Jellyfin as a Spotify alternative • Hacker News Board

Re: Jellyfin as a Spotify alternative

#51

Post by AIPedant » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 1:10 AM UTC

knowknow wrote: post #13

What’s wrong with Spotify?

Yes, "Spotify Alternative" does seem to miss that Spotify / Apple Music+ / etc are legal and somewhat ethical ways to get access to a huge amount of music that would be expensive to purchase and a huge pain to torrent.

E.g. lately I have been listening to more classical, and the musicianship between different performances of the same piece varies widely. It is very nice to be able to quickly explore a few different albums before I find the one I like (also to study the differences). In the Olden Days I would hogged the headphones at the music store... or, more likely, not make my own decision and purchase based on reviews and name recognition.

On the other hand, I of course never actually purchase albums anymore. ("somewhat ethical")

Re: Jellyfin as a Spotify alternative

#52

Post by OsrsNeedsf2P » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 1:12 AM UTC

ishanjain28 wrote: post #41

I wish more artists would sell their music on Bandcamp. I use jellyfin for music but acquiring music is difficult.

If you can't find a place to pay for it, then just do what Spotify did when they launched. I recommend Nuclear[0] for that

[0] https://nuclearplayer.com/

Re: Jellyfin as a Spotify alternative

#53

Post by bob1029 » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 1:14 AM UTC

dardeaup wrote: post #42

bob1029 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been working on a custom media server that does streaming, block-based storage on top of S3, with the local disk being used as a cache. I implemented an override of Stream in C# that can be passed directly to an HttpContext file response. This gives me range-based response support on top of cached S3 media blocks for free. The front-end uses ffmpeg to do a quick transcode on uploads to guarantee fast start of mp…

"block-based storage on top of S3" What does this buy you? It seems like an object storage system would provide everything you need on its own.

Encryption is the reason I don't use the provider's range based support. The server encrypts each block using a local key before it is stored in S3.

Re: Jellyfin as a Spotify alternative

#54

Post by LeoPanthera » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 1:14 AM UTC

agnishom wrote: post #50

LeoPanthera wrote: post #45

I really want to use Jellyfin for music, but unfortunately it separates albums based on directories and not by reading the metadata, so if you have an album separated into "Disc 1", "Disc 2", etc, each disc shows up as a separate album. I really don't want to restructure my library just for Jellyfin, so I basically can't use it.

Does it help to connect a different frontend app like Finamp to your jellyfin server?

Jellyfin maintains its own server-side database, the client you use is irrelevant.

Re: Jellyfin as a Spotify alternative

#55

Post by IlikeKitties » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 1:14 AM UTC

crossroadsguy wrote: post #46

My problem stays the same — finding all my music that is on Spotify from elsewhere. It costs a lot to buy those music files and that too if they are available (which isn’t always the case) and even after I buy I am not sure what were the T&C from that particular place I bought - whether I really own it, I don’t, a bit but not fully - etc. Finding from Linux ISO sites is a nightmare and an extra bad nightmare if we ar…

You can rip them from tidal quite easily. Youtube also has lots of music to rip but in shitty quality. That being said, music piracy has declined quite a bit since spotify. I'd suggest getting into a private music tracker if you really want to.

Re: Jellyfin as a Spotify alternative

#56

Post by PaulHoule » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 1:15 AM UTC

I struggled with Jellyfin for years, never got it to work right, particularly the XBOX clients. Switched to Plex for the win. I like the recommender that comes with Plex Pass and listen to music off my home server on my phone in the car and when walking in the woods.

Re: Jellyfin as a Spotify alternative

#57

Post by bhaney » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 1:16 AM UTC

crossroadsguy wrote: post #46

My problem stays the same — finding all my music that is on Spotify from elsewhere. It costs a lot to buy those music files and that too if they are available (which isn’t always the case) and even after I buy I am not sure what were the T&C from that particular place I bought - whether I really own it, I don’t, a bit but not fully - etc. Finding from Linux ISO sites is a nightmare and an extra bad nightmare if we ar…

> I wish there was an easy way for this - plug and play kinda

I can click a button in Lidarr to auth with Spotify and automatically search usenet for every album of every artist I follow on spotify, download them all, and make them available in Jellyfin. It'll even monitor the spotify account and import new additions. Getting the whole stack set up is pretty much the exact opposite of plug and play, but once you have it all installed it's amazing how much becomes smooth sailing. 2K songs is nothing for this kind of stack.

Re: Jellyfin as a Spotify alternative

#58

Post by chillfox » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 1:17 AM UTC

Self-hosting stuff is awesome if you have the skills.

I have been on a mission for the last 2 years to replace as many subscriptions as possible with self-hosted solutions. The subscriptions really had gotten out of hand, it had gotten to about $200 (AUD) a month.

Quick napkin math is that I have cancelled about ~$150 a month worth of subscriptions so far. The $500 office desktop I got for a home server is struggling at this point, but it's already paid for itself, so I will likely upgrade it to something much better later this year.

Currently I am in the process of replacing all the movie streaming services with Emby.

Spotify and Adobe lightroom is still on the todo list.

I will likely end up with Youtube, Fastmail and Borgbase being my remaining subscriptions once I am done.

Re: Jellyfin as a Spotify alternative

#59

Post by afavour » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 1:17 AM UTC

bhaney wrote: post #57

crossroadsguy wrote: post #46

My problem stays the same — finding all my music that is on Spotify from elsewhere. It costs a lot to buy those music files and that too if they are available (which isn’t always the case) and even after I buy I am not sure what were the T&C from that particular place I bought - whether I really own it, I don’t, a bit but not fully - etc. Finding from Linux ISO sites is a nightmare and an extra bad nightmare if we ar…

> I wish there was an easy way for this - plug and play kinda I can click a button in Lidarr to auth with Spotify and automatically search usenet for every album of every artist I follow on spotify, download them all, and make them available in Jellyfin. It'll even monitor the spotify account and import new additions. Getting the whole stack set up is pretty much the exact opposite of plug and play, but once you have…

I'm going to assume OP isn't interested in piracy given they were talking about buying...

Re: Jellyfin as a Spotify alternative

#60

Post by kaynyn1 » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 1:18 AM UTC

bob1029 wrote: post #36

toomuchtodo wrote: post #11

Just wish Jellyfin would support S3 compatible targets for media storage :/ point at bucket(s), scan/index/enrich, serve to clients

I've been working on a custom media server that does streaming, block-based storage on top of S3, with the local disk being used as a cache. I implemented an override of Stream in C# that can be passed directly to an HttpContext file response. This gives me range-based response support on top of cached S3 media blocks for free. The front-end uses ffmpeg to do a quick transcode on uploads to guarantee fast start of mp…

What are egress expenses though. I really want to go this way, but worried about the costs during egress data transfer