CerebralHawks

Navidrome looks like good stuff. If I ever move off of Plex, I’ll absolutely be looking at it. I’m running macOS, but my goal is to buy a gently used Windows PC from a business or something (like they couldn’t upgrade it to Windows 11 or whatever’s after that) and replace Windows with Linux, and use it as a server. My Mac (M2 Pro, 16GB RAM) is more than enough machine to run multiple servers, but I’d rather do that with a dedicated machine running some *nix that I can terminal into from the Mac. Navidrome does run on macOS with minor tweaking that is not above my skill level, but when I set up the server I’ll be looking real hard at alternatives.

Definitely more advanced than what I do! I’ve also been collecting for a long time, and I’ve just been storing the media. I went from Windows/x86-64 to Mac/ARM64 a few years back, and I have kinda limited options that way. I would have just gone to Linux if my computers didn’t die, but at the time, Apple made sense.

I do Apple Music, but, that doesn’t answer the question. I also self-host my music via a Plex server. I got Plex Pass for well under $100 on sale years and years ago. Much harder to recommend now. Plexamp is awesome for music, and I also use Prologue (iOS app) for audiobooks hosted on Plex.

For tagging, I use Mp3Tag and tag manually. It was free on Windows, but the guy wants $30 for it on Mac. It’s a long story as to why, but after he was kind enough to explain it to me… I paid the man. (For my part, I’d used it for free for many years and I got a lot of miles out of it, and still do, and it’s a good, well maintained app from a solo developer.) There are free alternatives. Not so many good ones on Mac (part of why I paid). For album art, I get them from Apple using this handy site (not mine): https://bendodson.com/projects/itunes-artwork-finder/ — you can use 600px or you can use either 2000px or 3000px, I forget which. I’m good with 600px. I think Apple uses the smaller size for phones and the bigger one for TVs and Macs (especially as iMacs have 5K screens now).

My library might also not be as big as yours is. Plex says I have 14,462 tracks indexed. Maybe those are rookie numbers, I dunno. I pretty much have everything I want. All I’d really want now is to take my Apple Music playlists and download them to m4a 192k or similar. I have a few decade playlists that are like 500-600 songs each (80s, 90s, and 00s).

I self-hosted Plex and Jellyfin on Windows. It’s fine. But as others have said, Windows machines tend to be too power-hungry. Honestly I think that’s more a symptom of x86-64. Changing the OS from Windows to Linux does not magically change the power needs of the hardware. (However, Linux tends to demand less of the hardware, especially if there’s no GUI.)

I now self-host Plex on a Mac mini (M2 Pro, 16GB RAM/512GB SSD). M2 Pro in Intel speak is like i5 as in, it’s the “next one up” and “good enough for most people” but not the low entry into the platform (M# base or i3), though I’d say M4/M5 base is better than M2 Pro. Just like going 2-3 generations newer, the i3 gets closer to and may surpass an older i5.

There’s a reason self-hosters prefer Linux, but I’d think it would be more about the hardware than the software. Windows is problematic because you’re opening ports and Windows is a target due to its massive market share. Mac is kinda (/sorta /not really) UNIX based, and Linux is, well, it’s Linux; neither is bulletproof, but both are better than Windows because they’re not really being targeted. That said, the MacBook Neo and Mac Mini going for $500 if you’re a student, $600 otherwise is getting a lot of people sick of Microslop’s BS to switch, and the Neo in particular is forcing the PC market to get competitive as macOS market share is rising — this also makes it more of a target. You’re always at some risk online and a little common sense goes a long way.

As an Apple guy, thank you for contributing to the platform I use. A lot of advanced networking stuff tends to favour Linux and even Windows. The former I understand… the latter, I grudgingly understand (it sucks but everyone uses it). And no one’s really buying Apple for networking. It’s not like it’s the 90s and networking is stupid hard and AppleTalk makes things make sense. Now everyone’s as good as AppleTalk was. I still think Macs are the best for networking. Wintel desktop, Wintel laptop, same WiFi network, couldn’t see each other no matter what I do. Mac mini desktop, MacBook Air, both signed into the same iCloud, they show up in each other’s Finder (file manager). Even my iPhone can navigate to them. The 10.5TB I have connected to my desktop is available to all my Apple devices. And I basically suck at networking.

You may be aware everyone is pissed at Plex right now because their self hosted media centre software’s lifetime license just tripled from $250 to $750 just a year or two after doubling to $250. I got mine at $90, so I’m not affected, but a lot of people are mad. Rival Jellyfin announced they were quadrupling their price in response — four times zero is still zero, though. Jellyfin is free and will remain so, at least for now. However, Jellyfin isn’t available outside your network. People use a thing called Tailscale which I only know by name, to allow remote access. It seems that it’s a kind of VPN host that allows clients to act as though they’re on the network remotely, and thus access the content remotely. By any chance, does your app do similar?

Again, I suck at networking. I understand some of the terms. I read your post and I read the description on the App Store and I understand some of the thing, but not all. I’m not looking to switch media centres, I’m just saying, if that’s something your app offers, you might have a growing audience. Maybe your app is nothing like Tailscale and I’m way off, but I thought I’d mention it on the off chance.

Jellyfin doesn’t work without complex setup on Apple stuff. For the Apple TV app, you’ll need to know the server’s IP address to get started. It can’t just detect it like Plex can.

I had it up and running at one point, but tried it again this year and it was a complete non starter.