[HN Gopher] Self hosting my media library with Jellyfin and Wire...
___________________________________________________________________
Self hosting my media library with Jellyfin and Wireguard on
Hetzner
Author : wismwasm
Score : 87 points
Date : 2026-01-06 19:50 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (layandreas.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (layandreas.github.io)
| cdrnsf wrote:
| It's worth the effort to host your own media. There are privacy
| benefits, you own the audio files (presumably) and are no longer
| hostage to a platform that cares little (if at all) about
| artists.
| hbn wrote:
| Of all the privacy concerns in my life these days, corporations
| knowing about my music taste is not cracking the top 1000. In
| fact Instagram ads have led me to discover some fantastic small
| artists, so I'll happily give that out to whoever cares.
|
| I'm sure it works fine if you've basically settled on what
| music you like and never listen to anything new, but if you do
| like to discover new music, self-hosting just isn't an option.
|
| Or if you follow any contemporary artists who will drop a new
| single on any given day (which is usually not available for
| purchase), I much prefer being able to just go into my
| streaming app and press a button to start listening as opposed
| to trying to find and rip audio files from the internet and put
| it on my server and deal with metadata and cover art manually.
|
| Apple Music and YouTube Music also let you upload your own
| files to a cloud locker and stream them from any device, so
| even if the platform is missing stuff you can fill it in
| yourself. Best option IMO
| cdrnsf wrote:
| Using apps operated by Meta is an entirely different thing --
| they're effectively spyware.
|
| I tend to listen to albums in full, as the artist sequenced
| them. I get recommendations from friends and niche
| communities, then follow specific artists. When I start
| listening for the day I'll pick a known artist or set of
| albums, queue them up and go on with my day.
| drnick1 wrote:
| > Of all the privacy concerns in my life these days,
| corporations knowing about my music taste is not cracking the
| top 1000.
|
| It doesn't stop there. The business model of cloud and
| streaming services is to charge the customer, and then sell
| the customer's interactions with the service to third parties
| (data brokers), who cross-correlate the information obtained
| with other sources to build very detailed individual
| profiles.
|
| You would have to go lengths (throwaway identity, email,
| payment with gift cards, VPN, etc.) with _each_ streaming
| service to effectively prevent this sort of tracking. And
| after that, you will still own nothing. Worse, the streaming
| company may even ban you for using a VPN, or refuse to play
| the content on free devices because DRM can 't be enforced.
| It's complete madness.
| hecanjog wrote:
| > if you do like to discover new music, self-hosting just
| isn't an option
|
| Sure it is. Music discovery via algorithmic services is not
| the only way. There's radio, talking to people who have
| similar interests, reading interviews with musicians who talk
| about other music they like, browsing selections at the
| library, reading books about music or musicians, even just
| reading the liner notes for an album, noticing some players
| you like and finding other things they've worked on, and on
| and on and on. It doesn't have to be high effort, it's not
| instant, but it works great.
| dazzawazza wrote:
| Nice. I self host using Navidrome, FreeBSD and Wireguard. I have
| a decent Fibre connection to my house and a static IP so it's
| "free" to serve.
|
| I primary do it because Spotify is basically sucking the life out
| of the music industry and I love heavy metal.
| ryandrake wrote:
| My media library is simply a directory on my Linux NAS,
| exported over NFS. No VPS, no Plex, no Jellyfin no Jellyfish,
| no Jelly donut, just NFS. If I want to listen to a song or play
| a movie, I just navigate to that directory and play it.
| Simplest system I could come up with.
| Yodel0914 wrote:
| That's fine, but with something like Jellyfin you get multi-
| platform apps (including tvOS and android tv etc), tracking
| of progress within a movie or tv series, play next etc.
| tomashertus wrote:
| The article is surprisingly missing the most important part: a
| cost comparison. I understand and share the frustration with
| rising prices and ads creeping into paid plans, but for people
| who value optionality and broad access, streaming is still
| meaningfully cheaper than owning content.
|
| In many cases, the price of a single movie is comparable to an
| entire month of a streaming service, which gives access to
| thousands of titles. Ownership can make sense if you repeatedly
| watch a small, fixed catalog over many years, but for most casual
| or exploratory viewing, the economics still favor streaming.
| galleywest200 wrote:
| Some people do not mind buying art or paying artists for their
| work.
|
| If we assume an artist gets 1C/ per stream of a song, and that
| album is 10 songs long, you need to listen to it 100x for the
| artist to get the same as just buying a $10 CD from Bandcamp.
|
| I understand this example is missing the cuts given to other
| parties (label, etc) but it is still more to the artist than
| streaming unless you obsessively stream the same albums
| repeatedly.
|
| Spotify is cheaper because your favorite local indie band makes
| far less from it.
|
| Additionally, thrift stores have loads of CDs you can rip for
| extremely cheap.
| geekamongus wrote:
| Spotify pays me about $0.003 per stream. That's pretty
| typical for every artist on the site.
