Your music. Your server. No subscriptions. Everything you need to know about SugarSpin.
| Feature | Free | Pro ($19.95) | Gold ($39.95) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Albums | Up to 20 | Up to 300 | Unlimited |
| Songs | Up to 100 | Up to 25,000 | Unlimited |
| Playlists & Favorites | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Simultaneous Clients | 1 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Album Art Fetching | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Format Support | All formats | All formats | All formats |
| Server Installations | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| Price | $0 | $19.95 one-time | $59.95 $39.95 one-time |
Yes. Your license key belongs to you — it is not permanently locked to one machine. To move it, you deactivate it on the current machine first, which frees up the activation slot. Then you enter the same key on the new machine and it activates normally.
To deactivate: open SugarSpin, go to your Account page, scroll to the License section, and click Deactivate License. You'll see a confirmation before anything happens. Once confirmed, your key is released and the machine reverts to the free tier.
Then on the new machine: go to Account → License and enter your key in the activation field. It will bind to the new machine and your full tier unlocks immediately.
You do not need to buy a new license. One purchase, transferable as many times as you need.
If you're moving to a completely new machine or doing a fresh install, deactivate your license on the old setup first if you still have access to it. Then re-enter your key on the new install to activate it there.
If you no longer have access to the old machine (it died, it's gone, you can't get into it), contact us at support@hotdang.studio with your license key and we'll manually release the activation slot so you can use it on the new machine.
No. Deactivating only removes the license from this machine — it does not delete anything. Your music files, library index, playlists, favorites, and play history are all stored separately and are completely unaffected. You just revert to the free tier (20 albums / 100 songs) until you re-enter a valid key. Re-activating restores full access immediately — no rescan needed.
http://localhost:3333 (or your server's IP on port 3333), create your account, and head to Settings → Music Library to scan your collection. For full step-by-step instructions for every platform, see the Installation Guide.
docker.com.
localhost:3333 if you're on the same computer). It's fully responsive and works great on mobile. You can also add it to your home screen for an app-like experience.
music.yourdomain.com) to your server's IP and port 3333 through a Cloudflare tunnel. Alternatively, Tailscale is a zero-config VPN that lets you access your server from anywhere as if you were on your home network. Install it on your server and on your phone or laptop, and you're connected. Both options keep your server secure without opening ports on your router.
music.yourdomain.com), configure it to point to your server on port 3333, and Cloudflare handles the rest. No need to open any ports on your router. It's free for personal use.This is a Docker limitation, not a SugarSpin bug. Docker runs apps inside a sealed container — isolated from the rest of your computer. Even if a USB drive is plugged in or a network share is mounted on your machine, the container has no idea those exist. It can only see what was specifically connected to it when the container was started.
Think of it like this: Docker builds a box around SugarSpin. Your drives live outside the box. To give SugarSpin access to a drive, you have to wire it in at startup — telling Docker "pass this folder from my computer into the container." Once that's done, the drive appears inside the app as a folder you can add to your music library.
This wiring is done when you first run the container, using what Docker calls a "volume mount." Every platform handles this slightly differently — NAS devices have a graphical Docker interface, Mac and Windows have Docker Desktop, Linux has the command line. Check the Installation Guide for your platform's specific instructions on how to add a new drive when setting up or updating your container.
It's a two-step process. First, make sure the drive is connected to your computer and recognized by your operating system. Then, you need to update your Docker setup to pass that drive into the SugarSpin container — this is called a volume mount.
The specifics of how you do that depend entirely on your setup: what computer you're running, what OS, and how you originally installed SugarSpin. A NAS with a Docker GUI, Docker Desktop on a Mac, and a Linux command line all handle this differently. We can't provide a single set of instructions that works for every machine.
See the Installation Guide for your platform. Look for the section on adding additional music folders or volume mounts — it walks through the steps specific to your setup. Once the drive is wired in, go to Settings → Music Library inside SugarSpin to add the new folder and run a scan.
Same idea. If you're running SugarSpin on a separate computer and want it to access music stored on a NAS (Network Attached Storage) or network share, you first need to mount that share on the machine running Docker, and then pass it into the container.
If you're running SugarSpin directly on the NAS itself, the music is already on the same machine — you just need to make sure the correct folder paths are wired into the container when it starts.
