The reason I gave up on MP3’s and subscribed to Spotify was because Spotify was easy. I’ve been listening “Iron Maiden - Empire of the Clouds” song every day and like a week ago, its removed. This was the last straw for me. Right now I’m trying to find “Stremio” of the music world. Can someone assist?
Key features I’m looking for:
Synchronization between devices
Offline play
Playlist support
Both desktop and mobile apps
Wide music library (optional if I will upload music)
Lyrics (optional)
Update: thanks to everyone who shared their solutions 🙏
My setup is lidarr+airsonic. This setup fulfills all the requirements you listed. The webplayer is really good and you can use free apps to stream your library on mobile devices. Highly recommend “substreamer” for iOS and android. To access my library at home, I use Twingate (Zero Trrust Access VPN that uses the QUIC protocol and it’s lightning fast). Also, the mobile app allows for offline playback and has cool playlist builder features.
This is great, but you should consider setting up Plex if you are downloading from tidal. I say this because the file structures are the same and Plex has an awesome app called Plexamp now
I’m sorry to hijack this thread, but does anyone know of any other mp3 players that work with foobar2000 other than classic ipods? I would need lossless support too, either ALAC or FLAC or something.
No it’s a good question. It would support playing the flac, but the power output on these players (like the m15s) is way higher than what you’d get from a $2-300 phone. Additionally, the 2.5 and 4.4mm ports are balanced outputs, which you’re probably not going to get from a cheaper phone. The cheaper phone also likely won’t support LDAC blue tooth.
It’s that this device is more specialized towards rendering high quality audio and has the power output to drive demanding headphones that require a lot of juice to drive. The separation of instruments is more noticeable and you can crank up the volume extremely loud and there is no distortion to the audio, which is nice for parties.
The device I use daily also has a battery bypass function that enables “ultra high gain”, so when I’m at home and want to drive my bookshelf speakers, I can turn the gain way up and feed the signal into another amp (using the fiio as a pre-amp to push more power to the amp). That way I’m not impacting the life of the battery in the audio player. The volume would be limited using a phone.
Edit: I fully acknowledged that the m15s is expensive, even on sale. I love listening to lossless music, travel regularly for work, and like spoiling myself with a high quality, portable setup. I use the player in my car, for get togethers, and while mowing the lawn. I’ve been very happy with the purchase and use the player daily. Enough power to drive my 660s and Shure 846 iems.
Yes the players support lossless/flac and LDAC blue tooth codecs.
I have foobar loaded onto the android player. I also use Qobuz/Roon. I like the auto playlists that roon generates and I can control different zones in the house with different Roon endpoints. I like qobuz for the detailed write ups and I can download high res files so they’re available offline.
The m15s was on sale for a bit at apos.audio. I got it because I liked the options to bypass battery /increase gain when plugged in. Also has 3 different output options -2.5mm, 3.5mm, and 4.4mm
I also have the device that only functions as a blue tooth player, which is nice in the car.
I have a RockPro64 and 2TB SSD connected with USB. I measure it at around 5,5W so in a month thats ~4 kWh electricity. For storage I think its not feasible to host it on a cloud, see https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/administration/storage/
Likely very cheap, you just have to buy all of the hardware first. I’ve got a raspberry pi b+ (the 2012 one) that I’ve previously used to host my music.
Janky setups, or functional setups? For Janky setups, sync manually. For functional setups, I’d suggest hosting your own Nextcloud instance and using it to sync your music library throughout your devices.
I’ve been downloading tons of my Spotify music using spotdl and sticking it on Plex, which kinda accomplishes most of what you want. I then organize it with lidarr. Spotdl doesn’t actually download from Spotify but it uses Spotify metadata to tag files after matching with and downloading from YouTube music, it might just use youtube-dl/p under the hood but being able to give it a Spotify playlist, artist, or album url from Spotify makes it super convenient. For some artists I just download the entire artist in one go.