| f33d5173 wrote:
| For the most part, you aren't meaningfully paying for content
| when you use streaming services. This has the effect of making
| it not cost effective to produce good content you enjoy, while
| still costing you money to pay for the services, most of that
| money being funneled towards slop and execs. The ecosystem as a
| whole would benefit if you set aside the money you would
| ordinarily pay for streaming, and instead spent it on choice
| works you appreciate, while downloading whatever you like.
|
| For movies specifically, you should consider paying
| substantially more than you would on streaming if you watch any
| substantial amount of movies. It is very hard to fund good
| movies with only streaming revenue.
| wismwasm wrote:
| Fair enough! However you need to consider:
|
| - Depending on your taste you will need to subscribe to
| multiple servics. Shows / movies I enjoy are scattered across
| Netflix, AppleTV+, Prime, Disney+. And it's increasingly
| unlikely that IP is licensed out (i.e. no Star Wars on Netflix)
|
| - There is a surprising amount of movies which are not on any
| streaming service (at least in Germany) OR they are but you
| still need to buy a digital copy or rent
|
| - The UX of self hosted solutions like for example Jellyfin or
| other open source can (surprisingly!) be better than the paid
| solutions. I.e. no ads & and no UX redesigns
|
| I'm not opposed to streaming services at all. I will subscribe
| to them as long as it's value for money.
|
| However in recent years streaming services got worse while self
| hosted solutions got much much better.
|
| Your point - subscription is cheaper than self hosting - may
| still hold, but the balance has definitely shifted in favor of
| self hosted solution.
|
| I don't think it'll become mainstream in the near future (or
| ever) but for me personally it's worth it!
|
| It's also not "either / or". You can both self-host and have
| subscriptions, but maybe you can cut down on some subscription
| services:)
| geekamongus wrote:
| A couple of points missed for why Spotify is bad:
|
| - Paying musicians cheap wages to make boring music (ghost
| artists) for playlists they promote:
| https://harpers.org/archive/2025/01/the-ghosts-in-the-machin...
|
| - Not paying musicians anything at all if they don't have enough
| streams: https://www.engadget.com/spotify-confirms-it-wont-offer-
| payo...
|
| - Not preventing the deluge of AI-generated music flooding the
| platform: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-
| features/spotify-no...
| cdrnsf wrote:
| They also commission music from "ghost artists" that they can
| pay a fix rate, then place said artists in popular playlists to
| reduce royalty payouts.
| DelightOne wrote:
| Isn't that how every streaming service does it?
| geekamongus wrote:
| The only evidence I can find is with Spotify doing this.
| DelightOne wrote:
| Amazon Originals, Netflix Originals. Disney Originals.
| Paramount Originals. I'm just wondering what is different
| between series and music, that for music its very bad
| morally to create your own and to put your own in the
| front row. While for other streaming its accepted.
| georgebcrawford wrote:
| Good point. Music is much more personal, perhaps?
| jamie_ca wrote:
| The difference is how they're consumed you don't sit down
| on Netflix and say "put some scifi on shuffle for 8h",
| you sit down and choose a show.
|
| If you're the kind of person who would manually queue up
| 100% of your songs for the day then Spotify Generic songs
| aren't an issue. If you just hit a "2020s R&B" playlist
| and go that's where it feels more sketchy.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| One big difference is that these shows and movies are not
| "ghost," they credit their crew and talent like any other
| production, and those folks negotiate their pay rates
| similar to other productions. If you are a grip on a
| Netflix original movie, you will get listed in the
| credits like any other movie.
|
| The other big difference is that TV and movie productions
| have always been "assemble when needed." Production
| companies are typically very thin business shells who
| hire in 99% of what they need per show. As opposed to a
| band or artist like Taylor Swift or The Rolling Stones,
| where the core persistent business unit _is_ the talent
| itself.
| wmeredith wrote:
| A) It's not how every streaming service does it, and B)
| this is whataboutism. Even if it was true, it doesn't make
| Spotify less shitty.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| Most streaming services commission their own content, yes,
| but they do so to market original content - Netflix
| Originals don't pretend to be Wes Anderson movies, and get
| slid into your playlist when you aren't looking
| DelightOne wrote:
| So if they played a short annoncement beforehand so
| people know its an Original, it would be fine? Originals
| get advertised heavily, next-movie, so I assume putting
| it in the same playlist is fine.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| It would at least be better, than sneakily trying to
| substitute it for artists they'd actually have to pay
| royalties to, yes
| maybsum1else wrote:
| gotta mix in a little baby powder, ya know?
| Spivak wrote:
| I really don't understand the hate around this one.
|
| 1. Spotify made a playlist that's "Chill Jazz To Study To"
| that's really popular.
|
| 2. They realize that listeners don't actually care about the
| specific artists in the playlist since it's background noise.
