection & wantlist sync. POST /api/albums/dedupe - Trigger async lossless master album deduplication DedupeAlbums , merging duplicate albums matched by Discogs master ID, normalized title, or track overlap. GET /api/sync/status - Thread-safe live progress streaming stage : idle / collection / wantlist / deduping /etc, current page , total pages , items fetched , last synced at , last deduped at . To access your music archive securely from your phone or laptop anywhere in the world without exposing ports to the public internet, deploy groovebox to your Home Server via Tailscale https://tailscale.com . Cross-compile a CGO-free static binary from your Mac: For Linux x86 64 server GOOS=linux GOARCH=amd64 go build -o groovebox-linux . For ARM64 server / Raspberry Pi 4/5 GOOS=linux GOARCH=arm64 go build -o groovebox-arm64 . Copy the executable, database, and public web assets to your home server: scp groovebox-linux user@homeserver:/opt/groovebox/groovebox scp music.db user@homeserver:/opt/groovebox/music.db scp -r public user@homeserver:/opt/groovebox/public On your home server, create /etc/systemd/system/groovebox.service : Unit Description=Groovebox Archival System After=network.target Service Type=simple User=daniel WorkingDirectory=/opt/groovebox ExecStart=/opt/groovebox/groovebox -port 8080 -db /opt/groovebox/music.db Restart=always RestartSec=5 Install WantedBy=multi-user.target Enable and start the service: sudo systemctl daemon-reload sudo systemctl enable --now groovebox - Ensure Tailscale is running on your home server: tailscale status - Note your home server's Tailscale hostname or IP e.g. homeserver.tail1234.ts.net or 100.x.y.z . - Open http://homeserver.tail1234.ts.net:8080 or http://100.x.y.z:8080 from any device on your Tailnet iPhone, Mac, iPad . Optional Serve over HTTPS with standard port 443 using Tailscale Serve : sudo tailscale serve --bg 8080 Now access securely at https://homeserver.tail1234.ts.net on any device To visually inspect UI changes or capture layout screenshots end-to-end: npx -y playwright screenshot http://localhost:8080 screenshot.png : 1-to-1 canonical master release entities albums discogs master id , title, artist, release year, cover image, has vinyl / in collection / in wantlist flags .: Specific Discogs physical pressings & digital entries release versions album id , discogs release id , label, cat , format, source .: Individual songs linked to canonical albums title, artist, duration, Spotify ID, ISRC . tracks : Internal playlists. playlists : Ordered track mappings. playlist tracks : FTS5 virtual table for fast searching. search fts