Getting more out of it
When Your Music Library Stopped Being Fun
This is the problem Aurral exists for. A library of forty thousand tracks plays like a library of forty, because nothing ever introduces you to the thirty-nine thousand nine hundred and sixty you have never played.
Why it happens
Nothing is broken. Streaming services refresh your recommendations daily, so new material keeps arriving. A self-hosted library is a static collection that only grows when you explicitly add to it, and a large collection feels static because browsing it is not the same as being introduced to it.
The result is a library that grows steadily while your listening stays flat. You might own forty thousand tracks and have heard twelve thousand of them, and the remaining twenty-eight thousand are invisible to you.
| Metric | Typical self-hosted state | What streaming gives you |
|---|---|---|
| New artists introduced per week | Zero without external help | Roughly 10 to 20 |
| Catalogue growth | Only what you request | Continuous |
| Discovery refresh | Manual | Daily |
| Listening history driving recommendations | Only if you connect it | Always |
Fix one: turn on a Flow
A Flow rebuilds a playlist on a schedule and downloads the tracks, which is the single biggest change. It moves discovery from a thing you have to think about into something that happens without you.
For a first configuration: 30 tracks, one day a week, half Discover and half Library, Deep Dive on. Run it for a month before changing anything else.
- 30 tracks is a reasonable weekly size.
- Half Discover, half Library keeps it feeling connected to what you own.
- Deep Dive stops popular artists dominating every mix.
Fix two: connect your listening history
Recommendations improve substantially with history, because history is what tells the system which parts of your collection represent your actual taste rather than what you happened to download.
Last.fm with an API key gives the closest matches. ListenBrainz works with no key at all, which makes it the lowest-effort improvement available.
Fix three: measure what you already own
Before reaching for more music, look at what you have not played. A library with heavy unplayed weight is a different problem from a library with nothing new in it.
The Library view sorts by recently added, which tells you when something arrived, not whether you have heard it. Artists you added long ago and never played are the cheapest wins available.
What to expect
A month of weekly Flows adds roughly 120 tracks you did not choose manually. That is not a dramatic number, but it is directional: the share of your library you have heard stops falling.
The bigger change is cumulative. A Flow running for a year adds about 1,500 tracks, and those become part of the library that seeds your next round of recommendations.
Frequently asked questions
How many new artists per month should I expect?
With a 30-track weekly Flow, somewhere between 100 and 150 tracks a month, most of which will be artists you have never heard of.
Do Flow tracks pile up and fill my disk?
No. Flow files are temporary and rotate out, provided no connected playback server still references them. Anything you promote into the library is permanent.
Should I delete old music to keep discovery fresh?
No. Deleting music to make a library feel smaller does not improve recommendations. The Flow approach adds without requiring removal.
Can I only discover music I do not own?
Yes. The Discover and Trending sources exclude library artists, and Focus looks only outside your library.
Ready to set it up
One container and one media path is genuinely all it takes. Everything else in this page is something you add when the need appears.