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Unable to communicate with LidarrAPI - Lidarr API "Intern...

Is there an existing issue for this? I have searched the existing open and closed issues Current Behavior Unless I miss something there might be a issue serverside. Especially since I am able to ge...

For anyone that wants to keep up with progress

The root cause of the problems with the Lidarr project is that no one working on it knows the first thing about software development, let alone understand WTF they're doing with Musicbrainz. Read the comments in the github issue above - they're an embarrassment.

Edited August 3, 2025Aug 3 by Espressomatic

On 8/3/2025 at 2:42 PM, Espressomatic said:

The root cause of the problems with the Lidarr project is that no one working on it knows the first thing about software development, let alone understand WTF they're doing with Musicbrainz. Read the comments in the github issue above - they're an embarrassment.

Are you volunteering? Or do you just like to shit talk people who are working for free?

Edited August 9, 2025Aug 9 by Uleepera

5 hours ago, Uleepera said:

Are you volunteering? Or do you just like to shit talk people who are working for free?

He can't. I've been following this for months, and many people have offered to help. The issue is with a proxy service written for Lidarr, which goes between the Lidarr program and makes API calls to search Musicbrainz. This code is not open source. It is held by a few (perhaps one person?) and is closed source.

Unfortunately the issue effectively makes Lidarr useless. If you have an existing Lidarr installation, it still searches/downloads what you had already asked for, but you can't add/update artists. So useless for anyone wanting a new install or for adding anything new that someone may have a liking to.

On 8/9/2025 at 5:24 AM, ConnerVT said:

He can't. I've been following this for months, and many people have offered to help. The issue is with a proxy service written for Lidarr, which goes between the Lidarr program and makes API calls to search Musicbrainz. This code is not open source. It is held by a few (perhaps one person?) and is closed source.

Unfortunately the issue effectively makes Lidarr useless. If you have an existing Lidarr installation, it still searches/downloads what you had already asked for, but you can't add/update artists. So useless for anyone wanting a new install or for adding anything new that someone may have a liking to.

Understood, I was pointing out that calling people trying to fix it an embarrassment wasn't productive or appreciative of their time/effort. Success aside, my expectation for free software isn't as high as his/hers apparently.

High jacking binhex's thread a bit, but as an application's user base increases in size, it is understandable that user's expectations will also increase. Write a plugin used by a few hundred users on a niche application? Don't expect much. Write an application that has tens of thousands of users across a number of platforms? Expectations get much greater.

On 8/12/2025 at 12:10 PM, Uleepera said:

Understood, I was pointing out that calling people trying to fix it an embarrassment wasn't productive or appreciative of their time/effort

They screwed it up in the first place because they don't know WTF they're doing. Don't forget that this project is leveraging the work of other arr projects but is itself the red-headed stepchild. So ya, the effort employed on Lidarr is an embarrassment. I'd not put my name of this level of unpolished turd.

And it's not because my expectations are high. The attitude of anyone working on Lidarr in particular has always been abysmal and whether they're working for free or not is 100% irrelevant. The software doesn't work, so who's going to use it? They deserve every criticism they get.

Additionally, what happens is that because it "exists" no one else is motivated to make an alternative. So they can keep chilling and blaming the Musicbrainz devs for their own mistakes and making up all manner of other nonsense to cover up whatever's happening on the back end. If their initial story had been true (at all), this would have been a very quick fix. Even if they had just started workign with databases a week prior, it was entry-level work.

Edited August 16, 2025Aug 16 by Espressomatic

There is finally an update to this docker. Hopefully they have fixed the issue in the update. I would like to keep using the program.

9 hours ago, strahd_zarovich said:

There is finally an update to this docker. Hopefully they have fixed the issue in the update. I would like to keep using the program.

A new image has been pushed, please update at your convienience.

After the update, I still get "Unable to communicate with LidarrAPI." when I try to search for anything...