|
| 3. There are companies who specialize in making "b-roll"
| music for background noise and have a huge library of it just
| sitting around.
|
| 4. Spotify realizes they can license them on the cheap.
|
| 5. Profit?
|
| Seems like a win for everyone involved including the listener
| who gets fresh tracks in their study playlists basically
| forever.
| barbs wrote:
| Also:
|
| - the chief executive invests money into AI weaponry
| https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09-12/spotify-boycott-danie...
| Zanfa wrote:
| It's perfectly reasonable for a Swede to invest in miltech,
| given current political climate. In fact, it would be
| irresponsible not to.
| qwerpy wrote:
| Also, even for premium customers they will display ads (local
| concert tickets) and add sponsored albums/tracks to playlists
| and the home screen.
| wismwasm wrote:
| That's true, I looked at it from pure consumerish selfish point
| of view. I appreciate the idealistic view and caring about
| artists, but in the end I believe:
|
| - Most people will generally choose what's most convenient for
| themselves
|
| - Streaming services will only change their ways if they lose
| customers. Any change they do is A/B tested, so the ads / price
| increases are definitely in their short term interest. Only
| when their customers churn because they cannot afford 10
| subscriptions anymore or are tired of paying for ads something
| will change
| atmosx wrote:
| There is this as well:
| https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/sep/18/massive-attack...
| thordenmark wrote:
| As much as I hate to say it, AI-generated music has gotten
| really good. Better than 99.9% of the dull noise that's being
| made these days. You can generate a heavy metal song that is
| actually heavy metal, same with other genres that have been
| destroyed, or the kind of music that just isn't being made
| anymore.
| stryan wrote:
| > You can generate a heavy metal song that is actually heavy
| metal, same with other genres that have been destroyed, or
| the kind of music that just isn't being made anymore.
|
| Or just listen to any of the easily available fantastic metal
| albums released in the past year? I could see the argument
| for incredibly niche genres (though in the age of Bandcamp
| I'd love to see a genre that doesn't have at least a few
| artists producing music for it) but there's plenty of heavy
| metal being made these days in both the general and the
| traditional (i.e. the heavy metal genre versus general metal
| genre) sense.
| soiltype wrote:
| It's very hard for me to see how someone could believe this
| unless they never even tried to actually find new music. I
| just bought a great new metal album (human made) yesterday.
| potatoicecoffee wrote:
| it probably is you just need to spend more time finding it.
| why would you choose this over finding music that has been
| made by someone interesting that lets you form a community or
| see a band live?
| xp84 wrote:
| Wow. The ghost artists - that's horrifying. Clearly Spotify
| would prefer to completely squeeze out everybody below the
| clout level of the top 10 artists, and replace the rest with
| stock music. I would bet anything they'll cut out the middle-
| artist any day now and fill their playlists with AI sloptunes.
|
| Spotify really wants to convert music into a commodity they can
| buy cheaply, own, and sell to an indifferent audience.
| hydrogen7800 wrote:
| >Now the sound music comes in silver pills
|
| >Engineered to suit you, building cheaper thrills
|
| >Music of rebellion makes you wanna rage
|
| >But it's made by millionaires who are nearly twice your age
|
| The Sound of Muzak by Porcupine Tree (2002)
| electroglyph wrote:
| Great band!
| tambourine_man wrote:
| Also, the UX is deliberately user-hostile.
|
| Its only use case seems to be algorithm playlist. It's an
| atrocious music player any other way.
| class3shock wrote:
| I mostly only use spotify for discovery, using either discovery
| weekly or starting a radio stream from a particular song. Is
| there another service that treats artists better that I can use
| instead for this purpose?
| WD-42 wrote:
| I recently made the same switch. Tailscale plus jellyfin is
| great. Threw in Immich too for good measure.
|
| I wanted a nice native client for Linux instead of using the web
| app so I wrote one in Rust. Shameless plug:
| https://github.com/Fingel/gelly
| xp84 wrote:
| Do you have a recommendation for a Jellyfin client that does a
| good job for music, for either iOS or Android?
| ndrake wrote:
| https://symfonium.app/ is great on Android. I've used it with
| both Jellyfin and Navidrome
| Yodel0914 wrote:
| I use Manet on iOS
| pewpewp wrote:
| "You'll own nothing and you'll be happy" Maybe they were wrong?
| ^^^
| dangus wrote:
| They don't have much in terms of popular music, but I like the
| concept behind Resonate.
|
| It's a co-op of artists.
|
| Streamers eventually own the song outright if they listen to it
| enough.
|
| https://resonate.coop/
| mrweasel wrote:
| What do people do to stream to their phones. The article just
| mentions Wireguard, but how is the media actually played?
| cletusw wrote:
| https://Symfonium.app is a good player for Android
| andreas_42 wrote:
| Usually either the Jellyfin/Navidrome app/web UI, or a native
| player app that talks to your NAS over the VPN.
