Headphones on a Seedbox: Music Automation (Lidarr Predecessor)

What Headphones Is

Headphones is an automated music downloader. You add artists, Headphones watches your indexers for new releases, and grabs them through your torrent or NZB client. Same workflow as Sonarr or Radarr, applied to music.

It's been around since 2010 and predates Lidarr. Most music automation has moved to Lidarr, but Headphones still has its niche: it handles artist matching and discography pulls slightly differently and some users prefer the way it picks releases.

Should You Use Headphones or Lidarr?

Honest take:

• Lidarr. Modern, actively developed, *arr family conventions, ties cleanly into Prowlarr.
• Headphones. Older, lighter feature set, slower release cadence. Some long-time users prefer how it matches.

For a fresh install, Lidarr. Headphones if you've used it before and want what you know.

The rest of this guide covers Headphones specifically.

Why Run It on a Seedbox?

Music automation needs uptime and indexer reach:

• 24/7 uptime so monitored artists get checked
• One-click install in the panel
• Sonarr, Radarr, Prowlarr alongside if you want to layer
• 10 Gbit so big releases finish quickly
• EU servers in Luxembourg, France, and Netherlands

Installing Headphones

Open the Bytesized Panel, find Headphones in the app catalog, click install. Panel handles the install, the reverse proxy, the URL.

Click "Open" to land on the dashboard.

First-Run Setup

1. Settings > Search Providers. Add NZB indexers (Newznab) and torrent indexers. Headphones supports the same Torznab and Newznab schemas as Sonarr.
2. Settings > Download Settings. Connect your NZB client (SABnzbd, NZBGet) or torrent client (qBittorrent, Deluge, rTorrent).
3. Settings > Download Settings > Music Folder. Standard layout is ~/files/music.
4. Add an artist. Search by name, hit Add.

Headphones pulls discography from MusicBrainz; the artist match is usually right but occasionally needs disambiguation.

Quality Profiles

Headphones doesn't have *arr-style quality profiles. Instead, you set a global preference for "Preferred Bitrate" or "Preferred Quality" under Settings. The app grabs the closest match available.

Common picks:

• 320kbps MP3 for compatibility
• FLAC for archival
• V0 VBR for a balance

Adjust to taste.

Common Gotchas

Indexer search returns nothing. Headphones expects the indexer to support music searches. Some Newznab indexers don't expose music categories well; check the indexer's documentation.

Artist match wrong. MusicBrainz has multiple artists with the same name. Use the Headphones search and pick the right MBID.

Releases imported with wrong tags. Headphones renames based on its tag rules. If the releases come in pre-tagged with messy data, set Headphones to retag from MusicBrainz under Settings > Library Settings.

Web UI looks dated. It is. The app's UI hasn't been refreshed in years. If polish matters, Lidarr's UI is much cleaner.

FAQ

Is Headphones free? Yes. Free and open source.

Should I use Headphones or Lidarr? Lidarr for new installs. Headphones if you're on it and don't want to switch.

Does it work with Subsonic, mStream, Plex? Headphones grabs and tags. The downstream music server reads the tagged files. They don't talk directly; they share the same folder.

Will it find FLAC? Yes. Set the preferred quality to FLAC and Headphones picks lossless when it's available.

Can I run Headphones and Lidarr together? Yes, on different folders. Most people pick one to avoid duplicate libraries.

Ready to Set It Up?

Browse Appbox plans, install Headphones from the panel, plug in your indexers and download client.