Self-hosted Media Streaming - Audio Streaming: what licence are you actually agreeing to

“Self-hosted” and “open source” are not the same promise, and the lists that recommend these projects rarely separate them. This page sorts 28 media streaming - audio streaming projects by the licence you are actually agreeing to, as read on 2026-08-20.

13 of 28 are permissive: run them, change them, keep your changes to yourself. 3 are AGPL, where serving a modified copy over a network obliges you to publish those changes, which is the clause that catches people who self-host for a team. 1 is not open source at all, carrying a proprietary or restricted-use licence. The remaining 11 are ordinary copyleft.

Project	Licence	What that means	Stars	Maintenance	Language
koel	MIT	Permissive, no strings	17,222	Active	PHP
Beets	MIT	Permissive, no strings	15,563	Active	Python
Mopidy	Apache-2.0	Permissive, no strings	8,558	Active	Python
musikcube	BSD-3-Clause	Permissive, no strings	4,825	Active	C++
Black Candy	MIT	Permissive, no strings	4,402	Active	Ruby
AzuraCast	Apache-2.0	Permissive, no strings	4,004	Active	PHP
Polaris	MIT	Permissive, no strings	2,719	Active	Rust
SwingMusic	MIT	Permissive, no strings	2,045	Active	Python
multi-scrobbler	MIT	Permissive, no strings	1,182	Active	TypeScript
Audioserve	MIT	Permissive, no strings	856	Active	Rust
Stretto	MIT	Permissive, no strings	634	Active	JavaScript
vod2pod-rss	MIT	Permissive, no strings	381	Active	Rust
Funkwhale	BSD-3-Clause	Permissive, no strings	-	Not measured	Python
Navidrome Music Server	GPL-3.0	Copyleft, publish your changes	22,987	Active	Go
Audiobookshelf	GPL-3.0	Copyleft, publish your changes	14,039	Active	JavaScript
Snapcast	GPL-3.0	Copyleft, publish your changes	7,824	Active	C++
mpd	GPL-2.0	Copyleft, publish your changes	2,745	Active	C++
gonic	GPL-3.0	Copyleft, publish your changes	2,514	Active	Go
mStream	GPL-3.0	Copyleft, publish your changes	2,380	Active	JavaScript
Lyrion Music Server	GPL-2.0	Copyleft, publish your changes	1,760	Active	Perl
LMS	GPL-3.0	Copyleft, publish your changes	1,660	Active	C++
moOde Audio	GPL-3.0	Copyleft, publish your changes	1,402	Active	PHP
Pinepods	GPL-3.0	Copyleft, publish your changes	960	Active	Rust
BotWave	GPL-3.0	Copyleft, publish your changes	140	Active	Python
Ampache	AGPL-3.0	AGPL, network copyleft	3,823	Active	PHP
LibreTime	AGPL-3.0	AGPL, network copyleft	942	Active	PHP
Supysonic	AGPL-3.0	AGPL, network copyleft	290	Active	Python
Väinö	⊘ Proprietary	Not open source, restricted use	-	Not measured	Python

What the licence column means

Permissive (MIT, Apache-2.0, BSD, ISC): do what you like, keep changes private.
Copyleft (GPL, LGPL, MPL, EPL): changes you distribute must ship their source.
AGPL, network copyleft: the same, and running it for others over a network counts as distribution. This is the one that surprises people who self-host for a team or a side business.
Source-available (SSPL, BUSL, Elastic, Commons Clause): not open source. Reading and self-use are usually fine; offering it as a service is not.
Other / unstated: the dataset lists no licence we could classify. Check the repo before you rely on it.

The Maintenance column is a second, independent check: the age of the most recent commit on the default branch, read from the GitHub API on 2026-08-20. Active is within 180 days, Slowing is 180 to 365, Dormant is over a year, Archived means the maintainer marked the repo read-only, and Not measured means the project is hosted outside GitHub so the check does not apply.

Source data from awesome-selfhosted-data, used under CC BY-SA 3.0. Licence family grouping and maintenance status are computed by this site (from the upstream licence fields and the GitHub API) and are not part of the upstream dataset. Licence classification is a summary, not legal advice: check the project’s own LICENSE file before you rely on it. This page is published under the same licence.