Thanks for all the advice here!

Soulseek/Nicotine+ has been excellent for filling out my library of music, Syncthing is a very clear winner for syncing all of my music to my phone, I’ve begun using Symphony for playing my music too.

It’s honestly revived my love for music! Goodbye spotify

I found an old $5 mp3 player in a discount bin and get my CD’s from the local library where I convert them to mp3’s. CD’s from the library give you quite an eclectic mix of music. I just delete my mp3 files from time to time, knowing I can get them at the local library again.

I think one of the aspects here is you want for drag and drop. Self hosting and jellyfin etc do take time and some resources inc storage and vpn to setup. It’s not as simple as I just want that song.

There is a hunt through soulseek to find the right song. Then there is the making sure it goes to the right place. Then the file name, matching albums covers etc and general library management. Then setting up vpn etc to your phone

It’s a learning curve and then is still not a setup where it’s just find an add. But it’s a step away from big tech.

Either you pirate or you buy from bandcamp.

Go on eBay and buy some iPods. You’ll need a new battery and new storage but it’s available and very easy to do. Also, check out some YouTube videos on iPods and iPod upgrading

Syncthing? Personally I just use my nextcloud server. Autosyncs every 15 or so minutes to my phone, and from PC it’s automatic.

Not off line at all, but I have been using funkwhale, guess you can upload your own personal pod. I do use a third party pod, but that is 'cause I’m ignorant on how to create my own server to stream my music.

If you are wanting to pay, I’ve been happy with TIDAL. Cheaper, pays the artists more, offline download available, and importing your entire Spotify library is not many clicks. Playlists, likes, everything

https://github.com/afkarxyz/SpotiFLAC

You can use Tailscale to connect to a server remotely and just stream all of your music.

And I would recommend Syncthing to sync a “favorites” folder to your phone so you always have your favorite music.

I’m not sure if Plex is still viable to stream your own music content without paying…but it is an option.

However I want the option to expand it as I find new music here and there.

With Jellyfin or other self hosted media player you’ll be able to add files as you like. I usually buy music in FLAC format from Bandcamp and Qobuz to add to my own library. That’s in addition to other music I ripped from CDs over the years.

but are there good options to “sync” the library to my phone other than just simply drag and drop the media?

Some Jellyfin apps have an offline mode (Finamp is one of them) so you can stream music online from your Jellyfin server or mark albums/songs to download within the app and then be able to play that music offline. I use it since I don’t have unlimited mobile data but still want to have some music on my phone for offline play. Not sure if that’s the best way but so far it works for my usage.

Well, for starters you could start buying CDs again and then do your own FLAC rips from those.

🏴‍☠️"Drink up, me harties! YO-HO!"🏴‍☠️

My combo is Jellyfin+Symfonium

With Symfonium you can manually download playlists and favorites for offline, and/or have a “rolling cache” where the most frequent listens are automatically kept synced for offline listening.

My collection is far too large to keep on my phone in its entirety, but with Symfonium I don’t need to, and if I’m ever caught without internet, I’ve still plenty to listen to.

Jellyfin does not organize the music, it’s a way to browse and access it. For a nice client for desktop, look at Feishin.

To actually organize the music, you want something like Picard.

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