Yesterday I got into a "funny image" post showing someone who couldn't use the correct date format online and quickly found a comment, with tailors, about the most efficient way of searching through a date-time format. I stopped and just thought that was the most "Reddit"moment I've had so far here and it felt nice

Y e p. It's a nightmare tbh. No ethical consumption under capitalism etc etc

You have to draw your own lines. For me I dont focus on all the bad choices, I pick something im interested in and then look at the options and try pick the choice I like the most. One thing at a time and before you know it you've made major choices in several areas of daily life.

This is how I feel with just my spouse. Spotify absorbs so much ADD energy and immediate new music whiplash that I can't help but be OK with it.

The alternative is to be up at 4:00am on Oct 13 ripping T-Swizzle MP3s from YT.

It is not free or open source but is software. FWIW I use it and like it. It's a one time fee and not a subscription service. The fee is under 10 USD. The program requires minimal permissions and doesn't even ask for (I.e. opt-in) for much more than it really needs to run. I find it relatively intuitive and it works with android auto which is something I really want in a media player/library at the moment.

Dsub2000 and Tempo are active FOSS alternatives.

@oldmansbeard @nfreak If the device you're playing them on can run www.last.fm app then that would give you that kind of insight to the data it uploads on your listening habits

Annoyance: Can't scan your music library from the PlexAmp app, can't scan it from the Plex app either. Super frustrating when music as added and you have to struggle with pop-up navigation on the Plex desktop site on mobile.

Game breaker: maybe it's just really hard to find and undocumented, but there doesn't seem to be a way to use profiles with PlexAmp, either to have individual play history and playlists, or to age restrict some music content.

I've been working on the same and ran into the same issue. If not Bandcamp, I've had success on Qobuz. Their streaming payments to artists, last I checked, are substantially higher than anywhere else I've looked. I'm hoping the same is true of their music sales but I'm sure half of that is dependent on the labels, which likely have something to do with their not being on Bandcamp... or maybe that's just my cynicism. I know little about how things work in the industry I just want to pay artists for their amazing work.

I agree, but only up to a point. If you like to discover loads of music because you listen to tracks all day at work for example (which can make you get bored of tracks/albums quickly when you play them a hundred times in one day), its much harder to do so when you have to use a different service for recommendations & listening.

Not so much that I haven't done that myself, but it is more time consuming.

So tl;dr its the discovery part thats a pain, at least for me.

(Speaking from experience)

Edit: i just clicked on the post and it covers discovery, ima have to read that later.

Very wrong

Didnt touch Jellyfin for ~2 years (except tweaking hardware acceleration) besides updating it.
Worked fine for me.
At worst you will get security problems from unpatched bugs or loose compatibility from external services, e.g. the musicbrainz API connection in lidarr.

I think I made a note about that, but you're right I should make it more apparent. I did use the blampe/hearring-aid build here which solves the issue for the short term, but I'll add a clearer note to futureproof it for when the main builds are fixed.

1. Closed non-federated streaming platform; requires an Internet connection.
2. Requires a subscription for a lot of basic functionality.
3. Even though it requires a subscription, they barely pay artists - the only ongoing benefit to using a non-pirate setup.
4. The increasing amount of "Perfect Fit Content" & LLM-generated music in playlists to avoid said payments.
5. They provide a guaranteed platform to political podcasts.
6. Audio quality is not only dependent on the subscription, but even the top-tier is generally subpar and can vary based on how they throttle you that day.
7. As a platform for mass appeal, discoverability is, loosely speaking, crud.

Pick any of those you like.

I've honestly never understood people who feel the need to "replace" Spotify. ... Spotify has never made sense for my use-case.

I don't know how to say this, but...you have extremely uncommon use-cases:

...during those times, my phone is either fully turned off (so I'll use an MP3 player), or it's in Airplane Mode.

Many people listen to music on stereos and don't necessarily want a device plugged in, so

I just download the music I like to my device and listen to it via VLC.

either doesn't work or is substantially less convenient than e.g. casting from a phone.

Not hating on your setup at all, but it's very niche, in my experience.

Maybe Navidrome's jukebox mode, although I suspect it's a slightly different idea (and it was a bit buggy last time I tried it).

Many don't run into dir structure issues because they have already organised their libraries with beets or an equivalent. I don't personally have any issues with playing albums either. Some of the issues you are talking about seem to be client side, are you only testing the web interfaces?