The Media Server is the heart of the Cardinal ecosystem, and powers all of your self-hosted apps.

Features

Get all Cardinal apps for free with Cardinal Media Server. Comes with a dashboard and everything needed to run your apps. No sign up required.

For audiophiles and casuals alike, with a set of features that long time music collectors will love.

Collect, curate, and rediscover your music every day with Cardinal Music's modern interface and powerful audio playback features.

Made to handle the era of camera ubiquity, and the lifetime of photographs that comes with it.

Archive a lifetime of photographs, and keep them safe from prying eyes. Only you can be trusted as the keeper of your photos and videos.

Embrace your inner projectionist and never worry about your favourite show leaving again.

Take back the future of movie and TV streaming in your home, and get that familiar online streaming experience for your own media.

_Cardinal Accounts_ provide **Identity** and **SSO** services for all Cardinal apps using Cardinal's cloud infrastructure. Accounts are free to create and use. Optional [paid subscriptions](https://cardinalapps.io/pricing) are available that unlock capabilities in your self-hosted apps, and grant you access to Cardinal's other cloud services.

Using a Cardinal Account is entirely optional, and you have the option of using your Cardinal apps offline, logged out, and restricted to the local network. However, users that use a free or paid account will benefit from these fundamental improvements to their apps:

### Secure Authentication for Your Apps

Using a Cardinal Account enables secure cloud authentication for your apps. The cloud authentication paradigm means that your self-hosted apps are relieved of most credential management duties, so that you don't have to worry about how your server is storing passwords or how your users will get their password reset emails.

A single identity provider also makes it easy for you to run multiple Media Server instances without having to juggle logins. Using `stable` and `beta` in parallel has never been easier.

### Connecting Users

Cardinal Accounts also make it easy for server owners to onboard new users. There's no need to manually create and issue account credentials, instead just click once to copy a link that you can send to anyone, or type the username of an existing Cardinal Account and we'll email them for you.

Information on how Cloud Accounts integrate with your Media Server.

Use a Cardinal Account

Secure authentication for your Cardinal apps.

1. Updated the [docker-compose.yaml](https://help.cardinalapps.io/getting-started/quick-start) service and container names to eliminate namespace conflicts when running multiple media servers simultaneously. Users must update their docker-compose.yaml file.

Release notes forCardinal Media Server v0.3.3