I like to DJ sometimes and I typically just create playlists for sets I want to do and listen to them over and over to get familiar / play around with the order / discover new tracks that fit by letting Spotify make suggestions.
It’s a pain to then have to go find all those tracks manually, so this sounds perfect for my usecase.
@deezertogdrivebot you can use this bot on telegram to download from Spotify and it even support playlist and gives you zip file link and the source of audio is Deezer so it can goes up to FLAC
Spotify is pretty much the only quality tool to learn about new music which fits your taste. Google services tend to disappear after a while, like Google Music did, and the only other option is Apple Music I guess, but I’ve never used it, so not sure.
I remember the days before Spotify still: downloading gigs of music, only 1% is ok, loads of time wasted. Fuck it, I’ll pay for Spotify and then download what I like for permanent collection. My time is a lot more worth than a subscription fee.
I am glad those work for you but music is very subjective and personal and these wont work for me. and my autistic peculiar tastes
I literally just managed to build a system so i never need to see the youtube website again. Its what made me wonder if i could do the same for Spotify
Take a look at Musicroamer
you type in a favorite artist and it uses the spotify recommendation stuff to find similar artists
if you find one that sounds nice then you can then create a branch of artist that are similar to them
(probably a horrible explanation, just mess about with it for a minute and you’ll get an idea how it works)
I’ve personally used it to find quite a few new favorites since ditching Spotify in favor of a self hosted Navidrome server
as for FLAC downloads check out Qobuz, which has unlimited DL plans
alternatively if you would rather sail the seas, search up Firehawk52 for a guide
I don’t know if there exists a solution with all your requirements. You could host your own music library via Plex or something, and aquire stuff via lidarr but this doesn’t have the instant availability of Spotify.
I’d probably use ViMusic (android) if we didn’t have a family apple music sub going. It basically uses the YouTube music backend. Super easy to set up and use, has on-device playlist and download support. I don’t think it does synchronisation though.
What’s the bitrate gonna be on ViMusic though – is it whatever is on actual YouTube video uploads? I imagine that would be very lossy. I could be wrong. If it was ~320kbps I’d be all over it. That’s what I’m looking for really. Short of my current solution, which is Soulseek > cloud service storage > CloudBeats (Android app) for stuff I want decent quality of, and Spotify adfree using XManager for discovery and lower quality listening.
Hyperpipe (self-hostable YTMusic frontend) supports accounts, which allows for syncing between devices. It really needs an app on at least mobile for it to really be worth it though, as right now it can only be used through the web UI.
Didn’t apple use to delete your local music and replace it with whatever remastered re-re-release bullshit? Even if they don’t do it anymore, it was shitty in their part and I wouldn’t trust them anymore. Also, their app on Android doesn’t support casting to other devices… At least it didn’t work as it should when I last tried.
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Take a look at funk whale.
https://www.funkwhale.audio/
Plexamp is a great Plex music front end if you already have a Plex server with music.
On mobile; Soundbound is the new Spotiflyer and recently still worked for me
Is it on f-droid?
think it is
My setup is lidarr+airsonic. This setup fulfills all the requirements you listed. The webplayer is really good and you can use free apps to stream your library on mobile devices. Highly recommend “substreamer” for iOS and android. To access my library at home, I use Twingate (Zero Trrust Access VPN that uses the QUIC protocol and it’s lightning fast). Also, the mobile app allows for offline playback and has cool playlist builder features.
Tidal-Dl/Soulseek + Navidrome works for me
This is great, but you should consider setting up Plex if you are downloading from tidal. I say this because the file structures are the same and Plex has an awesome app called Plexamp now
Plex shitty account system can suck my ass. I always prefer open source stuff and Navidrome has a few really nice clients on Android
Can confirm, incredibly powerful combo. Allows for lossless downloads!
