Full disclosure, I’m pretty new to selfhosting myself, and I haven’t written a guide like this before, but hopefully this scatterbrained writeup is enough for someone out there lmao
This is just what works for me and how I set it up. Always open to ideas for improvement as well.
“Replacing TV and movie streaming services is pretty trivial, and typically one of the first projects for any new self-hoster, but music streaming services are a whole different beast.”
both cases you just gather up media files, and you play them. follow me instead for more life hacks.
Very wrong
I agree, but only up to a point. If you like to discover loads of music because you listen to tracks all day at work for example (which can make you get bored of tracks/albums quickly when you play them a hundred times in one day), its much harder to do so when you have to use a different service for recommendations & listening.
Not so much that I haven’t done that myself, but it is more time consuming.
So tl;dr its the discovery part thats a pain, at least for me.
(Speaking from experience)
Edit: i just clicked on the post and it covers discovery, ima have to read that later.
It would be cool if there was open source software to link your library to your friends so you would still get new things you didn’t have coming into your list.
It could probably even use one of these fun new protocols too!
I mean for work listening passively I’ve moved to icecast on vlc. There’s a shit ton of internet radio out there and I’ve discovered stuff I never would have otherwise. There’s also the archive. And bandcamp. There’s soooo many ways besides Spotify. Pandora also still exists and I used to like it but I think there’s a lot of ads now
I need this i’ve been struggling to replace spotify.
Good write up. Spotify is the lsdt for me to replace
For me it’s YouTube.
Thank you for writing and making content.
In this era, I feel like I’m in the Good Place: it’s impossible to make “good” ethical choices while engaging with modern world. Every day, some platform or artist is found supporting blood money, genocide, unfair labor, treats other artist/collaborators like shit, exploitation… Then we all have to pivot to some obscure alternative with its own issues, lest we be immoral internet users.
I’m so tired of all this shit… /rant
You have to draw your own lines. For me I dont focus on all the bad choices, I pick something im interested in and then look at the options and try pick the choice I like the most. One thing at a time and before you know it you’ve made major choices in several areas of daily life.
The only way to be a truly moral person on this planet is to not participate in society and go completely 100% off grid. Even then the Good Place did a great episode on that, and they’re right, you’re not really living then either. It’s all just about what you’re willing to put up with
Y e p. It’s a nightmare tbh. No ethical consumption under capitalism etc etc
That saying too often gets used as an excuse to not even try moving away from patronizing a harmful business, as though it isn’t worth any inconvenience since we’re screwed no matter what.
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My hangup with self-hosting is due to the fact that I have a family for whom managing their entire library would be a full-time job. It’s unfortunately worth the $15/month for me to not have to constantly take requests for new music, add that to the server, troubleshoot when things don’t work, etc.
This is how I feel with just my spouse. Spotify absorbs so much ADD energy and immediate new music whiplash that I can’t help but be OK with it.
The alternative is to be up at 4:00am on Oct 13 ripping T-Swizzle MP3s from YT.
I had my partner put in the addresses of my *arr stack into their phone and showed them how to add things they wanted. They never close any tabs so all I need to say is what weird-ass unrelated name handles whatever media they want and I’m done.
You don’t have to host your whole family’s library though. You can start with whatever you want and be on the road to improving your setup.
this is incredible! petty much exactly what i did for myself, minus the *arr part (yet)
also i am dabbling with tempo, and it’s been forked with active development!
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So the first sentence says TV and movie streaming replacement is trivial… Can you elaborate for someone who still uses the pirate bay for movies?
I would imagine they mean something like jellyfin/plex, which don’t necessarily get you away from torrents. Unless you want to go the slightly more legal route of ripping DVDs and Blu-rays and re-encoding everything for yourself. I say “slightly more legal” because while you are legally allowed a backup or archival copy of your own media (in the US), you still usually have to violate the DMCA to break encryption so you can rip your archival copy.
Don’t forget the Arr stack.
This setup is very similar to mine
I know the self hosted communities are very pro open source, with which I largely agree, but PlexAmp is such a good player it makes sense to at least try it.
Annoyance: Can’t scan your music library from the PlexAmp app, can’t scan it from the Plex app either. Super frustrating when music as added and you have to struggle with pop-up navigation on the Plex desktop site on mobile.
Game breaker: maybe it’s just really hard to find and undocumented, but there doesn’t seem to be a way to use profiles with PlexAmp, either to have individual play history and playlists, or to age restrict some music content.
Dunno about plexamp, but Plex has an auto-scan built in. Its disabled by default, but works like a charm. It listens for new file events and general finds things before you complete a download or copy
I had issues with auto scan years ago, just re-enabled it and it’s working fine now so that’s resolved, thanks.
The other issue is still a problem, and why I’ll be switching to Navidrome for music. Jellyfin wasn’t mature enough last time I tried to replace my lifetime Plex pass, but I have a feeling I’ll be ditching Plex entirely soon.
You hosting your plex service for other users outside of your home? I’m finding the ease of access for other users / the wife is the largest driving point for me to continue using plex.
I could configure a VPN and attach my jellyfin server to that network however that’s a large hurdle for some of the general population users I have on my plex currently.
