chore: release 0.21.0

[github-actions]

🤖 I have created a release *beep* *boop*

0.21.0 (2026-05-25)

Highlights

• Transcoding works out of the box. stream now honors format and maxBitRate without needing a per-user profile, so clients like Symfonium can pick a bitrate per-network with zero server-side setup. Admins can also configure per-format defaults from a new admin UI section. For legacy clients like Sonus, use the existing but now renamed "per-client overrides" section
• Seeking works in transcoded streams. Cached transcodes are served with proper HTTP Range support, so scrubbing through an opus transcode now behaves like scrubbing through a normal file. For cache misses (first time streaming) timeOffset and estimateContentLength are now supported
• Track play counts are returned on individual tracks (feat: song level play counts #459), so scrobble counts sync correctly across devices
• Richer artist metadata: track contributors, performer roles, and per-relationship credit names are scanned and exposed. displayArtist now uses ARTIST_CREDIT
  • See Richer artist metadata demo below
  • Recommended taggers for full support beets or wrtag
• More scanned tags: ISRCs, record labels, and per-track year tags are now picked up and returned to clients that support them
• Portable m3u playlists use relative paths, so they survive moves between machines or library roots (Add -playlists-relative option #537, Request: better playlist portability #529)
• Bounded cover art cache with configurable size and eviction interval, useful on smaller disks (feat: add cache size and eject interval for cover art cache #687)
• Security: playlist ownership is now enforced - one user can no longer fetch or delete another user's playlists

Upgrade notes

• A full ("slow") scan is recommended after upgrading to v0.21.0 to pick up the newly scanned fields (contributors, ISRCs, record labels, per-track years, ARTIST_CREDIT).

⚠ BREAKING CHANGES

• deps: bump to go1.26

Features

• add cache size and eject interval for cover art cache (#687) (b25bf3c)
• ci: update golangci-lint (be36fb4)
• db: refactor artist and album level artist roles (1edd175)
• db: update log format (3793d48)
• docs: add Music Assistant to list of tested applications (#676) (f5eecae)
• gonic: add genre-tree option to expand genre hierarchies (be4e137)
• gonic: scan and return per-relationship credit names (731c07a)
• gonic: use more efficient job polling (9b4a0e3)
• lastfm: retry when artist image fetch fails (4eef4df)
• playlist: use relative paths in m3u playlists (798e7f8), closes #537 #529
• podcast: ensure that any error path out of doPodcastDownload sets status (#672) (192ee10)
• scan and return track contributors (f9b6e27)
• scanner: also read multi vorbis singular tags (896b0dd), closes #659
• scanner: skip macOS resource fork files (e2dabd2), closes #657
• subsonic: add configurable per format transcoding defaults (b0e2c94)
• subsonic: don't render track contributors for DSub (3ae3177)
• subsonic: honor stream format/maxBitRate without a configured profile (9d888c0)
• subsonic: make error codes match Open Subsonic spec (#671) (1b770c9)
• subsonic: return alternate performance name artists from getSimilarArtists (a7bbf55)
• subsonic: return artist roles field (d5ef198)
• subsonic: return band member name artists from getSimilarArtists (c2a11a2)
• subsonic: return consistent shapes (72418cd)
• subsonic: scan and return ISRCs to child data (#688) (52e0fa1)
• subsonic: scan and return record labels (36fe025)
• subsonic: serve cached transcodes directly for Range support (58a2d06)
• subsonic: sort genres alphabetically by default (bf8469c)
• subsonic: support estimateContentLength on stream (2953d23)
• subsonic: support track level play counts (9f706b9), closes #459
• subsonic: use ARTIST_CREDIT for displayArtist fields (44c2d79)
• support track level year tags (#661) (5e916d0)

Bug Fixes

• cmd: don't panic on context.Canceled during shutdown (03a9d06)
• lastfm: don't replace cached artist image with empty on refresh (ec457fb)
• listenbrainz: disable post-quantum TLS to avoid connection reset errors (b2674f8)
• podcast: don't try to rm the podcast directory when deleting an episode (8a860dd)
• podcast: fix crash if itunes extensions are missing (#668) (9473ec7)
• scanner: reduce sqlite lock contention during scans (5daf95c), closes #678
• scanner: reset batch timer on fsnotify Remove events (65c4674), closes #637
• scanner: set track created_at from file birth/mod time (5a5308b), closes #693
• subsonic: allow no podcast id for getPodcasts (737c7f1), closes #686
• subsonic: always report scrobblingEnabled true (a2db490), closes #644
• subsonic: contain playlist paths to prevent cross-user access (0824bed)
• subsonic: enforce playlist ownership on getPlaylist/deletePlaylist (6dd71e6)
• subsonic: provide uncompressed file on /download (#679) (3e436aa)
• subsonic: return artist as track artist in TrackChild (9407450), closes #654
• subsonic: return averageRating as float (0f98064), closes #677
• subsonic: unambiguate all columns (dec4000)
• subsonic: update homepage URL casing (e535e78), closes #664

Miscellaneous Chores

• deps: bump to go1.26 (f55cc3f)

Richer artist metadata demo

with airsonic-refix (fork) (Changes hopefully to be upstreamed soon)

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/0fc0f05f-53a7-48c6-a94f-9ba67b5d054e

This PR was generated with Release Please. See documentation.

[sentriz]

checklist

• perf check
• migrate full from 0.20.0

[github-actions]

🤖 Release is at https://github.com/sentriz/gonic/releases/tag/v0.21.0 🌻