[tastysandwich]

For music, Navidrome is superior.

It is just crazy how easy it is to set this stuff up nowadays. I run both Navidrome and Jellyfin in docker containers. Then I use NordVPN Meshnet to securely connect to them outside of the home.

The experience is absolutely flawless. In Navidrome you can host an entire FLAC library and then transcode to Opus on the fly.

It's been over a year now and I have pretty much no issues whatsoever.

I highly highly recommend it

Edit - Opus not Opal!

[vander_elst]

+1 for Navidrome, I self host both jellyfin and Navidrome. Navidrome wins hands down for music. With Jellyfin it's harder to categorize and then search, Navidrome provides a great experience out of the box.

[rc_kas]

I'm sold, thank you will install it.

[bladeee]

I understand that Navidrome is more specialized for music, but what specifically makes it superior to Jellyfin, in your opinion?

[liotier]

Navidrome's killer feature is its simplicity, and not just the dead simplicity of setting it up: Jellyfin has everything and the kitchen sink, which is nice - especially for video, whereas Navidrome offers a well-honed, long matured, music search/browse/play standard API, namely Subsonic which opens a world of clients for a multitude of platforms and all tastes... On that front Jellyfin feels narrow in comparison.

[steine65]

Smart Playlists mainly. They let you add logical filters to create playlists. Think IF song_name NOT contains "live". That's not syntactically correct but that's the idea. Also lots of apps can connect to navidrome so you can import everything easily. Like Feishen is a desktop music player, and

[TiredOfLife]

And Navidrome you can run on a 1gb Raspberry Pi.

[kassner]

PSA: Amperfy works well with Navidrome if you need CarPlay with offline syncing. It is a bit rough in the edges, though.

[chillfox]

That's great to hear, Navidrome is on the top of my list to checkout when I get to music (currently doing movies).

[bergon]

I've never tried NordVPN Meshnet, but just want to add an alternative I've fallen in love with: Tailscale. It's amazingly simple to set up and use. Today all my devices are connected to each other, and my jellyfin service is reachable through my chromecast, phone, computer and Ipad. As well as my filehost VPS.

I've been self-hosting for quite awhile now, and these days it's such a breeze.

[twilo]

Is it better than plexamp?

[hypercube33]

I use and like plexamp but I also think it's a low bar to set; Winamp 2 streaming from a file share is a better UX experience and less work than the funky ux Plex and plexamp has.

[apwell23]

> run both Navidrome and Jellyfin in docker containers

> use NordVPN Meshnet to securely connect to them outside of the home

> host an entire FLAC library and then transcode to Opus on the fly.

i really have no idea what any of these words mean. Spotify's future is secure.

[atoav]

A docker container is a way to easily install software on a server without having to install dependencies yourself.

A VPN (Virtual Private Network) is a way of securely connecting to your home network without exposing it to the world.

FLAC and Opus are audio formats. FLAC uses lossless compression and offers the best uncompressed quality while not being as huge as a broadcast wave (.wav) file. Opus is similar to an mp3, that means it is a lossy compression, but it sounds extremely good at small bit rates/with bad connections. The transcoding-on-the-fly-bit means the user opens up the private Navidrome website running in their home from the road and the Audio they play is compressed and sent over on the fly as they play it.

Self hosting sounds scary, but it is an essential skill nowadays and extremely useful. Things I self-host (besides websites) include a partskeeper instance which is essentially a stock keeping system for electronics parts, jellyfin as a netflix replacement for films and series, my mailserver (mailcow), paperless-ngx (hooked up to a scanner, allows automatic text-recognition and tagging of invoices, letters, etc.) and homeassistant (smart home).

That probably makes it appear like I have to spend all my free time on this, but it takes surprisingly little of my time to maintain this, with a lot of it running on a single Raspberry Pi.

[cortesoft]

> That probably makes it appear like I have to spend all my free time on this, but it takes surprisingly little of my time to maintain this, with a lot of it running on a single Raspberry Pi.

Sure, it is really easy to maintain… if you are already skilled with system administration and how all of these things work.

[_Algernon_]

It has always been clear that people who are scared of performing a few google searches wont use these services.

[Teever]

I'm curious how you came to find your self on Hacker News without either a passing knowledge of some of the things mentioned above or an innate curiousity to learn about the rest.

[mystifyingpoi]

Self-hosting has its price, one of which is knowing what you are doing. Just keep using Spotify, there is nothing wrong with that.

[lanfeust6]

the other is piracy, for video normally

[mixmastamyk]

Do you mean Opus?

[tastysandwich]

Yes my bad

[mfld]

Can Navidrome/Jellyfish integrate with Sonos? For me, the Sonos app still is not able to reliably index/play music from a network share.

[schrectacular]

Yes but you have to use the S1 player and run a second container with middleware, bonob. At least that's what ended up working for me.

[dash2]

> It is just crazy how easy it is to set this stuff up nowadays. I run both Navidrome and Jellyfin in docker containers….

Wow, I’ll get grandma to do it! Ha ha, just kidding, but I’ll try it myself. Ha ha, just kidding.

Honestly, I just want to scream “self-hosting isn’t going to happen, stop trying to make it happen.” I absolutely welcome the hobbyists doing this fun stuff in their free time, but the idea that they will ever win over ordinary users is total fantasy. And it’s accompanied by reality-denying stuff like how “you don’t need” feature X or Y. Sure, I long to go back to organising my own mp3 files like it’s 2002. And because you’re angry about corporate power, Spotify or whoever definitely provide no features of value to anyone! This is all pure mood affiliation.

Sorry. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad your setup works for you. But I think you are not using the word “easy” in the same way as most people.

[bugfix]

Those aren't competitors of Spotify/Netflix; they're alternatives for people who are willing to tolerate small inconveniences to have full control over their library.

Of course it's not as easy as signing up for Spotify/Netflix, but setting them up is easier than ever (even easier for tech people).

[steine65]

Yup, the key word for me is control. And over time, considering the continual loss of control, more people will adopt self hosting, and things will get better and easier. For now, i only recommend it to hobbyists or people with free time and money. It does take quite a while to get it all running smoothly.

[mixmastamyk]

Cheaper too.

[ajyey]

Disagree. With a little bit of technical knowledge which I’m assuming most people browsing hacker news have, these services are easy to spin up and use.

If you can read a README you can set up Navidrome and point it to your local library in 5 minutes.

[schrectacular]

Locally. It's a bit harder if you want remote access... I ended up using a reverse proxy and let's encrypt certs... It wasn't to bad but it wasn't easy. I have never looked into Tailscale or similar solutions though, maybe those are just click and go.

[MrDrMcCoy]

Tailscale, ZeroTier, Tinc, Hamachi, and the like are all very, stupidly easy mesh VPN solutions that anyone can use. If you feel like owning a domain, Cloudflare Tunnel makes it similarly easy to expose your service to the wider Internet on a home connection and not have to worry about proxies and certs. The barrier to self hosting has never been lower, and it keeps falling. Heck, Cockpit's Podman management means you almost never need to look at a terminal, and aren't locked in to a bespoke platform that's rainbows and glitter until it stops getting maintained or gets enshittified. Get a little SBC with as much RAM as you can find and you'll be amazed at the capability:effort ratio.