I Built Preludarr: A Self-Hosted Theme Music Manager for Plex, Jellyfin & Emby

shedman214 — Sun, 01 Nov 2026 21:10:39 +0000

I've spent a lot of time building and improving my self-hosted media setup with Plex, Jellyfin, and other media management tools.

One thing I particularly enjoy about streaming services is the experience of browsing a library and hearing the theme music for a show.

I wanted to bring more of that experience to my own media collection—especially for anime, where opening and ending songs are such an important part of the experience.

That's why I started working on Preludarr.

After considerable development and testing in my homelab, I'm releasing it publicly as a free, open-source project.

GitHub: https://github.com/shedman214/preludarr

🎵 What is Preludarr?

Preludarr is a self-hosted theme music manager for Plex, Jellyfin, and Emby.

It discovers theme music for anime, TV shows, and movies, lets you preview available tracks, and installs your selected audio as theme.mp3 inside the corresponding media folder.

Instead of manually searching for songs, downloading audio, converting files, and copying them into each show's directory, Preludarr brings the process into one web interface.

The goal is simple:

Make your personal media library feel more alive.

📺 What can it do?

Anime openings and endings

Preludarr uses AnimeThemes to find opening and ending songs for anime TV series and movies.

You can explore available OP and ED tracks, preview different versions, and choose which song you want to install.

Anime matching uses title and year information, with additional metadata from AniList and the AniDB title list.

Theme discovery for TV shows and movies

Anime isn't the only focus.

Preludarr also supports theme suggestions for television shows and movies using sources such as Plex TV Themes and ThemerrDB.

Optional YouTube searching is available for users who provide their own API credentials and cookies file.

A visual media library

Preludarr provides a library interface where you can:

Browse your titles by root folder.
Search and filter your collection.
Identify titles missing theme music.
Review and select available soundtracks.
Manage installed themes.
Use a Theme Queue to review multiple titles.

You can also configure optional automatic anime theme installation, which is disabled by default.

Theme review

The Theme Browser lets you review available music before making changes to your library.

I wanted users to have control over what gets installed, rather than relying entirely on automatic matching.

Plex, Jellyfin, Emby, Sonarr, and Radarr integrations

Preludarr supports optional integrations with popular media server and library management applications.

These integrations help identify titles and refresh media servers after a theme is installed.

Connection options include Plex sign-in, Jellyfin Quick Connect, and Emby authentication.

Movie collection themes

Preludarr can also manage theme music for movie collections.

Plex collection themes are uploaded through Plex. Experimental Jellyfin and Emby collection support is also included, although playback depends on the server and client.

Backup, recovery, and customization

Other features include:

Manual and scheduled configuration backups.
Guarded restoration and rollback protection.
Theme replacement recovery and Undo.
Library health checks.
Dark, light, OLED, and customizable visual themes.
A web interface for managing root folders and integrations.

🐳 Installing with Docker Compose

Preludarr is available through GitHub Container Registry.

Here's a basic Docker Compose example:

services:
  preludarr:
    image: ghcr.io/shedman214/preludarr:latest
    container_name: preludarr
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "8788:8787"
    environment:
      - PUID=1000
      - PGID=1000
      - TZ=America/Chicago
    volumes:
      - ./preludarr-config:/config
      - /path/to/tv:/media/tv_shows
      - /path/to/movies:/media/movies

Change the folder paths, user/group IDs, and time zone to match your environment.

Your media mounts must permit writing theme.mp3 if you want to install themes.

Start it with:

docker compose up -d

Then open:

http://YOUR-SERVER-IP:8788

On first launch, Preludarr provides a one-time setup code in its container logs. Use that code to create your account, then add your library root folders under Settings → Media Management.

For Unraid users, a Docker template is also available in the GitHub repository. The Community Applications submission is underway.

🔐 What about existing media files?

One of my priorities was making sure Preludarr wouldn't damage an existing media collection.

Preludarr does not rename or delete your video files.

Theme installations target the selected media folder, and existing theme music is protected from automatic replacement by default.

When you explicitly replace a theme, Preludarr preserves the previous version in a recovery location so you can undo the change.

The application also includes backups for its database and settings.

As with any application that writes to media directories, I recommend testing with a small library first and maintaining your own backups.

🚀 Current release and limitations

Preludarr's 1.12 series marks its first stable public release.

It's primarily been tested on Unraid with Plex. Jellyfin and Emby integrations are available, but have received less testing.

Some features require additional configuration:

TMDB or TheTVDB credentials for certain artwork.
YouTube API credentials and cookies for optional YouTube searching.
Appropriate filesystem permissions for theme installation.

The application currently supports one user account, and ARM64 hardware testing is still limited.

I'm continuing to improve compatibility, reliability, and the overall experience.

🤝 I'm looking for feedback and contributors

This project started because I wanted a better soundtrack experience in my own homelab.

Now I'd like to see how it works for other people running Plex, Jellyfin, Emby, Docker, and Unraid.

I'd especially appreciate feedback about installation, different media folder structures, anime matching, and media server compatibility.

If you encounter problems or have ideas, feel free to open an issue on GitHub.