How to do all of this depends on your specific NAS brand, operating system, and Docker setup. There's no one-size-fits-all set of commands we can give you here — each setup is different. Refer to your NAS or platform's documentation for how to mount a network share, and then see the Installation Guide for how to pass it into SugarSpin's Docker container.
Yes. You can wire in as many folders and drives as you need — each one gets its own path inside the container. Once they're all mapped in, head to Settings → Music Library inside SugarSpin and add each folder. Run a scan and SugarSpin will index everything into one unified library.
Again, how you add multiple mounts depends on your platform and how your container was originally set up. See the Installation Guide for your specific setup.
Since your music location is set at the Docker level — not inside the app itself — you'll need to update the container to point to the new drive. This means stopping the current container and starting it again with the new folder wired in instead of the old one.
Your library, playlists, and favorites are stored in a separate data volume and will not be affected — you'll just need to run a rescan once the new folder is connected. For how to update your container's volume setup, see the Installation Guide for your platform. Inside the app, you can also use Settings → Music Library to update the primary folder path once the drive is mounted.
/music, /usb, /nas, /mnt, and similar. If you don't see the drive you're looking for, it hasn't been connected to the container yet. See the questions above for how to add it.
Keep everything on the same machine. The single best thing you can do for performance and reliability is store your music on the same computer or NAS that is running the SugarSpin Docker container. No network hops. No external drives. No moving parts between SugarSpin and your files. When the music and the app are on the same box, scanning is fast, playback is instant, and there is nothing in between that can break.
This is the setup SugarSpin was designed and optimized for. Internal storage, local container, everything self-contained.
Internal drive, every time. External USB drives introduce a point of failure that is completely outside your control. USB drives can disconnect unexpectedly, spin down to save power, or lose their mount point after a reboot — and when that happens, SugarSpin loses access to your library without warning. Scans fail silently. Playback stops mid-track.
If your music is currently on a USB drive, the recommendation is to move it to internal storage before relying on SugarSpin day-to-day. It is a one-time move that eliminates an entire class of problems.
It works, but it is not the recommended approach. Reading audio files over a network share adds latency and introduces a dependency on your local network staying stable. If your network hiccups, your router reboots, or the other machine goes to sleep, SugarSpin can lose access mid-stream. These kinds of interruptions are frustrating and hard to diagnose.
The more pieces between SugarSpin and your files, the more things that can go wrong. If your music lives on a NAS, the cleanest setup is to run SugarSpin directly on that NAS — not on a separate machine reaching across the network to get to it.
Any always-on machine with Docker support and enough storage for your library works well. Some solid options based on real-world use:
For most people, the NAS or Mac Mini is the sweet spot: always on, music stored internally, Docker running locally. Set it up once and forget about it.
Follow this sequence and you will have the most stable, low-maintenance setup possible:
That's it. No cross-network mounts. No USB dependencies. Everything lives on the same box. This is the setup that works the best and causes the fewest headaches over time.
For the love of music — all of it. Roger has spent decades collecting and obsessing over it. Vinyl records, cassette tapes, reel-to-reel recordings, MiniDiscs — a lifetime of music that he carefully digitized and backed up to a local server so it would never be lost. Every format, every era, all of it preserved and accessible.
The problem was there was no player that felt like it deserved the collection. Nothing that treated the music with the same care he'd put into collecting it. And he wanted to take it with him — on trips, on bike rides, anywhere. You can't exactly strap a turntable and a hundred records to your back. SugarSpin was born out of that reality: a way to carry a lifetime of music in your pocket, on any device, with an interface that actually feels like flipping through crates. Built by someone who still gets excited every time he puts something on.
A deliberate choice, and honestly a straightforward one: Apple and Google both take a 30% cut of every purchase made through their stores. On top of that, there are annual developer fees just to keep the app listed. For an independent creator paying everything out of pocket, that's a significant chunk of money going to a platform that didn't build the app, doesn't maintain it, and doesn't know your music collection.
Staying off the app stores is a big part of why SugarSpin can be a one-time purchase instead of a subscription. No ongoing platform fees means no need to charge you every month to cover them. You pay once for the time and effort that went into building something that works for you — that's the whole deal.
SugarSpin works in any browser on any device already. Add it to your home screen on iOS or Android and it behaves like a native app. Same experience, no middleman, no commission, no subscription. That's the trade-off, and it's one that benefits you as much as it benefits the project.