You know that feeling when you've spent years meticulously collecting music—thousands of albums, tens of thousands of tracks—and it just sits there? Maybe you've got a Plex server or something similar, but it's passive. You have to choose what to play. What if your collection could come alive, broadcasting 24/7 like a real radio station with its own personality? That's exactly what one Redditor in the DataHoarder community did, and the reaction was electric. Over 500 upvotes and a hundred comments poured in, filled with questions about the how, the why, and the "can I do this too?"
This isn't just about playing music. It's about creating a living, breathing entity from your digital archive. In 2026, with the right mix of automation, organization, and a bit of technical grit, you can transform your static library into a dynamic broadcast. Let's break down exactly how it's done, answering the community's burning questions and adding some pro-tips they didn't even know to ask.
The Hoarder's Dream: From Static Library to Living Stream
The original poster's setup, dubbed MansionNET, is a classic data hoarder's paradise. We're talking about 50,000+ tracks. That's a number that makes most people's eyes glaze over. But here's the kicker: about 51% of it is in FLAC format. For the uninitiated, FLAC is lossless audio—it's the digital equivalent of a pristine vinyl record, preserving every detail. The rest is high-quality MP3 320 kbps and M4A files. This isn't a haphazard download folder; it's a curated museum of sound.
The real magic, and the core question from the Reddit thread, was: "How do you make this listenable?" A library this size is overwhelming. The answer is automation and curation. You don't just hit shuffle on 50,000 songs. You create rules, moods, and flows. The community was fascinated by this transition from a cold storage archive to a warm, engaging broadcast. It turns a personal hobby into a shared experience, even if the audience is just you and a few friends. The psychological shift is huge—your data isn't just being stored; it's being used, enjoyed, and given a purpose.
The Engine Room: Lidarr and the Soulseek Connection
This is where the tech gets interesting. The OP used Lidarr. If you're in the data hoarding space, you probably know Lidarr—it's like Sonarr or Radarr, but for music. It automates the finding, downloading, and organizing of music. But the secret sauce mentioned was the "Tubifarry plugin with native Soulseek integration."
This detail sparked dozens of questions. Soulseek is a peer-to-peer file-sharing network that's been a haven for music collectors for decades, especially for hard-to-find tracks, obscure albums, and specific editions. Integrating it directly into Lidarr via a plugin is a game-changer. It automates the most tedious part of hoarding: the hunt. You set your wanted list in Lidarr, and it scours Soulseek to complete your collection. This isn't about piracy in the mainstream sense; it's about archival and access for enthusiasts. The plugin handles the protocol, the queues, and the downloads, funneling everything into your neatly organized Lidarr structure. It turns acquisition from a manual chore into a background process.
Broadcasting the Hoard: Icecast, AzuraCast, and the Streaming Stack
Okay, you've got the music. How do you broadcast it? The Reddit thread was full of guesses: "Are you using Icecast?" "Is it AzuraCast?" The OP confirmed the use of Icecast, a venerable, open-source streaming media server. It's the backbone of thousands of internet radio stations.
Here's the workflow: You need a source client that plays the music and sends the audio stream to the Icecast server. Popular options include BUTT (Broadcast Using This Tool) or a more automated system like Liquidsoap. Liquidsoap is powerful—it lets you script your playlists, manage transitions, insert jingles, and even handle live scheduling. You can tell it: "Play 3 songs from this indie rock folder, then 1 from the 80s synth-pop folder, then a station ID, and never play the same artist twice within an hour." It turns your massive library into a coherent radio station with rules and personality. The Icecast server then takes that stream and makes it available to listeners via a standard URL that can be opened in any media player like VLC or iTunes.
The 24/7 Factor: Automation, Scheduling, and Uptime
"How do you keep it running 24/7?" was a major concern. This isn't a laptop you leave on your desk. The OP's MansionNET implies a home server setup. In 2026, this is more accessible than ever. A small, low-power machine like an Intel NUC or a used mini-PC can run this entire stack silently in a closet. The key is reliability.
