I don't really recommend LDAP. LDAP is just an access protocol, not a database technology. It would replace the http subset the receiver already uses, which isn't really all that useful as a step forward. The existing protocol is quite sufficient, and easily codable into a front end, regardless of the DB behind it. I worked on the LDAP interface to the Microsoft Win2K directory service, and as part of standards testing, also worked with Netscape and several others for interoperability testing and in ironing out the LDAP v2 spec. Bottom line is that any of the various implementations I worked on are only as good as the database underneath it.

I too have a private server. It uses an access database, and I reverse engineered the wire protocol. I use DAO against the database. I've only run it up to 3600 records. I've built user specifiable categorizations, so I have artist/album, or year/genre/composer, whatever. It's user speced, not hard coded into the DB.