[swombat]

You're not alone. My blood congeals at the idea that access to the music I love is somehow restricted by a third party with a different agenda to mine. I have zero interest in a third party streaming service. Now, if I could install my very own self-hosted Spotify-alike, stick all my music on there, and stream it to my devices with a smooth wireless connection that works even when I'm in tunnels, then you've got me as a streaming music customer.

[steelcm]

I'm the complete opposite. I'm a bit of a tinkerer, so my hardware and OS are transient (flash a new build every 3 months). Instead of migrating data, my habits have instead slowly evolved to using SAAS. Don't get me wrong, I have a NAS drive somewhere with a load of music/movies on, but I just don't touch it anymore. It's easier to open up a browser and sign-in to grooveshark or google play.

[stephenc_c_]

You can do that with Subsonic: http://www.subsonic.org/pages/index.jsp

[err4nt]

skip Subsonic and migrate to Plex. I do have a paid subscription because I love the software so much, but here's why it's so great:

The media server can run on Windows, Mac, and Linux, so I have it set up on my web server. You can then use a client on Windows, Mac, iOS, or the web browser to stream music, photos, and movies. You can also share your library with other Plex users, so if you have libraries that are always online, consuming media from iOS for you and your friends can feel very much like your own private Netflix (and Rdio/grooveshark)

It truly is the smoothest way to stream your own media, I've tried them all.

http://plex.tv

[swombat]

How's the caching on the iPhone? Can I stick a bunch of FLACs and others on Plex, then open them with the (paid) Plex Pass subscription client, then cache them on there, and play them wherever?

[mikewhy]

Big fan of Plex but haven't used the music features yet. How reliable is the metadata fetching? Or do you just point it to an iTunes library file?

[samolang]

Both Amazon and Google let you import your existing libraries and stream them.

[jimmyhmiller]

I'm a prime member, have been for a while. I just tried to import my library, it said I had 250 songs I could import for free. It then asked me if I'd like to pay $25 to upgrade so I can import any number of songs. I was able to upload all my songs to google for free.

[samolang]

Dang. Didn't realize that Amazon charged you past a certain number of songs. I have my whole library uploaded to Google as well. I usually use spotify, but it comes in handy sometimes (like when I want to listen to the Beatles).

[psychometry]

What is the point of uploading music I own to a cloud service so I can stream it later, wasting my precious mobile data? My phone has gigabytes of storage and I can transfer thousands of tracks in seconds.

[samolang]

Convenience. I have like 150 gigabytes of music. I can't put all of that on my phone and even if I just put a subset on there I'd have to re-load it every time I get a new phone. What if I want to play the music out of whatever laptop or tablet I happen to be using at the time? Also, I don't have to worry about my hard drive dying. Also, Google lets you save the music to your phone so you don't have to use mobile data.

[theplaz]

The old version of Cloud Drive was pretty much that (except it was hosted on Amazon).

Before Cloud Drive, I used Subsonic, which is self hosted. Though it never really worked all that well.