You need to automate everything. The music acquisition via Lidarr? Automated. The playlist generation and sequencing via Liquidsoap? Automated and scripted. The streaming server (Icecast) should be set up as a system service so it restarts automatically if the server reboots. For the truly diligent, you'd use containerization with Docker. Package each component—Lidarr, the music player, Icecast—into separate Docker containers. This makes the system portable, easy to back up, and incredibly stable. A Docker Compose file can define the whole orchestra, and it starts up perfectly every time. This approach directly answered the community's worries about maintenance and headaches.
Data Management: Organizing 50,000 Tracks for Sanity
With great hoarding comes great responsibility. A pile of 50,000 files is useless. They need to be organized in a way your broadcasting software can understand. Lidarr does the heavy lifting here, enforcing a consistent naming and folder structure. Think: Music/Artist/Album (Year)/TrackNumber - Title.flac.
But for broadcasting, you need more than structure—you need metadata. This is where tools like MusicBrainz Picard come in. It scans your files and tags them with rich, accurate metadata: artist, album, genre, year, composer, even the mood. This metadata is gold for your radio automation. Your Liquidsoap script can use genre tags to build themed hours. It can use the year to create a "1990s Alternative" block. Without clean, consistent metadata, your 50,000-track library is just noise. The community discussion highlighted that the real work isn't in the downloading—it's in the meticulous tagging and organizing that happens afterward.
Beyond the Basics: Advanced Curation and Audience Tools
The Reddit thread wasn't just about the "how." It quickly moved to the "what next?" People asked about requests, play stats, and a web interface. This is where you level up from a simple stream to a full-fledged station.
For a web interface, many hoarders pair AzuraCast with Icecast. AzuraCast is a web-based, self-hosted radio station management suite. It provides a beautiful public-facing page showing the currently playing track, history, and even a request system where listeners can ask for songs from your library. It also gives you, the admin, deep analytics: what times people listen, what songs get skipped, etc. You can also integrate with Last.fm to scrobble all played tracks, creating a public record of your station's journey through your collection. These tools transform your private hobby into a shareable service with community features.
Legal Gray Areas and Ethical Hoarding
No discussion in DataHoarder is complete without touching on the legalities. Broadcasting music you've acquired, especially via P2P, raises eyebrows. The community is acutely aware of this. The consensus, and a key point in the thread, is about scale and intent.
If you're streaming to a handful of friends and family, you're in a personal-use gray area similar to playing music in your living room with guests over. The moment you open it to the public, run ads, or get a large audience, you cross a line. Most self-hosters in this space keep their streams private, shared via a direct URL with a small group. They view their hoard as a personal archive, and the radio station as a novel way to interact with it. The ethics are deeply tied to the hoarder mentality: preservation and access, not commercial exploitation. It's about saving media from obscurity and giving it a second life.
Getting Started: Your Roadmap to Self-Hosted Radio in 2026
Inspired? Here's a condensed roadmap. Start with the music. Get Lidarr up and running. Organize what you have. Don't worry about having 50,000 tracks—start with 500. The principles are the same.
Next, set up your broadcasting core. I'd recommend starting with a Dockerized AzuraCast installation. It bundles Liquidsoap, Icecast, and the management web UI into one neat package. It's the easiest on-ramp. Get it playing a test playlist. Once that works, point it at your real music library.
Finally, think about hardware and uptime. Move everything to a dedicated, low-power machine. Configure it to start automatically on boot. Set up monitoring (a simple cron job to check if the stream is alive can work wonders). Share the link with a friend. Hit play. And just like that, your hoard is no longer silent.
The journey from a sprawling, silent music library to a living, breathing radio station is one of the most satisfying projects in the data hoarding world. It answers the perennial question: "What am I keeping all this for?" The answer is now clear: for the joy of discovery, for sharing, and for creating something uniquely yours from the digital artifacts you've preserved. As the original poster proved, with some automation and a clear vision, your entire collection can have a voice.
