Feature request: Add explicit “dislike” / negative preference to Subsonic API

[squintgit]

The Subsonic API currently supports star ratings and favorites, but has no way to represent a negative preference (dislike / thumbs down).

In practice, clients and servers are forced to overload 1-star ratings to mean “dislike,” which is ambiguous and prevents clients from implementing a proper thumbs-down UX similar to Apple Music or iBroadcast.

I’m proposing adding a first-class negative preference signal, for example:
• preference: like | neutral | dislike
• or a dedicated dislike boolean

This would be backward-compatible and optional, while allowing servers and clients to implement better recommendation, shuffle, and radio behavior.

Without this at the API level, Subsonic-compatible clients cannot add a true dislike feature.

[paulijar]

I kind of see the point although I'm not fully convinced that it would be worthwhile to have another 3-level rating system alongside the existing 5-level rating system.

But either way, this isn't really the correct forum to discuss Subsonic API changes. The *cloud Music is just one server among many Subsonic-compatible servers and not particularly prominent one. If I would just add some new API feature to my Subsonic implementation, then there would be very slight chance that any Subsonic clients would actually use that addition. And if they would, then they would risk becoming incompatible with other Subsonic-compatible servers.

The correct place to discuss the future of the API is the OpenSubsonic project. It's an open source project aiming to improve and extend the Subsonic API and most actively maintained Subsonic-compatible servers as well as many clients are endorsing it. The latest OpenSubsonic API specification can be found from https://opensubsonic.netlify.app/.

If the idea gets enough traction on the OpenSubsonic discussion board and someone creates a PR for the OpenSubonic API documentation and this PR gets merged, only then modifying the API implementation of the Music app may be considered.

[squintgit]

Ok thanks. One of the reasons it's important is in CarPlay, they never show the star ratings. Only the like/favorite/heart/star icon. But you can never dislike a song there in the car, or see if a song is disliked. Only in iBroadcast can you like and dislike via CarPlay without going into a separate menu. Apple Music has "Suggest Less" but you have to tap more options (...) then Suggest Less. And when you're driving you often tap that option when it has already been selected, so then you have to go back into more options (...) and undo what you just did. Super distracting, and dangerous. That's just one reason but I can think of others too. I'll look at filing in the right place.

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On Jan 5, 2026 at 3:54 PM -0600, Pauli Järvinen ***@***.***>, wrote: paulijar left a comment (owncloud/music#1279) I kind of see the point although I'm not fully convinced that it would be worthwhile to have another 3-level rating system alongside the existing 5-level rating system. But either way, this isn't really the correct forum to discuss Subsonic API changes. The *cloud Music is just one server among many Subsonic-compatible servers and not particularly prominent one. If I would just add some new API feature to my Subsonic implementation, then there would be very slight chance that any Subsonic clients would actually use that addition. And if they would, then they would risk becoming incompatible with other Subsonic-compatible servers. The correct place to discuss the future of the API is the OpenSubsonic project. It's an open source project aiming to improve and extend the Subsonic API and most actively maintained Subsonic-compatible servers as well as many clients are endorsing it. The latest OpenSubsonic API specification can be found from https://opensubsonic.netlify.app/. If the idea gets enough traction on the OpenSubsonic discussion board and someone creates a PR for the OpenSubonic API documentation and this PR gets merged, only then modifying the API implementation of the Music app may be considered. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe. You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[squintgit]

Posted here: opensubsonic/open-subsonic-api#193

[paulijar]

Kamino closed and cloned this issue to nc-music/music