Organizing My Music Library: From Streaming Platforms to Local Ownership
I’ve always liked listening to music—mostly video game soundtracks. If you think of the best way to find new music, you'd probably say Spotify, Tidal, or insert service name here. There’s a big selection, and each platform has its own unique features, like a massive catalog or hi-res audio files. Everything is tracked and used to feed a big algorithm.
If your taste is plain and you just listen to popular music, you'll do fine. But in a case like mine, where my music taste is more unique, it fails. Another issue with streaming is that if there’s no internet—there’s no music. Not every platform allows users to download files for offline use, or it's heavily limited and paywalled.
I really noticed this issue while traveling, especially by train, where in some areas the cellular connection was bad. That caused the audio quality to drop or even stop playback entirely.
As I decided to drop streaming platforms, I started self-hosting my own music collection—curated not by an algorithm, but by me.
The issue was, there weren’t many solutions that truly worked for my setup.
At first, I used PlexAmp (closed source). It probably had the best UI, good audio quality, and lots of features. But it wasn’t FOSS and had poor metadata management. One plus was that they offered a Linux desktop app.
Next, I tried Roon (also closed source), which had amazing audio quality and great metadata handling. The biggest issue? Their desktop app only supports Windows and macOS. The client wouldn't work on Linux—not even through Wine—it just crashed.
I also gave FOSS alternatives a try, like Jellyfin and Navidrome, but most of them lacked proper metadata management or didn’t have great mobile clients.
In the next part, I’ll share more details about my experience with each service.
Thanks for reading,
Madiator2011