Tech Veteran Ditches Spotify Subscription to Build an Offline Digital Jukebox with a Raspberry Pi

For years, consumer technology journalist and former IT professional Brian Burgess found himself falling into a familiar routine. While listening to music on Spotify, he realized that virtually every track streaming through his speakers was composed of songs he already physically owned. Facing what felt like a redundant monthly expense—paying to stream music he had already purchased on compact disc and vinyl—Burgess decided to cancel his streaming subscriptions and rethink how he consumed audio at home.

The result of this DIY pivot is a custom-built, affordable digital jukebox powered by a spare Raspberry Pi 4. Connected directly to his living room television and audio-video (AV) receiver, the makeshift system pulls lossless audio from either a local drive or a centralized network location. By converting the bulk of his legacy physical music collection into high-resolution FLAC files, Burgess managed to eliminate a recurring monthly bill while simultaneously upgrading his home audio fidelity. In an era dominated by compressed streaming formats and algorithmic recommendations, the setup offers a return to tangible, self-hosted media ownership, underscored by the reality that lossless audio simply sounds better than compressed cloud streams.

Turning a Pi into a Jukebox

Rather than starting from scratch with a complex software stack, Burgess leveraged existing hardware and software he already had running in his household. He had previously deployed LibreELEC on his Raspberry Pi 4 to serve as a lightweight, dedicated Chromecast replacement. LibreELEC is a streamlined, pared-down Linux distribution designed explicitly to do one thing exceptionally well: boot directly into Kodi, transforming inexpensive hardware into a lean, efficient media center.

Because the operating system is so lightweight, it runs invisibly in the background, consuming minimal resources while providing a snappy user interface. Recognizing that self-hosted media is fundamentally about utilizing physical discs already present in a collector’s library, Burgess expanded the Pi’s responsibilities to handle audio alongside video. Utilizing the Jellyfin for Kodi plugin that was already in place for his movie and television collection, he integrated his expansive library of ripped FLAC files into the interface.

The architecture of the system grants users multiple avenues for media ingestion. Music can be streamed directly from a dedicated USB drive physically connected to the Raspberry Pi, or pulled dynamically from a home media server running software like Plex or Jellyfin. For Burgess, the integration meant he could ditch his commercial music subscriptions without sacrificing convenience, utilizing the familiar Kodi interface solely to access his personal server and orchestrate music playback through his high-end AV receiver.

Listening to Tunes and Managing Local Media

Once the massive music library was successfully indexed, navigating the collection proved seamless. By utilizing a standard television remote, Burgess could interact with Kodi’s music section, which automatically populates albums alongside their corresponding cover art and metadata. However, navigating through thousands of tracks to decide on a listening queue can sometimes feel burdensome, and curating manual playlists requires upfront time and effort.

To bypass the friction of active curation, Burgess turned to one of Kodi’s built-in features: Party Mode. This function transforms the media center into an automated, always-on digital jukebox. When activated, the system dynamically selects ten random songs from the library to form a continuous, revolving queue. As each track concludes, the software automatically appends another selection from the underlying database.

If a randomly selected track does not match the mood of the room, the listener can instantly skip it for the next song—a modern convenience that improves upon the traditional coin-operated jukeboxes of the past, where a bad selection meant enduring an entire song. For moments when specific albums or curated playlists are preferred, the Party Mode feature can be toggled off instantly, returning full manual control to the user.

Mobile Control and Network Flexibility

While Kodi is often viewed as a legacy project by some technology enthusiasts, it continues to incorporate modern niceties that bridge the gap between traditional hardware and mobile devices. Rather than remaining tethered to the television screen to manage playback, Burgess utilizes remote companion applications to control the Raspberry Pi from anywhere inside his home.

By repurposing an older OnePlus smartphone as a dedicated home controller, he installed Kore, the official Android remote app for Kodi. This allows him to walk around the house while maintaining total command over his music library. From the palm of his hand, he can browse albums, queue specific tracks, add songs to the playback list, and manage Party Mode settings on the fly, all while the audio is cleanly routed through his AV receiver. The phone acts strictly as a remote control surface rather than an audio endpoint; playing the music directly on the mobile device would require configuring additional protocols like UPnP, DLNA, or a native Jellyfin client. Nevertheless, the dedicated phone-and-Pi combination delivers a cohesive, responsive at-home jukebox experience.

When configuring the system’s storage architecture, Burgess also weighed the operational differences between relying on a home server versus a locally attached drive. Even when a Raspberry Pi is wired directly into a local network via Ethernet, occasional network congestion, server reboots, or routing hiccups can occasionally interrupt a listening session. To insulate his audio setup from potential network dropouts, he acknowledges the practical advantage of keeping an external USB drive packed with music directly attached to the Pi.

At the same time, managing dual storage locations requires careful oversight to prevent duplicate entries and database conflicts within Kodi, as local media sources and network add-ons do not always share identical metadata registries. By streamlining his synchronization strategy—keeping newly added tracks available on Jellyfin while allowing them to sync over to the Raspberry Pi, or utilizing a direct external drive when network stability is paramount—Burgess has tailored a resilient listening environment.

Ultimately, connecting a Raspberry Pi running LibreELEC and Kodi to a living room media center demonstrates the viability of moving away from recurring subscription services in favor of self-hosted ownership. By pairing local FLAC storage with automated queueing modes and mobile remote management, the project breathes new utility into spare hardware, delivering an adaptable, high-fidelity music experience controlled entirely from the comfort of a couch or the palm of a hand.