|
| For iOS I ended up building a small app for my own setup that
| streams files straight from the NAS (SFTP/FTP) over
| WireGuard/Tailscale so no media server in between. TestFlight
| if anyone wants to try:
| https://testflight.apple.com/join/PaQAsGcM
| encom wrote:
| I keep music files on my phone, and play them with foobar2000.
| 128 GB is _a lot_ of audio.
| pjmlp wrote:
| I never used Spotify, keep buying CDs, and occasionally MP3 from
| digital stores.
|
| Still doing the modern version of mix tapes.
|
| Haven't lost anything, and is with a smile I observe kids today
| being responsible for the revival of portable tape and CD
| players.
| encom wrote:
| I've used Spotify a little from time to time over the years,
| but I never got rid of my music files. I have MP3 files around
| that I encoded in the 90's.
| sigil wrote:
| There's a reason Spotify might force shuffle play on the free
| tier. It isn't _solely_ to annoy you into upgrading. Royalties
| are 2x - 5x higher for interactive vs non-interactive streaming
| plays.
| whitguy wrote:
| Regardless of pricing you can't substitute one with the other...
| Spotify is a streaming service with a massive library. Self
| hosting means you must BYO media... and, news flash, populating a
| library with relevant content that rivals Spotify or would
| satisfy your average user will almost certainly require illegally
| acquiring said content.
| rurban wrote:
| Youtube has much more music than Spotify, is better sorted by
| Albums (without holes, no skips) and you can easily rip it. It
| has all the better obscure artists, Spotify delisted.
|
| There's also a recommendation engine via YouTube Music.
| zihotki wrote:
| And once you start listening there, your video suggestions
| feed becomes a music feed thus degrade the video experience.
| Vids and music must be separate
| rurban wrote:
| Well, their video suggestions suck anyway. I'm fine with
| music and table tennis alone
| dpoloncsak wrote:
| You don't need to rival Spotify's library. How many songs on
| spotify do you have added to playlists? You just need to
| purchase those....
| Austizzle wrote:
| I'm probably listening to more music than the majority of
| people, but I have about 6,000 songs on mine.
| asukachikaru wrote:
| This is my bottleneck too. I'm all for paying artists, and the
| hustle of setting up self host doesn't bother me (maybe not for
| my wife though, who is way less tech-y than me and is in my
| spotify family plan.) But the benefit of tens of millions of
| music, a search away, is simply too much for me to give up. I
| do my annually retrospective in music, and Billie Eilish was my
| back-to-back favorite artist of the year. Without streaming
| service, I probably wouldn't have tried her music at the first
| place.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I like that I must bring my own media. It means everything on
| my server was intentionally put there by me. No extra shit.
| didip wrote:
| Dumb question, where do you actually buy digital copy of music
| these days? Or find a big library of music that you can download.
| mahmoudhossam wrote:
| Qobuz and 7digital both have extensive libraries of high
| quality music.
|
| Edit: and of course bandcamp exists but I wouldn't call their
| collection extensive.
| eikenberry wrote:
| Don't forget bandcamp.
| mahmoudhossam wrote:
| Yes, but not every artist is on there. I do use it if the
| artist has one but that's rare.
| gainda wrote:
| i use bandcamp whenever possible
| acureau wrote:
| Spotify is the only streaming service I still pay for, and I will
| continue to pay for, because:
|
| 1. The catalog is comprehensive. I listen to far more music than
| I could afford to own. 2. There are no advertisements in the paid
| service. 3. Their music discovery algorithm is excellent.
|
| I also appreciate the yearly statistics, and how they continue to
| add value for me. Podcasts and eBooks being added to the platform
| was cool. I like to make "taste combo" playlists with friends.
| Really one of the only companies I genuinely feel deserves my
| money.
| akpa1 wrote:
| I do enjoy the Spotify Wrapped stuff, but after moving
| partially to selfhosting Navidrome for a growing collection of
| rips and DRM-free purchases, I've been scrobbling everything
| (including Spotify) to Last.fm, which has a similar end-of-year
| round-up. It's pretty good, got mine a couple of days ago.
| nomel wrote:
| > for a growing collection of rips and DRM-free purchases
|
| I did the math once for my Spotify liked songs list [1] and
| it came to $52k for the last 15 years, or $288/month, if I
| were to self host, without piracy.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45133622
| akpa1 wrote:
| Yeah, mine is also a little bit ridiculous. I think Spotify
| encourages a certain overconsumption of music; for me, the
| things on my liked list are not necessarily things that I
| value equally.
|
| I buy things that I either already know or have discovered
| on Spotify and that I enjoy enough that I _want_ to own, so
| I amass a collection of favourites over time. I would never
| buy everything I 've ever liked on Spotify, but that is
| also because my personal goal is not to become entirely
| independent of Spotify. The goal is to be a bit more
| intentional, to have a bit more autonomy, and to avoid good
| things vanishing into the inky blackness of distribution
| rights being withdrawn.
