Rubenerd

My post about moving on from iTunes generated a ton of interest and feedback. Thanks to all of you who sent in suggestions and comments in email and Mastodon, you’ve given me a lot to think about.

These were the servers you all suggested:

• Navidrome, an open source, self-hosted media server that even has FreeBSD install instructions. A few of you linked to Wouter’s post over on Brainbaking which goes into detail how it works.

• Plex Music, which I was told would work well given I already use Plex as a server for shows and movies. I was unaware it even existed.

And local client software:

• foobar2000, which is still being actively developed after all these years. The UI is a bit different to what I’m used to, but their Mac client is still pretty fast.

• DeaDBeeF, a clever pun on hex and audio, and also a capable media player with a flexible UI.

• Swinsian, a paid macOS app that gets the closest to mimicking the design of classic iTunes. I’d ideally want something cross platform after being freed from Mac/Windows only players, but… it’s also really nice.

And some other software I remembered:

• Exaile is still around which is awesome. It was my first FreeBSD music player I used on Xfce back in the day when others seemed too complicated. The site claims it can be built with Homebrew on Mac as well.

• I forgot to mention in that previous post that I do still use Musikcube in the Terminal for some quick playback, but I miss seeing cover art.

I only need local playback and rsyncing with my Walkman, so I’ll probably end up running those local players through their paces.