So you only listen to music on one device? If not, do you swap the SD card between devices all the time or do you have a separate SD card for all devices? How do you keep them in sync, transfer playlists, etc? What if you have more than 2TB?

Yeah, go local as in: Run your own media server and stream from that.

But only keeping music files on the end device is a step in the wrong direction.

SD Card on my phone. i don't stream it anymore. storage is so cheap now i can easily hold all of my flac files, no problem.

edit don't look for solutions to problems you don't have. most ppl don't NEED to stream everything over the internet.

go back to local.

beets for library organization, gonic for serving, Tempo for consuming

The only reason I still have a s20fe. The last of the sd card phones... sigh

i listen on two devices: my phone and my PC.

depends on ppl's use cases. a home media server is over-engineered solution for me, and perhaps others. but it's good to stop for second and consider what one's needs actually are.

Right, but considering that OP is already running a media server and also is looking for a way to curated his library, I don't see how switching to on-device storage would be anything but a downgrade.

The only reason I still have a s20fe. The last of the sd card phones... sigh

I was hoping to go all in with Jellyfin, but it's been absolutely maddening to try to get it to play nice with my curated library. It just makes too many dumb assumptions about artist metadata.

Any other suggestions?

EDIT: I installed Navidrome, then poured over the documentation for the config file and micromanaged every setting. This has allowed me to get damn near close to the exact unobtrusive behavior I had hoped for.

EDIT 2: AFA mobile client goes, I'd absolutely consider paying for Symphonium, if it didn't seem to require my having a Google Play account (fuck that). So instead I'm trying Tempo.

I use navidrome. And what's nice about it is, there are 3 people in my household, they can all access that. We all have our own favorite tracks saved in our preferred player, and we can still save a good chunk of them to our phones.

In my case, I have a random mood playlist of 200 tracks that gets updated every morning before I wake up, my phone app caches all 200 of them, so I can play them without network access.

up to OP. i read it as "i wanted to go all in on Jellyfin, but it's been a PITA. what else would you suggest?"

Yes... Which is OP is already using a streaming solution, clearly that's the chosen direction.

I did this for a while, and only switched back to Jellyfin/Finamp while degoogling (needed for paid version). I thought it was definitely worth it while I was using it. I also listen to music on the TV and Jellyfin handles it better than other options I tried (including side-loading symfonium).

I currently use a separate music library manager on my server to organize my music collection, then Jellyfin just does the server work.

I think you'll be very happy with the setup you are using.

Thank you for the info. I might try this, however I'm already having a 10x better experience now that I've set up Navidrome, and then tried the Symphonium client.

SD Card on my phone. i don't stream it anymore. storage is so cheap now i can easily hold all of my flac files, no problem.

edit don't look for solutions to problems you don't have. most ppl don't NEED to stream everything over the internet.

go back to local.

how does this work for you? i was on gonic but moved back to navidrome to allow for mopidy to let home assistant trigger playlists directly (with the mpd integration)

but i haven't figured out the smart playlists yet

Mstream - it's the lightest and simplest of streaming servers.

I use a DAP with an SD card on the go, because my whole collection is lossless and I like fidelity. However, it's convenient to be able to stream music to my TV while doing house chores, in addition to allowing family access.

Tailscail + Symfonium

I was hoping to go all in with Jellyfin, but it's been absolutely maddening to try to get it to play nice with my curated library. It just makes too many dumb assumptions about artist metadata.

Any other suggestions?

EDIT: I installed Navidrome, then poured over the documentation for the config file and micromanaged every setting. This has allowed me to get damn near close to the exact unobtrusive behavior I had hoped for.

EDIT 2: AFA mobile client goes, I'd absolutely consider paying for Symphonium, if it didn't seem to require my having a Google Play account (fuck that). So instead I'm trying Tempo.

There really isn't any decent alternative. I can run 4 Navidrome servers along side each other using less resources than a single copy of the alternatives. It just works and does almost everything you could want.