| eikenberry wrote:
| Music pricing is pretty ridiculous compared to streaming.
| Self hosting will pretty much always require piracy until
| artists decide they want more fans to buy their music than
| stream and price accordingly.
| barbazoo wrote:
| No ads in the traditional sense, sure, but they do push artists
| and albums for example with their stupid "pre-save"
| functionality, even if I don't have anything to do with them.
| I'd consider that an ad.
| atmosx wrote:
| Tidal has smaller library but higher quality (assuming your
| speakers allow you to tell the difference).
| acureau wrote:
| Actually Spotify finally introduced lossless quality, after
| teasing it for something like five years!
| nomel wrote:
| Spotify lossless support was added last year [1].
|
| [1] https://newsroom.spotify.com/2025-09-10/lossless-
| listening-a...
| meowkit wrote:
| Spotify only streams 16-bit lossless as far as I have seen
| (though they claim 24 bit in this post). Might require
| artists to reupload the audio?
|
| Tidal has much more 24 bit options when I did an A/B.
|
| The dynamic range difference is very material on quality
| sound setups.
|
| As a side note Bluetooth (at least for Airpods) only does
| 16-bit!
| SirMaster wrote:
| There's no benefit to more than 16-bits. 16-bit allows
| for a dynamic range of 96dB. No music is mastered
| anywhere near this dynamic range.
|
| 24-bit helps in production pipelines for mixing, but for
| end user playback it's pointless.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| Maybe pointless, but if provided why not?
| nomel wrote:
| By the same logic, if pointless, why?
| doublerabbit wrote:
| As quoted from the OP.
|
| > 24-bit helps in production pipelines for mixing, but
| for end user playback it's pointless.
|
| If you have two versions of something, where one is
| better than the other and the resource cost is more or
| less the same it makes more sense to provide the better
| than the worse.
|
| Maybe the end-user takes interest in mixing/production
| for which they then have the higher version allowing them
| to work with without the faff of having to obtain the
| better quality works. The end-user won't know the
| difference and the new apprentice has a copy that they
| can work with.
|
| That's not a loss, I see that as a benefit.
| kwanbix wrote:
| I doubt you can listen to the difference, unless you really
| have golden ears.
|
| We have been doing double blind test in HydrogenAudio.org for
| a while, and it shows most people won't notice (at certain
| levels of encoding).
|
| https://hydrogenaudio.org/index.php/board,40.0.html
| aeturnum wrote:
| There are lots of reasons to dislike Spotify but a frustration of
| mine with the "I ditched Spotify" discourse is that it hides the
| ball. As this article quietly acknowledges at the end: ditching
| streaming services either means spending a lot more money or
| listening to a lot less music.
|
| To be clear I think either option is fine, but those seem like
| the important aspects of the change. If you are going to spend
| 10x more on music by buying from artists - you can probably also
| afford to keep a streaming service. Spotify does suck so go to
| [1] or Tidal[2]. The thing that matters to artists is getting
| money. If you're going to radically alter your media consumption
| habits that's great too but again seems like the real story.
|
| If we are serious about convincing people to use alternatives to
| highly controlled streaming media I think we should ground our
| conversations about it in the practical choices that come with
| making ethical choices.
|
| [1] Qobuz has the highest per-stream pay rate in the industry by
| like 40%. https://www.qobuz.com/us-en/discover
|
| [2] Tidal is the widely-available service with the second-highest
| pay rate. https://tidal.com/
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Well obviously you could just pirate it instead right? Like
| piracy or not, spending more money or listening to less music
| are not the only options. Hell you could not pirate it and just
| listen on youtube - that's another option.
|
| The real cost to self-hosted is time and complexity. But there
| are all sorts of alternatives to simply not using Spotify
| anymore - not just self hosting.
| aeturnum wrote:
| Sure - but as you can see here the focus on "ditching
| spotify" is often ethical. You can absolutely use services
| that have an artist pay-rate of $0 per stream, but I don't
| think people typically advocate for that - and indeed this
| author does not seem to either (otherwise they would have no
| collection size issues).
| Freak_NL wrote:
| The piracy route can even be ethical. Compare:
|
| * Have a Spotify subscription, listen to all 10 albums of
| some artist.
|
| * Pirate everything, but buy a T-shirt from that artist.
|
| * Buy one album digitally (their latest), and pirate the
| rest.
|
| What is the artist earning from your contributions in these
| three cases?
| dawnerd wrote:
| I want to love qobuz but their ux is horrible as is discovery
| and they suffer the same problem the others do with their
| supplied catalog being flooded in fake songs attached to real
| artists as "ft.).
|
| Qobuz is one of the only places I've found to buy drm free
| music for some artists I follow.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| > I want to love qobuz but their ux is horrible
|
| I did not find this to be the case. Someone gave me a few
| months trial on them recently and I found the interface to be
| the only one out of the streaming services to give a shit
| about customers that prefer listening to albums. None of the
| other major streaming services I've tried do. (not Apple,
| Spotify, nor Tidal). My only real knock on them has been
| their catalog seems to be the smallest of the majors.
