I use Jellyfin. You can find a very easy to deploy docker container by linuxserver.io team. Jellyfin has dedicated music only apps as well, for phones as desktops.

What I’ve been doing:

Easy option: because I only have around 40gb of music, I sync it between my PC and my phone using syncthing since 128gb is the minimum nowadays

Hard option: streaming is cooler so I installed nextcloud with an optional plugin called “music” which allows to connect an app called “ultramusic” and it becomes “self hosted Spotify” with android auto support and all the bells and whistles. Disadvantage: Nextcloud is a moving target. For some reason they have to release new incompatible versions every two or three months. So for plugin developers this is a very annoying upgrade threadmill that eventually leads to burnout and that plugin dies. Even officially supported plugins sometimes don’t support the latest version when they launch it. If you choose to use nextcloud with docker, make sure to stay behind 1-2 versions (tag nextcloud:28 when nextcloud:30 is released) or your plugins might suddenly break without any warning. According to fanboys this is the industry standard nowadays and it’s up to the user to manually check the GitHub issues of each of the 30 plugins if it’s compatible before updating. Even if it’s official plugin. They call it “stable” but they mean “beta testing for the paid enterprise version”.

Skimmed comments, but if you download and manage your music on your own on a machine you can have a super simple setup like I do. All music is synced using Syncthing to my phone. So my phone gets local storage, and then I use Poweramp (android) to play it.

I pretty much have a folder for all the music though. But I assume you can sort music into folders to have them as playlists. But perhaps not as practical as desired.

I use a Plex server and the PlexAmp app wherever I want to listen. There are probably better options, but it’s something I set up years ago which was dead simple and requires almost no maintenance.

Symphonium is a great Android music player which connects to a Subsonic or Jellyfin server (or any other protocol like SMB).

Navidrome is a music server which implements the Subsonic protocol. This means apps like Symphonium can connect to it.

Any old PC is enough, even a Raspberry Pi is fast enough for a music server.

1. Install Navidrome on the server/pc
2. Configure Navidrome (open ports, add your music library/folder)
3. Connect a subsonic-compatible music app to to the server (I.e. type in IP or domain as well as the port).

Anything more like SSL (https) and a domain is optional for getting it working, and only a benefit if used outside of your home network. Using Tailscale makes a domain/SSL unnecessary and also no longer needs messing around with networking (e.g. no opening ports on the router).

I’m going to go another route here: do you need streaming?

Like, I’ve simply gone with a giant pile of FLACs that I put on a SD card for my phone, and use over the NAS for when I’m at home and don’t currently use any fancy-pants streaming stuff.

So like, depending on how you’re using your music library, you might not even need to drop deep into the giant self-hosting rabbithole for this.

however, i know nothing about self hosting. My knowledge is absolutely zero […] I dont understand nothing

This is going to be a problem, unfortunately. You’ll need to define your use case first:

• How much music do you want to have access to? Hundreds, thousands, millions of files? How large is your collection?
• Do you have downloaded copies of all the music you want to listen to? Are they all in one place, well organized and tagged? If you just have downloads in the Spotify app, you won’t be able to use those files, you don’t actually own that music. You’ll need DRM-free audio files.
• Where and how do you want to be able to access them? Just from one device like your phone? Many devices? Is having access at home good enough, or do you want to be able to access your collection while you’re away from home?
• Will you be the only user?
• What kind of budget do you have to work with?

An old PC might be enough to act as a server, but there’s more involved and the answer to what you need depends on what exactly you want to do. You will not be able to build a personal version of Spotify with just an old PC, for instance.

There are lots of solutions, but as others have noted, Plex with Plexamp is great.

I’d recommend getting a NAS for storage and running mirrored disks. This way you’ve got some redundancy in the event of a disk failure.

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Navidrome server. Use podman. Buy a Fully qualified Internet address first, then go to cloudflare and proxy your IP to the new. Address. Finally in android install Ultrasonic or Subsonic and go to your server.

You don’t need to have a Fully qualified Internet address. But I like it better than having to remember 55.655.67.533. but the IP address still works fine. The thing about the cloudflare proxy is that it never reveals your IP. So in case someone might be snooping around, they gotta get past cloudflare first.

Jellyfin + Finamp has been pretty good for me.

Plex is good and the Plexamp app for music is excellent.

What’s wrong with just throwing MP3s on an SD card, or hard drive?

Edit: Love how I have 4 upvotes, 4 downvotes. So a pretty divicive statement I’ve made. Yet nobody has told me why mp3s on local storage is or is not a solution for self hosting music. No opinions shared, other than angry arrows in both directions.

Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool.

Actually, I’m gonna add another really simple option: Lyrion (Formerly Logitech Media Server). My wife swears by this one, supports local library, integrates with LastFM, and if you use Tidal, Qobuz, Deezer, or Spotify, you can integrate your streaming service with your local library for radio mixes.

Can install it right on a laptop or PC and connect to wherever your music is (local on the machine, on a NAS, etc.). After you install it, you can access it directly via a web browser or webapp, which will make it accessible from desktop or phone.

There are two main ways you can do it. You’ve already mentioned you have your library/music files, so that’s a good start, you’re basically looking for a way to access it on other devices. The first way would be to set up an old PC/rent a cloud server, and set up the service you want to use, though for now this may be a bit too complex if all you want to do is stream your own music, and have no experience. That being said, it’s always good to have a look and see, there may be a tutorial that works for you if you want to go down this route.

You’ve mentioned Navidrome, and it’s a good shout, basically just looks at the folders of music you have, and lets you stream them to your phone/PC (and more) like Spotify or Google Music. For the simplest possible setup, I’d recommend a service like Pikapods (https://pikapods.com), which essentially selfhosts applications for you, and gives you access to the files. For Navidrome, for 50GB storage (and the recommended settings of 1 CPU core and 0.5GB RAM), it’s $3.01 a month, which, though not free, is very affordable if that’s all you want to do, plus they handle updates, etc. You shouldn’t need to set any variables, and can upload your music to their service via FTP (File Transfer Protocol, a way to copy files to another PC/server from your PC), and they have docs on how to do that on the site.

Hope this helps :P