I see that when people ask for music servers, people frequently suggest Navidrome or mpd/mopidy. I haven’t tried either. I’m just using Jellyfin as an all-in-one. I’m wondering why do people choose to use a dedicated music server over an all-in-one like Jellyfin?
Is the extra overhead worth it?
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Jellyfin works nicely for music, as long as you use a good client. The native jellyfin mobile app is not optimized for music. I use symphonium for android listening and am very pleased with it. More settings than Id ever need, different options for downloading/caching songs on device, support for subtitles and all.
One major reason why I have Ampache as a separate server is that they support smart playlist, which wasn’t well supported on Jellyfin. Navidrome also supports smart playlist, but you couldn’t edit on the web.
how does ampache handle day to day for you? what is your favorite client?
It works pretty well despit having 30k+ music files read over rclone, though I am the only user. It also has a web client, though it looks a bit old. I use Symfonium on Android and Feishin on Desktop since it provides OpenSubsonic API.
thanks for your response!
i had ampache running in docker for like an hour or something but can’t remember why i didn’t give it a fair shot. i think it was because i was still looking for jukebox mode.
how long have you been running it?
i had gonic for a bit but ended up back at Navidrome as the playlists can be edited by the mopidy subidy extension.
still haven’t figured out the smart playlists lol
Definitely more than a year! If you have tried it in the past, you probably dropped it either because you used it before the revival, or the UI looked really old. At least that was what I did.
I build smart playlists for Navidrome with Symfonium on Android or Feishen on desktop, then export to server to get them into Navidrome. I also have been playing around with local AI generating smart playlists with mixed success. The file structure is very simple.
Navidrome just announced plug-ins last release. I think an AI playlist maker would be pretty fun.
Clients often are better suited for music, specially for mobile. For example with Subsonic clients (Navidrome, Gonic, etc), the client aggressively caches the queued songs, which is super helpful when there are hiccups in the network while traveling. A few clients allow me to configure the cache size, allow me to mark some titles are always cached, allow me to browse the cache (case I don’t have network at all). It’s just way better suited for music.
And on the desktop clients are way lighter weight.
I wasn’t aware that the client cached the playlist. That’s pretty great.
Ultrasonic and DSub(2000) both do. It’s so incredibly useful on roadtrips. Works really really well. I have the app live on the as card in my phone and keep the cache at a massive 100Gb, I have all my favorite music stores, in flac, ready to go at all times.
Do One Thing Well: Each program should focus on a single task and perform it effectively.
At the moment im not hosting a music server, but used to use Navidrome, it worked fine and used a small footprint.
Having all in one it’s more issues to solve, if something breaks, everything breaks.
Having all on Jellyfin is more convenient.But adding hundreds or thousands of songs along with movies and episodes will create a huge database, more resources used, slower searches
I tried using Jellyfin for music but I found that it doesn’t really handle featured artists that well. Navidrome organizes music much better so I prefer using that.
I’ve used Plex’s music before. It works well. They have a dedicated Plexamp app for it. Works well with audiobooks too.
It works okay for audiobooks, but if you want it to save your place and track chapters, audiobookshelf is better.
Some plex audiobook clients like Prologue for iOS have this built in
Airsonic (fork of Subsonic) has worked well for me for a few years. Used Subsonic for many years prior. I mainly use play:Sub on IOS for playback, local/offline caching, etc.
Jellyfin has no five star rating for music. Navidrome has it. As simple as that.
I don’t think you’re really limited to one or the other. You can pool all your media in the same place and then point different services at it. I don’t listen to my crusty old downloaded music much these days, but, for example, I used to have Plex and Emby running side by side for years to watch movies/TV without issue. These services don’t consume that many resources so you can try multiple options until you find something you like and then remove the rest.
i am enjoying navidrome and mopidy together! mopidy for in house, Tempo or subtracks for on the go.
works with home assistant quite well if the MPD extension is installed on Mopidy.
Holy shit I was googling about this yesterday and was only finding useless reddit threads
I am using syncthing to directionally sync my music from my server to my phone. I like having the local copy on both devices so I don’t worry about losing cell service/internet.
I setup navidrome but never got around to using it much personally. It seems like a good option for a private collection, but im more about sharing mine these days.
I setup jellyfin with feishin and use finamp on mobile for music.
Im also running the latest alpha of funkwhale which i recommend checking out the stable version for a better impression but the alpha is functional if a bit ugly at the moment. My public service for funkwhale has the most users out of anything else i run so people def seem to like it.
I discovered mstream fairly recently and really like its simplicity.
I have MPD setup to stream as a radio on my homepage.
Overall i mainly just use jellyfin out of convenience because i already use it for shows and movies. But ive tried lots of dedicated music options and every subsonic fork still in existence, i keep coming back to jellyfin though.
I think if you already have jellyfin working navidrome isnt really as useful unless you dont like the way jellyfin handles music (wich objectively jellyfin isnt the best interface for music). Its not really that much extra overhead though tbh so you shouldnt hesitate to give it a try if you want to. Really anything thats just focused on audio streaming isnt going to add much overhead.
Not for me, I prefer AIO, less maintenance.
I’m hosting my music on Jellyfin. I generally use Symfonium on Android to listen. When I was on iOS I was using this app called Manet, but it was a little buggy. No complaints here though, it fulfills my needs.