Open Source Alternatives to Apple Music

Switching from Apple Music to an open source alternative means streaming a library you actually own rather than a licensed catalog that can change or lose tracks at a label’s request — and unlike Apple Music, every option below runs on Linux and Windows as well as macOS. Navidrome and Jellyfin are both self-hosted servers that stream your own ripped or purchased files through a modern web player and Subsonic-compatible mobile apps; Jellyfin bundles video and photo support alongside music if you want a single media server, while Navidrome stays focused on audio only. Funkwhale takes a federated approach instead, letting independently run community servers interconnect so a personal library can be extended by following other pods. Strawberry, meanwhile, is a desktop player rather than a server — a strong fit if you just want to manage and play a local collection without hosting anything. None of these match Apple Music’s tens of millions of licensed tracks or built-in discovery out of the box, but all give you full control over what’s actually available to stream.