Music - Self-Host - how to start / what's your stack?

Hi there,

I use a Jellyfin server to host my own movies and trying to think about doing the same about music. The problem is that I watch roughly one movie a week but a lot more of music (all day long). For now I'm mainly using sp0tify but the UI is worse and worse, constantly asking for more money.

I don't care much about my playlists but I'd need to start a list of the groups I listen to, probably around 200/300 ones on "random".

I'd be curious how you started you transition / technical one too.

Thanks

Edit: wow Thanks a lot for the great advices. I already have a tailscale + Jellyfin so I will probably start there with symfonium. For the download I will give soulseek a go.

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Well, I've maintained my music collection from the olden days, and acquire new music as I discover I like it. I mostly have trash vaporwave tastes so I actually buy most of my music cheaply on bandcamp. My music collection isn't massive like some peoples, but it's a decent amount of GB. Mostly mp3, I'm not fancy enough for FLAC.
As for hosting the music, check out Navidrome. It's a great subsonic compatible service that can run on your OS of choice. I use Symfonium on Android to access the library. It supports playlist syncing, offline caching, etc. etc.
- I also use Navidrome + Symfonium. It's a great combo.
- I've had navidrome setup for a while, but could never find a really good client for my android phone... thanks for the Symfonium link, it looks great. Will definitely give it a go.
- I had a good collection back in the days, but i've lost track of my old server when moving. I will need to search how to even organize all this :'(
  Thanks a lot for the recommandations <3
- Another vote for the Navidrome+Symfonium combination.
  I'm still sad that the Tempo development seems to have stalled.
- For those who don’t know, "trash vaporwave" is a sub-sub genre made of ASMR sounds of garbage trucks with mallsoft music in the background.

You already have Jellyfin, maybe test out adding a music library and using Finamp or Fintunes to access it?

How to aquire: Normal WWW, SLSK, Torrent
How to organize: Musicbrainz, Lidarr
How to play: Phone: Jellyfin or FinAmp, PC: Jellyfin Media Player or Jellyfin WebUI
- Feishin is also a good player for desktop

I'll echo what most people here are saying, Jellyfin (which is what I use) or something with the subsonic API, and Symfonium. It's non-free, but it's a cheap one-time payment and it's genuinely an excellent mobile app.
As far as building your library, I do use Lidarr, but it's a lot more hit-and-miss than Radarr or Sonarr are for their respective mediums. For music, much like back in the day, Soulseek is still the best option. In fact, you can selfhost slskd, which is a great modern web interface for it.

I use spotdl to download mp3s from Spotify playlists. 300 files shouldn't amount to much more than about 1GB so you can probably just use Syncthing to copy the files across devices and then use VLC or some other music player to listen.
- most of the discography of 300 bands :D I've seen in the wiki those downloading spotify ones. I will give it a go thanks.
  
  Ah so that might take more than 1GB. My library of about 4000 takes up 17GB so you can use that as an example.

I can highly recommend symfonium as a front end for a jellyfin music library on android, it's super clean and has tons of nice features.

So I recently terminated my Spotify subscription and moved my library to Jellyfin.
For my phone client, I use Symfonium. There are other options available (even FOSS options if you prefer), but I liked Symfonium's UI the best. It also has a rolling offline cache setting that I find very useful. However, it does have a one time fee of 5 USD. But the client is completely up to your preference - no right choice.
If you care about Last.FM scrobbling, use something like Pano Scrobbler on your phone.
For desktop streaming, Jellyfin isn't required. Use which ever media player you like best.
As for accessing your Jellyfin server outside your home network, Tailscale is an option. It was relatively easy to set up, even for someone who's dumb with networking.
- I'll also add that if you're looking to replace the recommendation algorithm, you can use Last.FM, AOTY, RYM, or even Instagram (I follow a lot of artists and the recommended posts when I go to search something have actually been decent. really strange and perplexing)
  Also, if you find any CDs you don't care for anymore, see if you can donate them to your local library :)

I have about 1TB of music, and I'm listening to music all the time. My go-to has been a Jellyfin server with either the desktop client or Finamp on my phone. I used to use Gelli on my phone, but it stopped working a few months ago

I use Bandcamp and redacted to fill my NAS, which runs Plex with a lifetime Plex Pass. For playback I use PlexAmp on Windows, iOS, and macOS. Very pleased with the radio / shuffle functions, sometimes it’ll absolutely nail a beat- and key-matched cross fade. Great for local library discovery.
My music library has continuity all the way back to 2000, I’ve still got a few vintage Napster MP3s from the 56k days.
- I’ve still got a few vintage Napster MP3s from the 56k days.
  Damn, I envy you. I lost all my digital music from those days to disk rot and a hard drive failure. Wish someone told me back then that CD-R was not a good backup medium. Or that I had checked on the disks before I needed them. Live and learn.
- Yeah, I'm sure Finamp and the rest of the Jellyfin options people are recommending do the trick for most people, but I'm really happy with PlexAmp.
  It also has Chromecast capability and is to my knowledge the only self-hosted option that does so. Really handy for casting to speaker systems, though I'm guessing many people just use Bluetooth for most off-device playback.

