A Docker image for librespot
First and foremost, the reference to the awesome project:
I am also currently relying on Raspotify because building images from crates.io fails for armhf platfrom. So here is the reference to this other excellent project:
| REPOSITORY TYPE | LINK |
|---|---|
| Git Repository | GitHub |
| Docker Images | DockerHub |
The latest image is published daily, so it will include the same version of Librespot included in the current release of Raspotify.
I prepared this Dockerfile Because I wanted to be able to install librespot easily on any machine (provided the architecture is amd64, armhf or arm64). Also I wanted to be able to configure and govern the parameter easily, maybe through a webapp like Portainer.
First, you need a Spotify premium account in order to be able to use any version of Librespot.
You need to have Docker up and running on a Linux machine, and the current user must be allowed to run containers (this usually means that the current user belongs to the "docker" group).
You can verify whether your user belongs to the "docker" group with the following command:
getent group | grep docker
This command will output one line if the current user does belong to the "docker" group, otherwise there will be no output.
The Dockerfile and the included scripts have been tested on the following distros:
- Manjaro Linux with Gnome (amd64)
- Raspberry Pi 3/4 (32 and 64 bit)
- Asus Tinkerboard with DietPi (don't let that board run at a very low minimum frequency)
- OSMC on Raspberry Pi 4
As I test the Dockerfile on more platforms, I will update this list.
Here is the repository on DockerHub.
Getting the image from DockerHub is as simple as typing:
docker pull giof71/librespot:latest
Mr. John Darko would be proud.
The following tables reports all the currently supported environment variables.
| VARIABLE | DEFAULT | NOTES |
|---|---|---|
| SPOTIFY_USERNAME | Your Spotify username. Required only if you want to disable discovery. | |
| SPOTIFY_PASSWORD | Your Spotify password. Required only if you want to disable discovery. | |
| BITRATE | 160 | Bitrate (kbps): 96, 160, 320. Defaults to 160. |
| BACKEND | alsa | Audio backend to use. Use ? to list options. Currently possible values are alsa and pulseaudio. |
| INITIAL_VOLUME | Initial volume in % from 0-100. Default for softvol: 50. For the alsa mixer: the current volume. |
|
| DEVICE_NAME | Device name (spaces allowed). | |
| DEVICE_TYPE | speaker | Displayed device type: computer, tablet, smartphone, speaker, tv, avr (Audio/Video Receiver), stb (Set-Top Box), audiodongle, gameconsole, castaudio, castvideo, automobile, smartwatch, chromebook, carthing, homething. Defaults to speaker. |
| DEVICE | Audio device to use. Use ? to list options if using alsa, portaudio or rodio. Enter the path to the output when using pipe. Defaults to the backend's default. |
|
| FORMAT | S16 | Output format: F64, F32, S32, S24, S24_3, S16. Defaults to S16. |
| ENABLE_CACHE | Y or y to enable, uses corresponding volume. |
|
| ENABLE_SYSTEM_CACHE | Y or y to enable (recommended), uses corresponding volume (also recommended to use). |
|
| CACHE_SIZE_LIMIT | Limits the size of the cache for audio files. It's possible to use suffixes like K, M or G. |
|
| DISABLE_AUDIO_CACHE | Y or y to disable. |
|
| DISABLE_CREDENTIAL_CACHE | Y or y to disable. |
|
| MIXER | softvol | Mixer to use: softvol, alsa. Defaults to softvol. |
| ALSA_MIXER_CONTROL | PCM | alsa mixer control, e.g. PCM, Master or similar. Defaults to PCM. |
| ALSA_MIXER_DEVICE | alsa mixer device, e.g hw:0 or similar from aplay -l. Defaults to --device if specified, default otherwise. |
|
| ALSA_MIXER_INDEX | 0 | alsa mixer index, Index of the cards mixer. Defaults to 0. |
| QUIET | Only log warning and error messages. Y or y to enable |
|
| VERBOSE | Enable verbose output. Y or y to enable. |
|
| PROXY | Use a proxy for HTTP requests. Proxy should be an HTTP proxy in the form http://ip:port, and can also be passed using the all-lowercase http_proxy environment variable. |
|
| AP_PORT | Connect to an AP with a specified port. If no AP with that port is present a fallback AP will be used. Available ports are usually 80, 443 and 4070. |
|
| DISABLE_DISCOVERY | Disable zeroconf discovery mode. Y or y to disable discovery. |
|
| DITHER | Dither algorithm: none, gpdf, tpdf, tpdf_hp. Defaults to tpdf for formats S16, S24, S24_3 and none for other formats. | |
| ZEROCONF_PORT | The port the internal server advertises over zeroconf: 1 - 65535. Ports <= 1024 may require root privileges. |
|
| ENABLE_VOLUME_NORMALISATION | Enables volume normalisation for librespot. Y or y to enable. |
|
| NORMALISATION_METHOD | Specify the normalisation method to use: basic, dynamic. Defaults to dynamic. |
|
| NORMALISATION_GAIN_TYPE | Specify the normalisation gain type to use: track, album, auto. Defaults to auto. |
|