Yes, I saw the same. Happens both with the text search and when using the lidarr:<MusicbrainzID> in the New search.

In the Github discussion about this, three days ago they said the new database was rebuilding, and they are routing around 60% of the requests to the new server as the cache builds. So we can only hope this resolves itself in the next few days.

Edited August 31, 2025Aug 31 by ConnerVT

A follow up, as I had some time this morning to play with this. I have a list of 20+ artists I wished to add to Lidarr.

By doing the following, I was able to add about a dozen of them:

• Search for the artist in Musicbrainz

• Copy the ID part out of the URL (looks like 56cd15a1-0d74-438b-8244-c96ffe1cae03)

• In the New search, add this: lidarr:56cd15a1-0d74-438b-8244-c96ffe1cae03

I was having about a 50% success getting the needed hit on the search. The other 50% was the error that it has been reporting for a while now. Repeated search of the same ID was never successful (in my short time testing) so I suspect it hasn't been cached yet in the app's database.

So hopefully this is a sign that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Fingers crosses.

Hi - Having an issue where I can link albums for certain artists, either automatically or manually.

I get the error, 'Object reference not set to an instance of an object.' when trying to do it manually.

Any suggestions? I've tried rebooting, reinstalling

Attached is the relevant part from the Debug Log

debug log.txt

Could be a lot of things - corrupted database, bad mapping, incorrect file permissions, bad characters in file names, something wonky with a download client.

Start here: Google Search

I am glad to say, after several months of being basically unusable, the Lidarr team seems to finally have resolved their database issues and it is now possible to search/add new artists. I just spent the past 20 minutes adding music I've been wishing for. You do not need to use the lidarr:xxxxxxxx Musicbrainz format - a text search now works.

A couple things to note:

• The Lidarr devs state that their server is still getting hit hard (by all of the users finally able to use it) so you may still get an error at times - Try again a little later (I did not have any issue this morning).

• I tried this a few days ago, and was still having issues. I updated my Lidarr container last night, and now all looks good. I recommend updating to the latest as well.

Good luck, happy hunting.

Edited October 25, 2025Oct 25 by ConnerVT

@binhex I am getting the errors on the tailscale hook in this container now that were in Prowlarr, which got fixed. Can you also update the mirrorlist in this one as well? (I imagine that is what the issue was).

Error:

Executing Unraid Docker Hook for Tailscale Detecting Package Manager... Detected pacman Package Manager! Installing packages... Please wait... ERROR: Installing packages! :: Synchronizing package databases... core downloading... extra downloading... error: failed retrieving file 'extra.db' from europe.archive.pkgbuild.com : Could not resolve host: europe.archive.pkgbuild.com warning: fatal error from europe.archive.pkgbuild.com, skipping for the remainder of this transaction error: failed retrieving file 'core.db' from europe.archive.pkgbuild.com : Failed to connect to europe.archive.pkgbuild.com port 443 after 4051 ms: Could not connect to server error: failed retrieving file 'extra.db' from america.archive.pkgbuild.com : Could not resolve host: america.archive.pkgbuild.com warning: fatal error from america.archive.pkgbuild.com, skipping for the remainder of this transaction error: failed retrieving file 'core.db' from america.archive.pkgbuild.com : Failed to connect to america.archive.pkgbuild.com port 443 after 46 ms: Could not connect to server error: failed retrieving file 'extra.db' from asia.archive.pkgbuild.com : Could not resolve host: asia.archive.pkgbuild.com warning: fatal error from asia.archive.pkgbuild.com, skipping for the remainder of this transaction error: failed retrieving file 'core.db' from asia.archive.pkgbuild.com : Failed to connect to asia.archive.pkgbuild.com port 443 after 47 ms: Could not connect to server error: failed to synchronize all databases (failed to retrieve some files) ERROR: Unraid Docker Hook script throw an error! Starting container without Tailscale! Starting container...