|
| Spotify was always trying to push some unrelated garbage when
| I had them like podcasts which I would never want to listen
| to and especially not the types they kept pushing (wasn't
| even popular ones like Rogan, it was stuff like male erection
| help and jesus podcasts lol). They also tried to weasel in
| audiobooks, which again isn't something I'd ever want in a
| music app. I think they even tried to do tv shows for a brief
| period of time. All these things pushed me away from it.
|
| Besides all the other reasons Spotify is a terrible shit
| company it just sucks for discovering albums. No way to turn
| off playlist and single recommendations. It prioritizes
| recommending new stuff that's in genres I don't listen to.
| The only nice thing it does do is support last.fm (which
| Qobuz and plexamp also does) so I can scrobble there and get
| actually accurate recommendations through that.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| UX is okay but the search functionality, which is
| definitely part of the UX, sucks fat balls on Qobuz.
|
| But Qobuz is still king. I gladly pay their monthly
| subscription even though their programmers can't even be
| bothered to code a proper search functionality (that is:
| unless you enter precisely, with every single character
| being correct, the name of what you're looking for, Qobuz
| won't find it... And then weird, just plain weird non-
| matching matches do show up).
|
| But I don't despair: I take it that at some point they'll
| find the time to figure out how to implement a better
| song/artist/track search functionality.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| There is another way. Spend some money on artists, directly
| (digital downloads, merchandise, concerts, etc.). Pirate all
| music.
|
| If you still spend as much on music as before (for the sake of
| argument), more of that amount now goes to the people who
| actually make music. It's a big middle finger to Spotify and
| the likes.
|
| Of course, the obvious issue is that your money now isn't
| distributed fairly according to some viewpoints. You like band
| A, and buy some of their merchandise or a CD, but you also
| pirate singer B's music, and don't pay them a dime. On the
| other hand, if you want to stop helping these mega-platforms
| exploit artists and users and just generally suck, piracy seems
| like a good answer if you can do it without risking yourself.
|
| It won't help much in the short term though, this is not an
| option for most people, but I won't judge anyone taking this
| route and can see how it can be ethically sound for many (but
| certainly not for all).
| drnick1 wrote:
| > ditching streaming services either means spending a lot more
| money or listening to a lot less music.
|
| Certainly not. As to how, I don't believe I need to provide
| instructions.
|
| The main issue with streaming is that you own nothing, and also
| get snooped on.
|
| If you really want to "stream" NewPipe is as good as any
| streaming service.
| Yodel0914 wrote:
| That probably depends on how you listen to music. I still have
| a qobuz family subscription but barely use it. Mostly I listen
| to new albums on Bandcamp, and if I like them enough, I buy
| them.
|
| I bought ~20 albums last year, which I guess would have been
| about the same price as my qobuz subscription.
|
| One caveat is that I do have ~300 CDs from the pre-streaming
| era, which I've ripped. If you were starting from zero I can
| see it'd be a bigger issue, but TBH I mostly listen to new
| albums anyway.
| insatiablo wrote:
| -
| urbandw311er wrote:
| Before cancelling his Spotify subscription and saving EUR11.
|
| EUR11 - EUR6.49 = EUR4.51 profit per month
| wismwasm wrote:
| It's not just Spotify, it's also Netflix & Co., so that adds up
| quickly!;) But I don't argue whether it's economical or not, my
| point is rather:
|
| - Commercial subscription services are getting worse
|
| - Self hosted solutions are becoming better
|
| Jellyfin is a really nice piece of software & Navidrome looks
| really cool as well! And in some (not all!) aspects the open
| source alternatives are even better than their subscription
| equivalents.
| jaredcwhite wrote:
| Never used Spotify, never will. I also, as a producer, pulled my
| music off that service a long time ago.
|
| I'm also not very happy with Apple Music anymore either. The lack
| of UX care regarding the service is noticeable. It suffers from
| weird bugs and tracks which suddenly won't play all the time.
| This is _not_ the Apple which lovingly created the first few
| versions of iTunes.
|
| So I've started to collect a solid collection of lossless music
| files myself, a combination of CD rips, Bandcamp and Qobuz
| downloads. And I'm using alternate player software to access
| them, depending on the platform I happen to use. I don't use any
| server. I manually sync the music files between canonical storage
| systems (my iPhone, my Linux desktop, and my Mac desktop). I've
| even gotten my old iPod Classic out of mothballs and started
| messing around with it. So much fun!
| etskinner wrote:
| The problem seems to be, as a producer, if you don't publish
| your music there, people won't find it or listen to it, at
| least not in the viral way that other artists are able to find
| success.
|
| Sure, there are plenty of people who get their kicks from
| record stores and soundcloud, but to properly make it, you need
| to be where the ears are.
