lagu
0.16.1 is out: Lagu Mixes and Wrapped Download

Starting a library

Leave streaming for a library of your own

If you are leaving Spotify, Apple Music, or another subscription, this is the whole route: where the files come from, how to tag and file them so they stay tidy, how to set up the server, and what Lagu does with it once it is there. It takes an afternoon to start and you can add to it for years.

What you end up with

Three things, each doing one job. Your music sits as ordinary files in a folder on a computer at home. Plex Media Server, which is free, reads that folder and serves it to your devices. Lagu is the app you listen with, on your phone, your computer, your TV, your watch, and in the car.

The parts of a subscription you would expect to lose are in Lagu, made from your own library:

  • Lagu Mixes. Lists such as Classic Rock Hits and 80s Hits, fifty songs each, built from the albums you own and refreshed every Monday.
  • Radio. A station from any song, artist, or album, and Autoplay to carry on when a queue ends.
  • Synced lyrics on the phone, the tablet, the desktop, and the TV.
  • Lagu Wrapped each December, counted from your own server’s play history.
  • Lagu Remote. Your phone picks what plays on the computer or the TV, at home or away, the way a streaming app hands playback to another device.
  • Downloads for the times there is no signal.

Playlists you make in Lagu, a mix you save, and a smart playlist made from one of Lagu’s starters are all stored on your Plex server as ordinary playlists. They are yours, and they show up in any other Plex app too.

1. Get the music

Start with what you already own. A CD ripped to FLAC is an exact copy of the disc, and a ripper that checks its result against an online database of other people’s rips will tell you when a scratched disc did not read cleanly. FLAC files are about half the size of the raw audio and lose nothing.

For albums you do not have on disc, buy from a store that sells files you keep, such as Bandcamp or Qobuz. Choose FLAC when it is offered. MP3 and AAC files you bought years ago work as they are, and Lagu shows the format and bitrate of whatever is playing.

You do not need everything on the first day. The hundred albums you play most will make the library feel like home, and your liked songs from the subscription you are leaving make a good shopping list for the rest.

2. Tag it before you file it

Tags are the information stored inside each file, and they are what Plex reads first. Every track should carry these:

  • Album artist. The one that matters most. It is what keeps an album together when half its tracks have a guest, and a compilation should say Various Artists here.
  • Album, title, track number, and disc number.
  • Year. Lagu’s decade lists and decade stations are built from it.
  • The cover, stored in the file, so the album keeps its artwork wherever the file goes.

A tagger that matches whole albums against a public database does this in a few clicks for each album, and fixes spelling and track order while it is there. MusicBrainz Picard is free and does this. A well-tagged album is also easier for Plex to recognize, and Plex’s match is where the styles, moods, and popularity behind Lagu Mixes come from.

If you have timed lyrics for a track, save them as a .lrc file with the same name beside it, and Plex will pick them up.

3. File it by artist

Plex asks for one folder for music, a folder for each artist inside it, and a folder for each album inside that:

Music/
  Fleetwood Mac/
    Rumours (1977)/
      01 - Second Hand News.flac
      02 - Dreams.flac
  Various Artists/
    Pulp Fiction (1994)/
      01 - Misirlou.flac

A few habits keep it tidy:

  • Name the artist folder after the album artist, so a compilation goes under Various Artists and not under whoever sings track one.
  • Keep music in its own folder, apart from films and shows. Plex wants a separate library for each.
  • For a multi-disc album, set the disc number in the tags. The discs can share one folder.
  • If you use a library manager that renames and files albums for you, give it this same pattern, and let it finish moving an album before Plex scans the folder.

4. Set up Plex Media Server

Install Plex Media Server on a computer that stays on, or on a NAS. It is a free download from Plex. Sign in, add a library of the type Music, and point it at your music folder. Plex scans the folder, matches each album, and fills in artist photos, genres, and the rest.

Three things are worth knowing:

  • Prefer local metadata, in the library’s advanced settings, makes your own tags win where they differ from Plex’s match. Turn it on if you tagged carefully.
  • Plex Pass is Plex’s paid tier. On a music library it adds sonic analysis, which Lagu uses for stations that follow how a song sounds, and it adds lyrics fetched by Plex for tracks that have none of their own. Everything else in Lagu works without it. The FAQ has the full list.
  • Listening away from home takes a Plex Pass or a Remote Watch Pass. That is Plex’s rule for every app that plays from your server.

After a large import, leave the server on overnight. The scan is quick, and the analysis that follows it is slow. A library that has only just been added looks the same to Lagu as one with no analysis at all, so a station that says it cannot find related songs on the first evening will usually work by morning.

5. Add Lagu

Download Lagu for the devices you listen on. Desktop is free. The phone, tablet, and TV apps are $1.99 once, no subscription: one purchase per store covers all three, and the Apple apps are free while the beta runs. Sign in with your Plex account, pick your server, and the library is there. Lagu has no account of its own.

Things to try in the first week:

  • Play a Lagu Mix from Home, and look again on Monday when it has changed.
  • Start a station from a song you like and let it run.
  • Download a playlist to your phone before a trip.
  • Leave Lagu playing on the computer or the TV and take it over from your phone.
  • Open the settings guide when you want to change how something behaves.

If you have more than one music library on the server, Lagu browses them as one.

6. Keep it going

Add an album the same way every time: tag it, file it, and let Plex scan. An album added carelessly is the one you will be fixing a year from now.

Keep a backup of the music folder on a second drive. Nobody else holds a copy of this collection, so make one.

Rate songs and heart the ones you love as you listen. Ratings, play counts, and playlists live on your server and follow you to every device, and your play history is what Lagu’s stats and Wrapped are counted from.

Questions about any of this are welcome on the forum, which you can read without an account.