Hey guys, so I have been searching for the different ways to self-host a music-server and don’t really know whats the best/most elegant way to go.

I know that there is navidrome and many also use jellyfin for it. Now I have a few questions:

  • Are there any good apps for android for navidrome/jellyfin respectively?
  • how easy can I add songs to them/do they pull metadata from somewhere (like jellyfin does for movies)
  • how do they (or any other options) compare in terms of ease of setup/maintainability?
  • do you have any overall recommendations?

Thanks a lot for any tips/recommendations and your help :D

  • gedaliyah@lemmy.worldEnglish
    9·
    14 days ago

    Tempus is phenomenal. I switched to navidrome on my server to use it. Chora is also good, and I use it on my TV (works well on any screen). If you don’t mind closed-source, Symphonum is excellent.

    If you are using Jellyfin, it works well on PC, with Fintunes on mobile.

    You can find a number of good apps for navidrome here. I quite like Strawberry, which is cross-platform. I use it locally for library management.

    I connect everything with Tailscale, which is dead simple.

    • fluxx@mander.xyzEnglish
      3·
      14 days ago

      Are you me? Cause I have exactly the same setup. Navidrome, tailscale, the whole thing. I also use strawberry. It’s OK but a bit basic. I recently tried Nocturne for desktop, looks promising, but still somewhat buggy.

    • SpatchyIsOnline@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      14 days ago

      Thanks for the Chora recommendation, I recently pushed the Tempus apk to my tv as the dev has been working on better landscape screen support, but navigating it on tv still requires a mouse unfortunately.

      I’ll definitely give Chora a try when I get home

    • gedaliyah@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      14 days ago

      Navidrome works best with a library that is already well-organized, but it can do some things in terms of library management, particularly with the use if plugins.

      There are some good tools for organizing your library, such as beets, Picard, etc. I did not have good luck with beets because I find it a bit complex for a CLI tool, and a lot of my library is composed of singles and mixes. It seems to do better with whole albums. I use Strawberry player for local library management, which has tools like Picard built in, and also connects to lots of things like lastfm if you want. You can also add lyrics with a tool like lrcget.

      If you have existing playlist files saved, Navidrome will automatically import them. It can also make new playlists, and there are plugins for smart playlists, etc. Once you set up Navadrome, you shouldn’t have to touch it very much because it will automatically monitor and update your library if you set it up correctly, which is not difficult at all. It’s a little bit more specialized and so has a little bit better setup for music than Jellyfin, in my opinion. And it has far more front-ends on various platforms. I do use Jellyfin for all of my TV and movies, though.

  • philanthropicoctopus@thelemmy.clubEnglish
    4·
    14 days ago

    I really like jellyfin with finamp on android but I don’t have any really specific requirements. It just acts like an old media player and works really well

  • sbeak@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    3·
    15 days ago

    As for me, I just use Syncthing between my devices so I have the same music files in my laptop and my phone. It works well as I don’t often change out the music I listen to, and plus it’s local files so no network required (good on an aeroplane, for example). I personally use an MPD client on my (Linux) laptop, while on Android I use Auxio (Lotus and Chocola are excellent too)

    If that doesn’t work for you, there is Jellyfin as well: Finamp for specifically music playback, Findroid for general Jellyfin use. Am not hosting Jellyfin currently so I don’t have anything to add besides that, but do check out the docs if you need help setting up / maintaining it!

    • vgnmnky@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      14 days ago

      This is my approach too. I use Moode Audio on a Pi at home, linked to my mini server. Same server syncs (with Syncthing) all of my music to my phone’s SD card. I have Jellyfin on the server too and my music library is available there, but I just use that for video.

  • AbidanYre@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    15 days ago

    On the client side, tempus is the best Android app I’ve found for interacting with a navidrome server.

  • StrawberryPigtails@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    2·
    15 days ago

    I run both Navidrome and Jellyfin. I would say that Navidrome is probably simpler of the two to setup if you’re only interested in music.

    In both cases uploading new music is the same. Upload the tracks to your media directory and wait for the next scan.

  • jwiggler@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    2·
    15 days ago

    i stream music from my desktop at home. i use navidrome as the server (edit: behind a reverse proxy). it hooks up to lastfm account to grab metadata that is not already build into the files. sometimes the metadata in the files are wrong, so i have to fix with an app called picard.

    symphonium is a paid client i use on my phone, but it has so much customization that a buck or two made it worth it for me.

    i use soulseek to share media with my friends. sldl is a cli tool for it that makes it easy as one command album download.

  • dogs0n@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    1·
    9 days ago

    My recent improved flow is:

    1. Put my new music in a ‘import’ folder
    2. Run a beets container and tell it to import from the ‘import’ folder to my ‘music’ folder (beets tags all music with prompts before moving to my final music folder ofc).
    3. Jellyfin (which already has a music library set up and pointing to my ‘music’ folder) automatically refreshes after a few seconds.
    4. Listen and enjoy through jellyfin app/site OR through finamp (on android).

    The best part is you can rip your music into the ‘import’ folder, or torrent, or get it direct from youtube. Thanks to the modularity provided with this setup, it doesn’t matter.

  • TheHolm@aussie.zoneEnglish
    1·
    15 days ago

    beets + navidrome is the answer. beets organises music collection and enriches metadata with thinks like lyric and images. navidrome just serve it.

  • thd@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    14 days ago

    Music Assistant is an excellent Home Assistant addon. Works with all streaming platforms, internet radio, and local files. And easy to stream to multiple devices (either different streams or synced for multiple speaker setups). I mostly play Qobuz for lossless audio straight to my sound system by soldering an SPDIF optical audio connector to my Home Assistant Voice device. Streaming music to Android devices or any device with web interface works as well, and you can do this on the go if you’ve configured remote access to Home Assistant.

  • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    1·
    14 days ago

    My favorite client on android is symfonium. Also has support for more sources:
    Local
    Plex
    Emby
    Jellyfin
    (Open) Subsonic
    AudioBookShelf (Experimentell)
    Kodi (19+)
    OneDrive
    box
    Box
    Google Drive
    Dropbox
    pCloud
    WebDAV
    SMB/SAMBA

    Strictly Jellyfin:
    Had good experiences with Finamp before switching to Symfonium.

    Metadata (Jellyfin):
    ID3 Tags
    Musicbrainz (1st party plugin. Manual 1-click install) (optional) Apple Music as a plugin

    Maintenance/Import:
    Done via lidarr

    Effort:
    Besides having to create album entries on Musicbrainz (can be done automatically with the webtool ‘Harmony’), waiting 7 days to get them auto-approved and then importing it on lidarr?
    Very low.

    Recommendation:
    Jellyfin + Lidarr

    If you like tracking data:
    You can track your listening history on listenbrainz (part of and operated by musicbrainz) and generate pretty graphs and get listening recommendation made from users with a similar taste.

    Disclaimer: I havent tried subsonic or anything else than Jellyfin. So I can’t speak pro/cons