Mirrorlist comparison:

docker exec binhex-prowlarr cat /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

Server = https://archive.archlinux.org/repos/2026/01/23/$repo/os/$arch

docker exec binhex-lidarr cat /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

Server = https://europe.archive.pkgbuild.com/repos/2025/11/06/$repo/os/$arch

Server = https://america.archive.pkgbuild.com/repos/2025/11/06/$repo/os/$arch

Server = https://asia.archive.pkgbuild.com/repos/2025/11/06/$repo/os/$arch

Thank you!

10 hours ago, arkestler said:

@binhex I am getting the errors on the tailscale hook in this container now that were in Prowlarr, which got fixed. Can you also update the mirrorlist in this one as well? (I imagine that is what the issue was).

Error:

Executing Unraid Docker Hook for Tailscale Detecting Package Manager... Detected pacman Package Manager! Installing packages... Please wait... ERROR: Installing packages! :: Synchronizing package databases... core downloading... extra downloading... error: failed retrieving file 'extra.db' from europe.archive.pkgbuild.com : Could not resolve host: europe.archive.pkgbuild.com warning: fatal error from europe.archive.pkgbuild.com, skipping for the remainder of this transaction error: failed retrieving file 'core.db' from europe.archive.pkgbuild.com : Failed to connect to europe.archive.pkgbuild.com port 443 after 4051 ms: Could not connect to server error: failed retrieving file 'extra.db' from america.archive.pkgbuild.com : Could not resolve host: america.archive.pkgbuild.com warning: fatal error from america.archive.pkgbuild.com, skipping for the remainder of this transaction error: failed retrieving file 'core.db' from america.archive.pkgbuild.com : Failed to connect to america.archive.pkgbuild.com port 443 after 46 ms: Could not connect to server error: failed retrieving file 'extra.db' from asia.archive.pkgbuild.com : Could not resolve host: asia.archive.pkgbuild.com warning: fatal error from asia.archive.pkgbuild.com, skipping for the remainder of this transaction error: failed retrieving file 'core.db' from asia.archive.pkgbuild.com : Failed to connect to asia.archive.pkgbuild.com port 443 after 47 ms: Could not connect to server error: failed to synchronize all databases (failed to retrieve some files) ERROR: Unraid Docker Hook script throw an error! Starting container without Tailscale! Starting container...

Mirrorlist comparison:

docker exec binhex-prowlarr cat /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

Server = https://archive.archlinux.org/repos/2026/01/23/$repo/os/$arch

docker exec binhex-lidarr cat /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

Server = https://europe.archive.pkgbuild.com/repos/2025/11/06/$repo/os/$arch

Server = https://america.archive.pkgbuild.com/repos/2025/11/06/$repo/os/$arch

Server = https://asia.archive.pkgbuild.com/repos/2025/11/06/$repo/os/$arch

Thank you!

I've just rebuilt the image, please pull down and see if that fixes the isse.

10 hours ago, binhex said:

I've just rebuilt the image, please pull down and see if that fixes the isse.

That fixed it, thank you again!

On 8/8/2025 at 11:25 PM, Uleepera said:

Are you volunteering? Or do you just like to shit talk people who are working for free?

I took that to heart and decided to do something about it. So yea, I fixed it so Lidarr doesn't need to use Lidarr's servers at all anymore. You can now query anything on MusicBrainz locally at insane speeds compared to Lidarr's remote server, plus access a couple of dozen artwork sources instead of the non-working ones the Lidarr devs had hardcoded into the app. Pause/stop/start Lidarr's scheduled tasks, theming engine added to Lidarr with over 30 themes, instantly remove unwanted media types like Tape or Vinyl and more soon: integrated direct downloader, split/custom releases...

Works with this binhex Unraid docker or any lsio/hotio container on any platform. Supported with Compose Manager Plus on Unraid, docker compose on other systems.

https://github.com/HVR88/Limbo

Edited April 29Apr 29 by Espressomatic