| NORMALISATION_PREGAIN | Pregain (dB) applied by the normalisation. Defaults to 0. |
|
| NORMALISATION_THRESHOLD | Threshold (dBFS) to prevent clipping. Defaults to -2.0. |
|
| NORMALISATION_ATTACK | Attack time (ms) in which the dynamic limiter is reducing gain. Defaults to 5. |
|
| NORMALISATION_RELEASE | Release or decay time (ms) in which the dynamic limiter is restoring gain. Defaults to 100. |
|
| NORMALISATION_KNEE | Knee steepness of the dynamic limiter. Default is 1.0. |
|
| VOLUME_CTRL | Volume control type cubic, fixed, linear, log. Defaults to log. |
|
| VOLUME_RANGE | Range of the volume control (dB). Default for softvol: 60. For the alsa mixer: what the control supports. |
|
| AUTOPLAY | Autoplay similar songs when your music ends. Y or y to enable. |
|
| DISABLE_GAPLESS | Disables gapless playback by forcing the sink to close between tracks. Y or y to disable gapless mode. |
|
| PASSTHROUGH | Pass a raw stream to the output. Only works with the pipe and subprocess backends. Y or y to enable. |
|
| PUID | Set this value the the user which should run the application, defaults to 1000 if not set when using the pulseaudio backend |
|
| PGID | Set this value the the user which should run the application, defaults to 1000 if not set when using the pulseaudio backend |
|
| AUDIO_GID | Specifies the gid for the group audio, it is required if you want to use, e.g., the alsa backend in user mode. Refer to this page from my squeezelite-docker repository for more details. |
|
| PARAMETER_PRIORITY | Where to look for a parameter first: env or file. For example, the credentials.txt file compared to SPOTIFY_USERNAME and SPOTIFY_PASSWORD environment variables. Defaults to file, meaning that each file is considered if it exists and if it contains the required values. |
|
| LOG_COMMAND_LINE | Set to Y or y to enable, N or n to disable. Defaults to Y. |
| Volume | Description |
|---|---|
| /data/cache | Volume for cache, used by --cache (ENABLE_CACHE) |
| /data/system-cache | Volume for system-cache (recommended), used by --system-cache (ENABLE_SYSTEM_CACHE). |
| /user/config | Volume for user-provided configuration. Might contain a credentials.txt file. |
Please not that the volume /data/system-cache will contain the encrypted credentials. Enabling the system cache and using a dedicated volume will help keeping players discoverable by the Spotify web app when you don't provide credentials to LibreSpot.
Using docker-compose is preferable for multiple reason, a notable one is the fact that it avoids a few headaches with password escaping, in case of special characters.
Among the docker-compose.yaml files hereby presented, those which use credentials require a .env file at the same level of the docker-compose.yaml file itself. The .env file should have the following format:
SPOTIFY_USERNAME=myusername
SPOTIFY_PASSWORD=mypassword
With credentials:
---
version: "3"
services:
librespot-u12:
image: giof71/librespot:latest
container_name: librespot-u12
devices:
- /dev/snd:/dev/snd
environment:
- DEVICE=hw:x20,0
- SPOTIFY_USERNAME=${SPOTIFY_USERNAME}
- SPOTIFY_PASSWORD=${SPOTIFY_PASSWORD}
- BACKEND=alsa
- BITRATE=320
- INITIAL_VOLUME=100
- DEVICE_NAME=gustard-u12
Discovery mode:
---
version: "3"
services:
librespot-u12:
image: giof71/librespot:latest
container_name: librespot-u12
network_mode: host
devices:
- /dev/snd:/dev/snd
environment:
- DEVICE=hw:x20,0
- BACKEND=alsa
- BITRATE=320
- INITIAL_VOLUME=100
- DEVICE_NAME=gustard-u12
With credentials:
---
version: "3"
services:
librespot-pulse:
image: giof71/librespot:latest
container_name: librespot-pulse
environment:
- SPOTIFY_USERNAME=${SPOTIFY_USERNAME}
- SPOTIFY_PASSWORD=${SPOTIFY_PASSWORD}
- BACKEND=pulseaudio
- BITRATE=320
- INITIAL_VOLUME=100
- DEVICE_NAME=manjaro-xeon10-pulse
volumes:
- /run/user/1000/pulse:/run/user/1000/pulse
Discovery mode:
---
version: "3"
services:
librespot-pulse:
image: giof71/librespot:latest
container_name: librespot-pulse
network_mode: host
environment:
- BACKEND=pulseaudio
- BITRATE=320
- INITIAL_VOLUME=100
- DEVICE_NAME=manjaro-xeon10-pulse
volumes:
- /run/user/1000/pulse:/run/user/1000/pulse
With credentials:
docker run -d --name librespot \
--device /dev/snd \
-e DEVICE_NAME=kodi-living-pi4-tuner \
-e INITIAL_VOLUME=100 \
-e BACKEND=alsa \
-e DEVICE=hw:D10,0 \
-e FORMAT=S32 \
-e BITRATE=320 \
-e INITIAL_VOLUME=100 \
-e SPOTIFY_USERNAME=myusername \
-e SPOTIFY_PASSWORD=mypassword \
--restart unless-stopped \
giof71/librespot:latest
Discovery mode:
docker run -d --name librespot \
--device /dev/snd \
--network host \
-e DEVICE_NAME=kodi-living-pi4-tuner \
-e INITIAL_VOLUME=100 \
-e BACKEND=alsa \
-e DEVICE=hw:D10,0 \
-e FORMAT=S32 \
-e BITRATE=320 \
-e INITIAL_VOLUME=100 \
--restart unless-stopped \
giof71/librespot:latest
Discovery mode, using docker --user:
See here for a sample configuration using a specified user (uid) in a docker-compose file.