YMusic
spotube is not piracy but it works for some things
Doesn’t have offline support, but it’s easy to setup, ytmusic vanced on mobile with ytmusic with ublock origin on desktop.
Another even easier only-online solution would be to install modded Spotify via xManager
I’m sorry to hijack this thread, but does anyone know of any other mp3 players that work with foobar2000 other than classic ipods? I would need lossless support too, either ALAC or FLAC or something.
Fiio has some pretty solid options for this. I really enjoy the Android mp3 player I picked up from them.
Okay, first things first, I’m sorry for being very very ignorant.
But wouldn’t a 200-300$ Android phone also support foobar2000 and playing FLACs?
No it’s a good question. It would support playing the flac, but the power output on these players (like the m15s) is way higher than what you’d get from a $2-300 phone. Additionally, the 2.5 and 4.4mm ports are balanced outputs, which you’re probably not going to get from a cheaper phone. The cheaper phone also likely won’t support LDAC blue tooth.
It’s that this device is more specialized towards rendering high quality audio and has the power output to drive demanding headphones that require a lot of juice to drive. The separation of instruments is more noticeable and you can crank up the volume extremely loud and there is no distortion to the audio, which is nice for parties.
The device I use daily also has a battery bypass function that enables “ultra high gain”, so when I’m at home and want to drive my bookshelf speakers, I can turn the gain way up and feed the signal into another amp (using the fiio as a pre-amp to push more power to the amp). That way I’m not impacting the life of the battery in the audio player. The volume would be limited using a phone.
Edit: I fully acknowledged that the m15s is expensive, even on sale. I love listening to lossless music, travel regularly for work, and like spoiling myself with a high quality, portable setup. I use the player in my car, for get togethers, and while mowing the lawn. I’ve been very happy with the purchase and use the player daily. Enough power to drive my 660s and Shure 846 iems.
Does it work eith Foobar? Does it support lossless?
Yes the players support lossless/flac and LDAC blue tooth codecs. I have foobar loaded onto the android player. I also use Qobuz/Roon. I like the auto playlists that roon generates and I can control different zones in the house with different Roon endpoints. I like qobuz for the detailed write ups and I can download high res files so they’re available offline.
The m15s was on sale for a bit at apos.audio. I got it because I liked the options to bypass battery /increase gain when plugged in. Also has 3 different output options -2.5mm, 3.5mm, and 4.4mm
I also have the device that only functions as a blue tooth player, which is nice in the car.
Glad to answer any other questions you’ve got.
Thanks man! I’ll likely review this on the weekend. I appreciate the offer to answer questions. This is super helpful.
Never heard of this, thanks for the suggestion
yt-dlp -x -f 251 https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=9CWTig2kBKE
I upload all my music to a selfhosted Jellyfin server. Finamp is a great Android/iOS app for Jellyfin that has offline play.
What’s the usual cost for self hosting a server? Also, is there some way I can use Google Drives/OneDrive/Mega as storage solution for these services?
I have a RockPro64 and 2TB SSD connected with USB. I measure it at around 5,5W so in a month thats ~4 kWh electricity. For storage I think its not feasible to host it on a cloud, see https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/administration/storage/
Likely very cheap, you just have to buy all of the hardware first. I’ve got a raspberry pi b+ (the 2012 one) that I’ve previously used to host my music.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://music.piped.video/watch?v=9CWTig2kBKE
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Yt-dl and use any media player, it’s the easiest way to get most of those option ticked.
yt-dlp, the p is important
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Janky setups, or functional setups? For Janky setups, sync manually. For functional setups, I’d suggest hosting your own Nextcloud instance and using it to sync your music library throughout your devices.
I’ve been downloading tons of my Spotify music using spotdl and sticking it on Plex, which kinda accomplishes most of what you want. I then organize it with lidarr. Spotdl doesn’t actually download from Spotify but it uses Spotify metadata to tag files after matching with and downloading from YouTube music, it might just use youtube-dl/p under the hood but being able to give it a Spotify playlist, artist, or album url from Spotify makes it super convenient. For some artists I just download the entire artist in one go.
