A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
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Free I recommend jellyfin and use finamp, but I don't know it will have all the features you need (yet).
If you're willing to shell out some money then Plex does all of what you need, and it's hard for me to think of anything that comes with PlexAmp, which requires PlexPass (subscription or one time lifetime purchase). The organization of the music is really nice too, however I run everything through Picard musicbrainz first anyway
I use Navidrome with play:Sub (paid) or Amperfy (free as in beer) on iOS. I also use the Volusonic plugin with Volumio to play music throughout the house. All my music is curated using MusicBrainz Picard and the files are mounted read-only for Navidrome.
I looked at Roon briefly, and I know many people like it, but I can’t justify the cost. Plex and I don’t get along; pretty sure it’s operator error and/or grumpiness. Jellyfin looks promising, but I ran into challenges with it as well. I think if you’re just hosting music, then Navidrome is fine. If you think you might expand to series or films, something like Plex or Jellyfin could be better long term.
I'd recommend navidrome over jellyfin, even if you have an existing jellyfin instance. It's just that much better. Lidarr does a pretty good job organizing files, even if that's not how you're acquiring your music, but Picard is great. I use a Picard docker right on my server that streams the ui in a browser.
I paid for and don’t regret Plex pass so I could access PlexAmp. It’s quite nice. Will it be worth the price for others? I’m not sure.
Navidrome for the server, and its WebUI for the desktop, and Synfonium for Android (https://symfonium.app/) Not using iOS so can't suggest anything there.
I would recommend something compatible with the subsonic API, because some clients are great, and there's always one decent for every major platform. That leaves us with:
depending on how much configurability you need and how many resources you are willing to throw at it. Navidrome is still quite crashy, though, while airsonic ticks like a clock.
Had for years airsonic, later airsonic advanced. The overhead is huge compared to Navidrome.
Had never an issue with Navidrome and it is much snappier. No even starting to talk about the modern interface compared to Airsonic.
Yeah, I’ve never had an issue with Navidrome.
Airsonic is a Java-server app, so it takes a lot of memory because it's optimizing for high-thoughput and high-load. You can customize the JVM settings to make it much leaner! (but not as much as navidrome, sure).
Regarding the UI, I generally don't play my music in a web-browser, but I get the sentiment :)
Your friends will comment on interface when you share music to them :)
Hardly using the UI myself ;)
Good point!
I’ve tried a few deficient servers but always came back to Plex. Plexamp just organise things really well and is slick on all platforms.
Another vote for Navidrome.
Roon is expensive, but if you are a serious music fan, it’s 100% worth it.
I describe it to others as like talking to a super knowledgeable music store employee. It knows so much about each track, each musician, each band… cross-referencing them all, so you can go down a rabbit hole of hyperlinks learning about the music. It seamlessly mixes playlists across streaming and locally stored music. It does a decent job of streaming around the house to Apple, android, and audiophile devices. They just added an app that enables remote listening to your locally stored music.
Love Roon. I also have Navidrome in my server but found out a docker image of RoonServer and my gosh, I love it. I need a webapp to control it from my Linux desktop, otherwise, perfect (and expensive).
I have active Roon subscribtion though most issue is that Remote connection works clunky. The desktop app is only on windows and also Siri on iOS do not support song selection with voice commands.
I use both plex and navidrome server side love them both
I can recommend Navidrome. Organizing of library with Lidarr and (Beets)[https://beets.io]
I’m using Beets for tagging because of the Discogs plugin.
Lidarr for visual overview of the library.
Beets My issue is that some of my media files are messed up tried to use Beets though not sure if I did something wrong but I messed up a bit.
Lidarr can be used for tagging too and it does have a web interface.
Cleaning a messed up library with Beets is tough and depends on how the individual files are sorted.
Start importing/organizing a small part or some albums to find out how it works. And a backup of data is always recommend!
you need to be organised with beet. Import your music one album after an other. use "-t" to be sure that beet is guessing albums correctly. It is lot of work, but once it done it is smooth sailing.
I tried jellyfin but it was too slow to index my library. So I switched to navidrome. It works and it indexes music very fast. Searching for songs is for some reason slow. It only works with tags so browsing by folders is not possible. My workaround is a script that auto creates playlists in folders with songs from different artists/albums. Ios app play:sub is nice.
I am happy with it so far.
Navidrone is pretty great. Clients are hit or miss.
Daphile 23.01. This network media player and CD Ripper available such as a ZeroTier Integration which will allow you to access your music outside your home network.
That looks great though it’s own OS and in my case I already have OS.
Call me crazy, but I'm using jellyfin + beet for backend. Native Jellyfin client on PC and Sympfonium on mobile. Works for me. But my library is small less than 50k tracks.
And another vote for Navidrome. I use it vith DSub frontend (the only one I've found that supports DLNA, for playing back on any DLNA renderer device) and Tailscale for remote access.