Please note that with this DAC I had to specify S32 as the format. It would not work with the default (which is S32 for librespot).
With credentials:
docker run -d
-e PUID=1000 \
-e PGID=1000 \
-e BACKEND=pulseaudio \
-e BITRATE=320 \
-e SPOTIFY_USERNAME=myusername \
-e SPOTIFY_PASSWORD=mypassword \
-e DEVICE_NAME=librespot-pulse \
-v /run/user/1000/pulse:/run/user/1000/pulse \
--name librespot-pulse \
giof71/librespot:latest
Discovery mode:
docker run -d
-e PUID=1000 \
-e PGID=1000 \
--network host \
-e BACKEND=pulseaudio \
-e BITRATE=320 \
-e DEVICE_NAME=librespot-pulse \
-v /run/user/1000/pulse:/run/user/1000/pulse \
--name librespot-pulse \
giof71/librespot:latest
When using a desktop system with PulseAudio, running a docker-compose with a restart=unless-stopped is likely to cause issues to the entire PulseAudio. At least that is what is systematically happening to me on my desktop systems.
You might want to create a user-level systemd unit. In order to do that, move to the pulse directory of this repo, create a valid envfile.txt with your credentials using envfile-sample.txt as a template, then run the following to install the service:
./install.sh
After that, the service can be controlled using ./start.sh, ./stop.sh, ./restart.sh.
You can completely uninstall the service by running:
./uninstall.sh`
Of course, you might simply want run the Spotify binary client or the web player instead of this service, but this alternative will allow you to control the player on your desktop system from e.g. a smartphone or any Spotify client. And it will consume significantly less resources.
Credentials can be stored on a separate file and mounted as /user/config/credentials.txt. The format is the same as the standard .env file.
By defaults, SPOTIFY_USERNAME and SPOTIFY_PASSWORD entries found in this file have the priority against the correspondent environment variables, unless you set the variable PARAMETER_PRIORITY to env.
For discovery mode to work, you will need to specify network_mode=host on the compose file. Otherwise the player will not be discovered.
In this mode, you will not need to provide username and password, but OTOH any premium spotify user on your network will be able to use your Librespot Player.
Please note that even in "discovery" mode, the premium account is always required for playback, but it would only not be required to provide the credentials to the container.
I am currently relying, as mentioned before, to the Raspotify project to build this image. Of what Raspotify provides, this container only uses librespot.
I have a branch dedicated to this issue: the problem is with the build on GitHub via QEMU, which fails for the armhf architecture.
Any help in resolving this issue is welcome.
You can build (or rebuild) the image by opening a terminal from the root of the repository and issuing the following command:
docker build . -t giof71/librespot
It will take very little time even on a Raspberry Pi. When it's finished, you can run the container following the previous instructions.
Just be careful to use the tag you have built.
| Change Date | Major Changes |
|---|---|
| 2024-09-21 | Use exec instead of eval |
| 2024-09-05 | Handle non-writable volumes more gracefully |
| 2024-09-05 | Fix user and group management |
| 2024-03-07 | Fix switch for normalisation pregain (see #81) |
| 2023-12-20 | Support docker --user mode (see #77) |
| 2023-10-06 | Change ownership of volumes (see #75) |
| 2023-09-05 | Clean Dockerfile (see #73) |
| 2023-06-23 | Pass device name in quotes (see #67) |
| 2023-06-23 | Daily builds update latest images |
| 2023-06-23 | Add support for bookworm |
| 2023-05-13 | Routine rebuild |
| 2022-10-28 | Credentials are not exposed with the command line output |
| 2022-10-28 | Enabled reading credentials from file |
| 2022-10-28 | Allowed configurability over command line being logged |
| 2022-10-27 | Updated github action versions |
| 2022-10-20 | Quotes on a few environment variables |
| 2022-10-08 | PulseAudio user-level systemd service introduced |
| 2022-10-04 | Feature complete (2022-10-04.1) |
| 2022-10-04 | Documentation enrichment and cleanup |
| 2022-10-04 | Support for cache and system-cache |
| 2022-10-04 | Initial Release (2022-10-04) |