For something on-topic the wife and I agreed that she should move to the student sub as she’s studying and kick me off Spotify entirely. I’ve got until the EOM to get plexamp / something else self hosted. Interested to see what comes from this post as it’s pretty relevant for me right now.
Admittedly I could Bluetooth to my head unit in my car and stream Grayjay music to it, but that’s just leaning on an unfree service.
I love the idea of Jellyfin, but since I host for my extended family, and it has to be wife approved (re: easy) plex is the answer. If you already have a plex pass it’s annoying brainer. If you don’t, weigh the pros and cons because there are cons.
Spool up an instance of Plex, and install PlexAmp. Put a handful of your favorite albums on it, see if you like the features and the interface.
Yer I host Plex for 10+ folks and it’s an easy send. Really wish I could pipe it through CloudFlare but not willing to risk it currently.
I’ll give plexamp a go, man my tastes are all over the shop so it will be an album dump (that I should have done years ago) spinning up some old cds and the external dvd drive 😂
In PlexAmp, on the bottom right, tap the gear. Tap account. Tap “switch user”.
Now switch users.
The other “issue” isn’t an issue at all. Plex handles all that stuff just fine and super easily.
Unfortunately, directory monitoring doesn’t work if your music is on an NFS share.
A quick search shows alternatives to keep the functionality: https://github.com/TRaSH-Guides/Guides/blob/master/docs/Plex/Tips/Plex-media-server.md#scan-my-library-automatically
YT video linked in that post. Ultimately just takes a bit of effort to figure most things out IMO.
There definitely can be profiles. You can either create fully new users (with their own logins, etc) or home users. Assign them restrictions as necessary. Of course this is all done in the plex web app, but user switching is done easily in PlexAmp.
Anyone have suggestions for an iOS media player I can connect to a setup like this?
I’ve been using play:Sub for years (for subsonic, then airsonic).
I like Amperfy and I think Navidrome has a Subsonic API: https://github.com/BLeeEZ/amperfy
i like use amperfy on ios and i think it’s nice. for jellyfin i tried finamp, but i disliked music streaming via jellyfin in the end (mainly because making playlists was a hassle)
amperfy takes me back to the old days when i used itunes and an ipod touch interface wise
Spotify has a feature where if it is playing on another device, you can control it with any other device logged into the account, is there any good way to replicate this with a linux desktop and an android phone?
Jellyfin has a remote control feature that lets you do something like this, I use it quite a lot for music.
That whole Spotify Connect feature and Sonos support is what keeps me in the ecosystem, unfortunately…
If your use case is only desktop and phone, KDE Connect can do it independently from your music service. Works in both directions as well.
interesting, thank you.
That’s something I’ve struggled to find so far unfortunately. Maybe something exists but I haven’t found an answer yet.
It really is spotify’s killer feature for me, probably won’t switch to something that doesn’t have it.
Maybe Navidrome’s jukebox mode, although I suspect it’s a slightly different idea (and it was a bit buggy last time I tried it).
I just rolled some of this out on my setup. I already had lidarr running, but didn’t know about the metadata issue.
Beets is running excruciatingly slow importing my music collection. Anyone have any insight on this? I’m running the Linuxserver.io docker container with a very basic config.
Soulseek is new to me and I set that up with a vpn.
Your blog is really pretty!
Appreciate it! I literally just slapped it together just for this post LOL but I’ll probably start using it some more, kinda therapeutic in a way. The assets are all recycled from my streaming days, may as well still get some use out of em
Is symfonium foss? Been looking for a good navifrome frontend for android.
Dsub2000 and Tempo are active FOSS alternatives.
It is not free or open source but is software. FWIW I use it and like it. It’s a one time fee and not a subscription service. The fee is under 10 USD. The program requires minimal permissions and doesn’t even ask for (I.e. opt-in) for much more than it really needs to run. I find it relatively intuitive and it works with android auto which is something I really want in a media player/library at the moment.
On bandcamp Friday in 2 days I am going to buy a whole bunch of music to have locally and there are some artists which are not on bandcamp that I still want to have, I know I can buy their CDs or records and save them as files myself but I’d rather just buy and download a high quality digital version and not all of them have digital copies available to download fr the artists…so does anyone have any recommendations for website to buy digital music from that just have a lot of different artists regardless of where they are on platforms?
I really need to get into a better habit of waiting for their friday events lmao, but yeah that’s where I get most of mine from as well. Otherwise, sometimes a physical record comes with a download slip or w/e, or I’ll just go find a download for something I already physically own. But for purchasing digital, Bandcamp is king right now, and I’m definitely interested in other options that are out there too.
Bandcamp is where I do most of my shopping. Not sure where you are located. In Europe, for alternatives I use Qobuz and have used Bleep.
I tend to use it for more “commercial” albums.I’ve been working on the same and ran into the same issue. If not Bandcamp, I’ve had success on Qobuz. Their streaming payments to artists, last I checked, are substantially higher than anywhere else I’ve looked. I’m hoping the same is true of their music sales but I’m sure half of that is dependent on the labels, which likely have something to do with their not being on Bandcamp… or maybe that’s just my cynicism. I know little about how things work in the industry I just want to pay artists for their amazing work.
