[woodruffw]

> MPD works great for non-tech-savvy friends over, you just need to install a web-based client and they can point their smartphone browser to it.

There are different standards for this: my non-technical friends could probably browse to a local website on their smartphones. My parents would forget how to do it each time, and would be annoyed that it doesn't look like Spotify or Apple Music.

As it is, everybody on my network is able to auto-discover the Pi using their phone or computer's native AirPlay/DLNA support and play music using their application of choice (meaning my server, their own MPD server, Spotify, whatever). That kind of flexibility was a necessity for my case.

[softwarebeware]

Doesn't that have the drawback, though, that you aren't able to share the playlist? My biggest complaint about Airplay (and also Bluetooth) is that someone might put their music on but when I want to put "my" music on I can't because they're paired to the given speakers.

The MPD approach is far better because each person's client view is a shared view of a single playlist. People can all add or update that playlist together.

[woodruffw]

This is definitely true -- there's no shared playlist state, as far as I can tell, with this setup. I think HiFiBerryOS supports MPD, but I haven't looked too closely into it.

At least for my purposes, this isn't too big of a drawback: HiFiBerryOS seems to take a "FIFO" approach, so taking over control just involves playing over AirPlay and booting the last person off. Someone could of course do that do me, but that's what social etiquette is for :-)