To the author's point about not wanting to always run a music server like Plex or Jellyfin.
In Plexamp, browsing is heavily restricted in offline mode and very "flat." Downloaded albums, artists, and playlists are respectively grouped in a single list in the downloads tab. Clicking on any collection gives you a big list of songs with no further filtering or searching available.
Independent apps like Prism for Plex and Manet for JellyFin offer more iPod-like offline experiences with multiple layers of browsing and searching downloads. Prism syncs back changes (ratings, playlists) to Plex once server connectivity is restored. Though, Prism does not offer transcoding to save storage like Plexamp does.
I think these companion apps solve the major weakness of server based music hosting and offer an easier and more flexible alternative compared to the set up in the linked article.
> There is no good reason why my iPhone shouldn’t let me play local music.
I imagine this is a combination of low user demand, Apple's "walled garden" mentality, and Apple's perverse incentive to nudge people into paid Apple Music subscriptions.
That class of MP3 devices are a joke. I've tried acceptable looking devices from Innioasis, Ruizu, Tokemisc. They all have the same flaws.
Poor interfaces and user controls. The ipod style touch wheels were frustrating, no velocity, dead spots.
Every single one displays filenames instead of tracknames. They have mp3 tag support for albums, genres, etc. I don't know if it is a Chinese thing to use the filename, but it was so weirdly consistent across every brand I tried.
They'll have tons of storage that may or may not work (bad usb storage implementation, bad flash, who knows). I would copy new stuff, and old tracks would disappear. Transfers were extremely slow, and it would disconnect. It doesn't matter though, because some can only index about 5000 tracks. The SD card expansion may not be indexed at all, file navigation only.
I was getting them free for reviews, and I just gave up trying new ones after about the fifth attempt. Nothing came close to even basic players like the sandisk clip series. They are awful to interact with.
I’ve had a similar adventure, price shopping albums between Qobuz and eBay, roping when it was cheaper. If I still lived in a town with a proper library I’d be ripping CDs everyday.
I like jellyfin for accessing a central library, as opposed to keeping multiple devices in sync. Finamp is a good app companion that lets you pick albums to store offline (same as Apple Music so I found that an odd complaint by the author, you can listen offline, you just have to pay the subscription for the rest of your life…)
I also found the play-from-thumbdrive feature of my Toyota to be not that bad, at least it indexed the library via metadata and displays song titles properly, something that cannot be said for all Bluetooth devices. Nice to have my library on a road trip well outside of cell service.
What's the best open source solution for a music server and playback primarily on Android? I've become really tired of Spotify lately, would like to recover my old music collection, but don't want to lose the convenience of having all the music available on all devices at all times. Should I go with Jellyfin and its android app?
I've settled on Navidrome for the server, and Symfonium for the player on Android (not open source). Symfonium can sync with the server so I can have all my music even when offline.
I use jellyfin and findroid or symfonium atm. Jellyfin can be slightly finicky at times but mostly just works. Don't be afraid to use the refresh metadata button though, its file watcher isn't good at picking up changes in the files' tags in my experience.
1. Artists / labels can pull releases from streaming services, so an album may completely disappear from one day to another. They won't come to your house and rip the CD out of your CD player.
2. They can also replace one version of a song for another, like a remastered version. Especially remasters from the "loudness war" era are often worse in quality than original releases. On a streaming service, you often don't have the choice of which version you can listen to (and if you have the choice, point 1 is still a danger). This is also a problem with songs that contain explicit lyrics. The streaming version may force you to listen to the version with those lyrics removed (e.g. US release vs. EU release). Again, you are not affected by this if you have the physical media or a copy on your computer.
Having a copy of the music that noone can take away from you is important. Tons of music keeps disappearing from streaming services. This is not just a made-up scenario. Yes, technically speaking you only "own" a license to the music. The important thing is that this license is practically irrevocable.
In Plexamp, browsing is heavily restricted in offline mode and very "flat." Downloaded albums, artists, and playlists are respectively grouped in a single list in the downloads tab. Clicking on any collection gives you a big list of songs with no further filtering or searching available.
Independent apps like Prism for Plex and Manet for JellyFin offer more iPod-like offline experiences with multiple layers of browsing and searching downloads. Prism syncs back changes (ratings, playlists) to Plex once server connectivity is restored. Though, Prism does not offer transcoding to save storage like Plexamp does.
I think these companion apps solve the major weakness of server based music hosting and offer an easier and more flexible alternative compared to the set up in the linked article.
> There is no good reason why my iPhone shouldn’t let me play local music.
I imagine this is a combination of low user demand, Apple's "walled garden" mentality, and Apple's perverse incentive to nudge people into paid Apple Music subscriptions.
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