Wow this is gold. Thanks
Now this is what I’ve been looking for!
I like to DJ sometimes and I typically just create playlists for sets I want to do and listen to them over and over to get familiar / play around with the order / discover new tracks that fit by letting Spotify make suggestions.
It’s a pain to then have to go find all those tracks manually, so this sounds perfect for my usecase.
@deezertogdrivebot you can use this bot on telegram to download from Spotify and it even support playlist and gives you zip file link and the source of audio is Deezer so it can goes up to FLAC
I much prefer to download music as flac and keep them local but i have 2 issues.
Finding new musis is hard because i am rarely exposed to it.
Music i like tends to be more obscure and harder to find a flac download for.
Ive started to use Spotify this year for those reasons but i hate it. I would love an alternative.
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Spotify is pretty much the only quality tool to learn about new music which fits your taste. Google services tend to disappear after a while, like Google Music did, and the only other option is Apple Music I guess, but I’ve never used it, so not sure.
I remember the days before Spotify still: downloading gigs of music, only 1% is ok, loads of time wasted. Fuck it, I’ll pay for Spotify and then download what I like for permanent collection. My time is a lot more worth than a subscription fee.
I’ve had better luck with Tidal’s recommendations. Spotify just kept playing me covers and live music on my weekly and it was driving me crazy.
It’s the opposite for me.
Warez websites
Blogs
Bandcamp daily
Youtube and twitch feedback channels
Sorry but it’s easy to discover new music without algorithms
I am glad those work for you but music is very subjective and personal and these wont work for me. and my autistic peculiar tastes
I literally just managed to build a system so i never need to see the youtube website again. Its what made me wonder if i could do the same for Spotify
Take a look at Musicroamer
you type in a favorite artist and it uses the spotify recommendation stuff to find similar artists
if you find one that sounds nice then you can then create a branch of artist that are similar to them
(probably a horrible explanation, just mess about with it for a minute and you’ll get an idea how it works)
I’ve personally used it to find quite a few new favorites since ditching Spotify in favor of a self hosted Navidrome server
as for FLAC downloads check out Qobuz, which has unlimited DL plans
alternatively if you would rather sail the seas, search up Firehawk52 for a guide
I don’t know if there exists a solution with all your requirements. You could host your own music library via Plex or something, and aquire stuff via lidarr but this doesn’t have the instant availability of Spotify.
I’d probably use ViMusic (android) if we didn’t have a family apple music sub going. It basically uses the YouTube music backend. Super easy to set up and use, has on-device playlist and download support. I don’t think it does synchronisation though.
What’s the bitrate gonna be on ViMusic though – is it whatever is on actual YouTube video uploads? I imagine that would be very lossy. I could be wrong. If it was ~320kbps I’d be all over it. That’s what I’m looking for really. Short of my current solution, which is Soulseek > cloud service storage > CloudBeats (Android app) for stuff I want decent quality of, and Spotify adfree using XManager for discovery and lower quality listening.
I think YouTube music is different to actual YouTube but I’m not exactly sure. You can always just try it and see if it’s good enough.
Most songs are between 130 and 160kbps
Ah thanks for letting me know. Not ideal
Does ViMusic support Android Auto? That’s a nifty find, thanks!
It seems there is a way to get it to work
Hyperpipe (self-hostable YTMusic frontend) supports accounts, which allows for syncing between devices. It really needs an app on at least mobile for it to really be worth it though, as right now it can only be used through the web UI.
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Didn’t apple use to delete your local music and replace it with whatever remastered re-re-release bullshit? Even if they don’t do it anymore, it was shitty in their part and I wouldn’t trust them anymore. Also, their app on Android doesn’t support casting to other devices… At least it didn’t work as it should when I last tried.
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