Airsonic vs Black Candy
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted media servers options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
Airsonic
Archived
Free, web-based media streamer derived from Subsonic
VS
Black Candy
Music streaming server
| Feature | Airsonic | Black Candy |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 15 · At risk | 89 · Excellent |
| Status | Archived | Actively maintained |
| Category | Media Servers | Media Servers |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Language | Java | Ruby |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 512 MB | 512 MB |
| Deployment | docker, bare-metal | docker |
| GitHub stars | ★ 2,045 | ★ 4,418 |
| First released | 2017 | None |
| Replaces | Spotify | Spotify, Apple Music |
What are Airsonic and Black Candy?
Airsonic
Airsonic is a free, web-based media streamer providing access to your music collection from anywhere. It is the community fork of Subsonic and supports the Subsonic API for use with many client apps.
- Subsonic API support
- Multi-user with roles
- On-the-fly transcoding
- Podcast support
Black Candy
A self hosted music streaming server. Contribute to blackcandy-org/blackcandy development by creating an account on GitHub.
- Personal music streaming
- Responsive web player
- Multi-user accounts
- PWA support
Airsonic vs Black Candy: key differences
The biggest difference is maintenance: Airsonic's repository is archived and no longer developed, while Black Candy is actively maintained. Airsonic is written in Java, while Black Candy is built with Ruby. Licensing differs — GPL-3.0 for Airsonic versus MIT for Black Candy. Black Candy has the considerably larger community, at 4,418 GitHub stars versus 2,045.
Why pick each one
Choose Airsonic if…
- Released under the GPL-3.0 license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Active community (2k GitHub stars)
- Written in Java
Watch out for
- Original repo less active
- Java memory usage
Choose Black Candy if…
- Clean modern interface
- Simple to deploy
Watch out for
- Music only
- Smaller ecosystem
Frequently asked questions
Is Airsonic or Black Candy better?
Neither is universally better. Black Candy has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Airsonic and Black Candy free and open-source?
Yes. Airsonic is licensed under GPL-3.0 and Black Candy under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Airsonic and Black Candy with Docker?
Airsonic: yes. Black Candy: yes.