| thedangler wrote:
| I had a nice little app that I would run once and a while and it
| would take all my Weekly Playlist Spotify built, remove
| duplicates and make one playlist.
|
| Spotify built playlists are no longer accessible in the API.
|
| I do not like them now.
| sp1nningaway wrote:
| I just did the same, but using a Pi + nvme drive at home. I did
| an initial setup with Mopidy/Iris, but just tested Plex, and it
| was such a better experience I am going to start paying for that
| instead.
|
| It's been a real joy getting away from Spotify's shoving music
| and podcasts in my face and instead buying music from band camp
| based on friend recommendations.
| modernerd wrote:
| I buy my music from Bandcamp and similar and drop it into YouTube
| Music.
|
| It supports up to 100k uploads and you can stream and/or download
| your uploads on web/iOS/iPadOS etc.
| https://support.google.com/youtubemusic/answer/9716522?hl=en
|
| It's not as independent but if you're already paying for YouTube
| Premium it seems reasonable if you don't want to host your own
| media server.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| > It supports up to 100k uploads and you can stream and/or
| download your uploads on web/iOS/iPadOS etc.
| https://support.google.com/youtubemusic/answer/9716522?hl=en
|
| TIL they somewhat resurrected Google Music and raised the limit
| (I think it was 20k on that). I used Google Music for years
| because it seemed like only Spotify and them figured out
| reliable caching on mobile, other services when I'd lose signal
| they'd give up trying to stream... even noticing recently apple
| music is not super reliable with that.
| Frotag wrote:
| I've tried self-hosting with navidrome [0] / plex / jellyfin but
| the thing I miss most is music discovery via radios / discover
| weekly. I've tried replicating it a few times with embedding
| vectors + vector search but at best it finds songs in the
| (sub)-genre with the tempo / mood being pretty different.
|
| Maybe I just need better data, been meaning to try again when
| that spotify crawl by annas-archive gets released. I've just been
| using musicbrainz [1] and youtube. Model-wise I've tried off-the-
| shelf ones like [2] and [3] and training auto-encoders like VAEs
| / MAEs [4]
|
| [0] - https://www.navidrome.org/
|
| [1] - https://musicbrainz.org/
|
| [2] - https://github.com/LAION-AI/CLAP
|
| [3] - https://github.com/SonyCSLParis/music2latent
|
| [4] - https://arxiv.org/pdf/2207.06405
| josh-sematic wrote:
| This is the main factor that makes me leery to try going the
| full self host route.
| urbandw311er wrote:
| With the recent data leak of Spotify's entire playlist
| database, you might be able to build something considerably
| better for music discovery now!
| spiritplumber wrote:
| I just want to be able to buy a mp3 for a dollar is it so hard.
| sedatk wrote:
| I stopped my Spotify subscription and gave Apple Music and
| Youtube Music a try for a few months. I'm now again a Spotify
| user, despite that Youtube Music is still included in my Youtube
| Premium.
|
| The apps are terrible in terms of usability, performance, and
| reliability. I couldn't believe Apple dropped the ball on so hard
| on this, but then I remembered iTunes and started believing
| again.
|
| Most of my problem is basic necessities. For instance, it's
| impossible to remove a playing song from its current playlist on
| competing apps. That's such a common, basic scenario that Spotify
| can perform easily.
|
| Youtube Music has horrible sound quality, no need to say it
| doesn't provide a lossless option. Apple Music is on par with
| Spotify in sound quality but that's pretty much where Apple's
| competitiveness ends. I had to struggle with Apple Music even
| with the simplest things.
|
| My Apple Music summary:
| https://bsky.app/profile/ssg.dev/post/3m2mvmybjr225
|
| My Youtube Music summary:
| https://bsky.app/profile/ssg.dev/post/3m5ms6fxsrs27
| temp0826 wrote:
| A few of my favorite artists have dropped from Spotify (for
| great reasons that I agree with) and I want to switch to
| something else. I gave Apple Music a try but the interface is
| just unbelievably bad. Also I am a Linux user and the lack of a
| native app is brutal (and Cider, a 3rd party app, is a no-go
| for me). Tidal seems decent though and I'll probably give it
| another shot eventually.
|
| The other thing is I actually do get a lot out of the
| suggestions and daylist of Spotify. I guess there are some 3rd
| party recommendation systems out there now (pulling in data
| from last.fm scrobbles) but I'm not aware of something that
| would be as easy and have such an integrated result.
| sedatk wrote:
| Apple Music has a native Windows app (and surprisingly not
| Electron), but it's quite unstable and laggy, and makes me
| deal with "authorize this computer" or whatever every week.
| So, practically equivalent to having no native app.
| temp0826 wrote:
| I went down the rabbit hole with it and even briefly tried
| it out via wine before giving up. Pretty unfortunate that
| there isn't even an electron app. The web gui is just
| painfully slow and clunky (plus not being able to
| download/cache songs is the biggest bummer).