Why not just spin up Syncthing, sync your music between your phone and server, and then use one of the countless good local music players.
You own the music anyway, you have a limited library, and there is 0 delay having your music locally along with no buffering, offline access, and it will always be at max quality.
(Of course, not realistic if you have 500GB of music and no SD card slot in your phone)
- (Of course, not realistic if you have 500GB of music and no SD card slot in your phone)
  That's the problem right there. SD card storage is so cheap, but the manufacturers don't include a slot for it.

I'm still using MPD+ncmpcpp. For remote access, I use Wireguard and stream via HTTP on VLC. It's amazingly fast and lightweight (26MB RAM for 30K+ songs).
MALP also works on Android, might be better with no physical keyboard (now supports streaming also).

I use Jellyfin to stream both video as well as audio. Media is stored on my NAS via a samba share.
Much like yourself, I’m more frequently streaming music. The default apps aren’t great for music (and horrid for audio books) but there are music specific apps for most iOS, Android, and most PC OSs. Can’t remember what app I use on Linux (don’t use it much) but I use FinAmp on iOS a lot.
Navidrome is probably a better self hosted music service , but I didn’t see the point when Jellyfin plus FinAmp and met my streaming audio needs.
As for where I got my music collection, I’m an old fart whose music collection predates digital music. Early stuff was ripped from whatever format it was on to digital a while ago. Nowadays I tend to buy CDs and rip them to flac or buy digital from Band Camp or Amazon.
I haven’t seen the need since iTunes and Amazon Music came around, but if you wanted to go sailing you can find popular releases and discographies of popular artists on public torrent sites easily enough. There are also several programs available that can take a Spotify playlist and automatically download the music from YouTube.
While you didn’t ask about audio books, it might help someone else. While I can access my audiobook collection from Jellyfin, it is so bad at audiobooks that that I don’t bother. For audiobooks I use a service called AudioBookshelf. Great for podcasts as well. The audiobooks themselves I generally buy from Audible and then use Libation to strip the DRM.

In the past I used airsonic. It has the best support for different music files and good support for albums ripped as single track, like most classical releases.
The problem with airsonic and its protocol is the lack of good android clients.
If you need to listen through the phone for most of the time, go with jellyfin + finamp. Otherwise try airsonic + its web ui.
For music acquisition:
torrent for the mainstream stuff
niche trackers for niche stuff
nicotine+/soulseek for everything
bandcamp to support the artists

Subsonic (https://www.subsonic.org/) hasn't been updated in years, but it still works perfectly for me. I'm mostly on Youtube Music these days just for the size of the library, but for stuff I have that YTM doesnt I still fall back to Subsonic that's running on my HTPC.
- You should look into Navidrome, it's the spiritual successor of subsonic.

I'm using NextCloud Music 🎶

A 2.5" SSD and a sata to USB cable, Mullvad and torrents-csv. I don't have time for all that overhead, maintenance on that stuff is worse than the time you supposedly save by automating everything. I used to do the deluge seedbox dav server thing, and I had to disassemble it for a reason and found my life got easier after that. Every now and then I just back what I've downloaded recently up to the drive.
I do want to run a seedbox again, but just to archive and make available certain things that need to stay available. All the jellyfin owncloud and all that stuff is not worth it to me.

I use either telegram or Bandcamp to get stuff, then beets.io to manage my library, Jellyfin is then pointed to that folder and I mainly use Symfonium to play my music on mobile.

I use Jellyfin for movies and shows but sub to a streaming service for music. To me, it’s worth the monthly cost to put millions of songs at my reach all with impeccable quality. The convenience alone not withstanding. But music is super important to me and I don’t go a day without it. I haven’t seen anything close to that if you pirate.
I ripped my old CDs way back in like 2003 and didn’t join a streaming service till 2019. I’ve added more bangers and almost doubled my collection since then.
I kind of count my blessings as to only having to sub to that service. I have friends that pay $300 a month for Netflix, Diznee+, etc. And here I am getting by on $6 a month. Totally not mad.

I also use the Jellyfin+Symfonium combo. There is also Finamp as the free and open source option. And Feishin on desktop.

33 comments