I’ve tried a few options over the years, including SMB and NFS, XBMC as well as HTML with javascript I found online.
I don’t have a large collection of music (fewer than 100 albums), so hand coding things was actually one of the quicker options to setup. That’s despite then hassle of hand coding the URL to each FLAC file as well as the album art. But sometimes the javascript doesn’t handle large collections of FLAC and each implementation I tried had different quirks so I’ve sunk a lot of time into that in other ways without a satisfactory result.
I’ve heard of Emby, Jellyfin, Plex, Roon and Servio. I just need something that’s simple to set up and access. I don’t need fancy features beyond the ability to play the music with a pleasant UI that can be accessed from the web (HTTP, not HTTPS). I’d be running this from a Raspberry Pi 3B which already has the lighttpd server running.
I’m also considering just getting a portable, 128GB FLAC player with a minijack connection and moving on with my life without getting involved in networking at all.
Any recommendations for an uncomplicated way to approach to doing this?
Edit: Thanks so much for the helpful and enthusiastic comments! I tried Navidrome and had it up and running in ten minutes thanks to this tutorial video: https://invidious.nerdvpn.de/watch?v=7V5UUJlSknY
I’ve been very happy with Navidrome. I have it accessible on a subdomain, so I can just use it from wherever I want. Feishin is a great frontend for Linux desktop, and Tempo is a great frontend for Android.
My friend uses Jellyfin instead of Navidrome, and he’s also happy with it. Both the frontends that I mentioned work with Jellyfin as well.
I’m using a Jellyfin server with Symonium on android. It’s almost as good as plexamp, but sadly not available on other platforms. Symfonium will work with any media player that uses subsonic. My current jellyfin implementation is http with a VPN for external use.
I prefer Airsonic-Advanced over Navidrome when using the web interface. Airsonic-Advanced and the Substreamer android app are a nice combo. You can run both severs side by side if you are setting up docker containers.
Plex is moving in the app direction… So Plex is probably moving away from what you want despite being one of the easiest options.
It would probably be helpful to know what you’re trying to accomplish beyond “what”. Like, why do you want to host your music and play it via a web browser.
Looks like you may have made a decision already, but wanted to give Polaris a mention. Been using that on my home server, has a nice Web-UI and a mobile app on F-Droid as well.
Seconding Plex / Plexamp if the use case involves streaming remotely. Probably the easiest to get up and running for remote access.
I’m not sure about the capabilities of hosting on a Pi, but it should be straightforward to run a couple different apps in parallel to test and compare features (I’m currently doing exactly that with Plex and Jellyfin)
If you already have a NAS, (since SMB was mentioned, I’m assuming there’s some sort of NAS setup going) then you may even be able to host Plex directly on the NAS. It likely won’t be powerful enough for things like video transcoding, but just audio should be fine.
Currently I use Jellyfin and found it simple enough to setup. My personal setup is https on the public internet using Caddy as a reverse proxy to handle the https part, but you can set it up for local network access only using http.
Jellyfin itself is not the greatest music player ever, (UI is more setup for movies and tv) but there are music-centric apps that use it as a backend that are really good, for most platforms. On my phone and tablet, I really like Finamp, and on the desktop I use Sonixd.
I’m also considering just getting a portable, 128GB FLAC player with a minijack connection and moving on with my life without getting involved in networking at all.
I used this setup for the better part of 20 years. Nothing wrong with it, my music collection simply expanded to the point where it simply wasn’t feasible to store all of it on my iPod anymore and from day to day I never really know what I’m going to be in the mood to listen to. Setting up a streaming service made more sense for me.
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I’ve been very happy with Navidrome. I have it accessible on a subdomain, so I can just use it from wherever I want. Feishin is a great frontend for Linux desktop, and Tempo is a great frontend for Android.
My friend uses Jellyfin instead of Navidrome, and he’s also happy with it. Both the frontends that I mentioned work with Jellyfin as well.
Second Navidrome. I use it with the android app Symfonium and have thoroughly enjoyed it.
I’m using a Jellyfin server with Symonium on android. It’s almost as good as plexamp, but sadly not available on other platforms. Symfonium will work with any media player that uses subsonic. My current jellyfin implementation is http with a VPN for external use.
I prefer Airsonic-Advanced over Navidrome when using the web interface. Airsonic-Advanced and the Substreamer android app are a nice combo. You can run both severs side by side if you are setting up docker containers.
Thanks. I’m happy enough with Navidrome but if I can try ASA in parallel I might give it a try sometime.
I really like the turntable effect in the Navidrome web app, though :)
ReadyMedia (formerly MiniDLNA) works fine for me as a container via podman on a raspberry pi.
No http interface though for playback. Still very simple and does the job for me.
That looks quick to get going
Moode maybe.
https://moodeaudio.org/
Ampache, good web interface and subsonic client support.
Plex is moving in the app direction… So Plex is probably moving away from what you want despite being one of the easiest options.
It would probably be helpful to know what you’re trying to accomplish beyond “what”. Like, why do you want to host your music and play it via a web browser.
Plex was easy enough to set up. I use plexamp on my phone but can access the Plex server via a browser, which includes my music
Do NOT use funkwhale!
What’s wrong with it?
You got to give us some context my dude. Why is funk whale not recommended by you?
Looks like you may have made a decision already, but wanted to give Polaris a mention. Been using that on my home server, has a nice Web-UI and a mobile app on F-Droid as well.
https://github.com/agersant/polaris
Jellyfin or funkwhale
Plex is probably the easiest and most convenient, I think jellyfin is viable too, but I don’t use it.
If you’ve got the money, Roon or Audirvana are the gold standard of self hosted music
If you want something similar, but free, look into things like volumio or subsonic based solutions.
Seconding Plex / Plexamp if the use case involves streaming remotely. Probably the easiest to get up and running for remote access.
I’m not sure about the capabilities of hosting on a Pi, but it should be straightforward to run a couple different apps in parallel to test and compare features (I’m currently doing exactly that with Plex and Jellyfin)
If you already have a NAS, (since SMB was mentioned, I’m assuming there’s some sort of NAS setup going) then you may even be able to host Plex directly on the NAS. It likely won’t be powerful enough for things like video transcoding, but just audio should be fine.
I use Plex (Plexamp) and I can not complain. I don’t really access via the web browser however, I use the app for dedicated music playback.
Why would you stream flacs? If you download lossless is to hear directly with ASIO or WASAPI .
Currently I use Jellyfin and found it simple enough to setup. My personal setup is https on the public internet using Caddy as a reverse proxy to handle the https part, but you can set it up for local network access only using http.
Jellyfin itself is not the greatest music player ever, (UI is more setup for movies and tv) but there are music-centric apps that use it as a backend that are really good, for most platforms. On my phone and tablet, I really like Finamp, and on the desktop I use Sonixd.
I used this setup for the better part of 20 years. Nothing wrong with it, my music collection simply expanded to the point where it simply wasn’t feasible to store all of it on my iPod anymore and from day to day I never really know what I’m going to be in the mood to listen to. Setting up a streaming service made more sense for me.