| soiltype wrote:
| Tidal and Qobuz are good, if you need a streaming service,
| although Qobuz is much less oriented around "pick a vibe and
| press play". They might not have exactly the things you like
| about Spotify, but as far as sacrifice goes, if you feel
| Spotify should be abandoned for ideological reasons, it's
| trivial.
| r14c wrote:
| I'm looking forward to trying jellyfin once DDR4 prices come down
| a little. I was slow rolling my server build as I added services,
| but the ECC ram sticks I was using jumped up to 150 USD from 50
| USD. Hopefully the lesson I get out of this is just buy the damn
| chips already lol
| this_user wrote:
| This really is a completely nonsensical article.
|
| The author is angry that his Spotify subscription becomes
| slightly more expensive, now running at EUR 12 per month instead
| of 11. So his solution is to instead rent a EUR 6.50 per month
| Hetzner server plus a storage space that starts at EUR 3.20 per
| month (next bigger tier is 10.90). Which means he is now paying
| at least EUR 9.70 per month for infrastructure, and he has
| invested a whole bunch of time, and he doesn't even have any
| actual music, because that would cost extra.
| wismwasm wrote:
| Hey, that's not my point!:) My point is:
|
| - Subscription services getting worse
|
| - Open source / self hosted solutions becoming better
|
| Self hosting is also a learning experience / hobby.
|
| And I'm still subscribed to other streaming services! However I
| get more and more annoyed of getting worse overall products for
| higher prices.
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| The satisfaction of dumping Spotify is priceless to start with,
| but then you also end up with full control of your setup.
| distantsounds wrote:
| Okay, so, where do you get the music from?
| SirMaster wrote:
| You know you can get Spotify for way cheaper by buying card codes
| and activating your service from that? Just buy a new card before
| your subscription expires and it adds the time onto your plan
| when you put in the card activation code.
|
| Even from official retail channels like Best Buy and Amazon a 1
| year Spotify activation code in the US is $99, so 8.25/mo. But
| you can get cards from gray markets like G2A and it's only like
| $26 a year.
| palata wrote:
| I see that they suggest Jellyfin. I wonder if there is an end-to-
| end encrypted media server that can be self-hosted? E.g. if I was
| to host my photos on a VPS, I would use Ente instead of Immich
| because Ente is E2EE. Same for my media.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| I probably should mention this: If you're a Plex user, Hetzner
| blocks them so don't try to host it there unless you want to
| setup wireguard and a reverse proxy somewhere else. They received
| too many complaints from media companies mad about resellers of
| access to plex shares hosted on Hetzner so they block the whole
| ASN.
| footy wrote:
| I self-host on Jellyfin with Tailscale from my home server and
| it's been a great experience. It's fun and intentional.
|
| I left Spotify during one of the many scandals they've had but I
| think this was in 2019ish based on where I was living and I just
| can't remember what it was. Possibly not paying the artists
| enough? This was pre-Rogan. Can't say their actions over the last
| few years have made me regret the decision.
|
| I ran Navidrome and then Jellyfin alongside TIDAL and then Apple
| Music for a while, but the UX is just so much better with my own
| stuff and finding things to add is fun. I wish I'd spent all the
| money I spent on music streaming services over the past 15 years
| on buying music instead. Vinyl is more expensive now (I buy it
| anyway), but used CDs are dirt cheap and ripping them is fun.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Cloud hosting is not self hosting. Can you touch the box? Are you
| root?
| chatmasta wrote:
| Does anyone have a good solution for Jellyfin with tiered
| storage? I'd like to store my media as encrypted blobs in object
| storage and then materialize it on disk when I'm about to watch
| it (manually queued or e.g. next episode).
| darknavi wrote:
| Just shooting in the dark, but could you use rclone somehow?
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| 6 EUR per month really ain't much but then 80 GB of SSD is really
| not much for a media library.
|
| FWIW I both rip, losslessly and verifiably, my own CDs to FLAC
| (lossless but compressed), I run Plex (tried JellyFin and going
| to switch) _and_ yet I still pay for Qobuz (I don 't see why I'd
| pay for Spotify when lossless streaming services like Tidal and
| Qobuz do exist: additionally Qobuz allows to buy DRM-free song
| individually).
|
| Now, and that is not a snark: I both rent dedicated servers since
| _decades_ now and run Proxmox at home.
|
| I thought "self-hosting" meant hosting on your very own hardware,
| at your place (e.g. from your home).
|
| If hosting on a rented virtual server is "self-hosting", then I
| take it hosting on a rented dedicated server is self-hosting too?
| But then what's the difference between a company renting servers
| and deploying its apps there? That one is registered as, say, a
| LLC and that the other is an individual?
|
| So "self-hosting" depends on whether you're an individual or a
| company?
|
| Sounds like a weird definition of "self-hosting" to me.
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