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

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.

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 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.

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

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 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 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 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.