Basically I’m looking for suggestion.
I’ve been trying all the usual suspects, Ampache, MPD, mStream, *Sonic, Plex, etc. I only want to stream to my mobile. I love how PlexAmp works, but I have a few small issues. Sweet Fades is dope but only works with library radio, and library radio only plays the top 1 or 2 hits from each artist, so I get a ton of repeated songs, like about 200 songs played repetitively with a collection of over 7000 songs. I dig those deep tracks, man.
Anyone have a setup they’re proud of and willing to share? Or am I doomed to use Subsonic and deal with these small annoyances?
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I’ve tried/reviewed most solutions out there. Plexamp is the one I’ve settled with, since almost everything works (despite downloads being structured in an unusual way).I’ve had various issues with most other solutions, especially with a 110k song library. Despite Plex’ annoyances with metadata, it’s been the one consistent choice (when using Plexamp rather than the standard Plex mobile app).
I think the various sonic solutions are probably better overall, but the lack of a nice mobile app is a killer for me. Plus, I’ve had issues specifically with Subsonic where downloading a playlist (which includes transcoding FLAC) has essentially crashed my entire server. I do have gonic running, which is just a lightweight implementation of the *sonic library.
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It’s worth mentioning that Koel doesn’t currently have a fully functional Android app, meaning you have to rely on the web app which can’t sync.
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I’ve been using Airsonic for the last couple years since it is actively maintained (unlike Subsonic). It had some quirks when I was using a psql backend db, but everything mellowed out after just sticking with a basic sqlite db. Have about 50k files on there, mix of music, OSTs, Podcasts, and Audiobooks. Use the DSub Android app (free apk via their github or a couple bucks on the play store).
If you need some content, let me know and I can give you access to my music library to test it out if you want.
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@Mason I’m using dsub, it’s best one I’ve found (and free on F-Droid). I couldn’t get Airsonic running on Arch. 
And I’m partial to docker-compose scripts lol.
@Ympker I forgot about koel, tried it a long time ago. Lack of a mobile app is a bit of a deal breaker. 
@Wolveix Installing gonic now, probably the only *sonic I didn’t try yet haha!
Seems like the consensus is every solution has its issues and I should quit whining and pick the lesser of the evils, lol. Thanks for your input, kind souls!
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Yeah 100%. Plexamp has been the best for me. *Sonic is great, but the lack of a good looking mobile app is a killer sadly. Plus, DSub had some weird stability issues on my phone.
Bear in mind that Gonic is not a web interface, it’s just an incredibly efficient implementation of the *Sonic API, which you can then connect dedicated web/mobile apps to 
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Care to elaborate? Is Plex still messing up meta data, as in assuming it’s own genres etc. instead of trusting/showing the embedded tags? (I remember it being hopeless at this many years ago, therefore I never used Plex for music.)
Hm, care to elaborate/explain this?
If I add even a small chunk of music at once, it’ll either fail to match the artist, or just show the albums without artwork despite literally having artwork when editing the album.
This is specifically regarding Plexamp and not Plex. I usually make a playlist specifically for all of the music that I want to keep on my phone, which is usually thousands of songs long. Unfortunately, this isn’t really possible as Plexamp has a 24 hour limit on playlist downloads. Plexamp handles downloads differently to the official Plex app, which allows it to skip Plex’ awful download handling which is great! But it’s kind of annoying if you’re used to doing things a different way.
I mostly just have genre playlists now.
I quite like MusikCube with the MusikDroid Android app, though it might not have the auto playlist feature you seem to be after.
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Which of these solutions would work for streaming from home server to phone while on the road?
(Or which would need me to store the music on a VPS etc.?)
I’ve tried a couple of CloudPlayer apps for streaming from pCloud (CloudBeats and EverMusic Pro), it works, but caching is buggy.
EMP has hopeless genre handling …
So far the best, non-Plex option for me has been airsonic. I had caching issues with dSub so I’ve been using UltraSonic on my Android for the last week with almost no issues. If you have Plex and Plex Pass, Plexamp is also a very prem solution.
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My biggest annoyance with *sonic is the inability to create or modify playlists in any of the apps. That, and the fact that all of apps look like they were designed a decade ago.
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That’s true, the UI is ugly. Spotify/Pandora/Apple, all the steamers basically gutted buying, storing, and streaming your own music. So rent from the Big 3 and let them manage the minutia, right? Nah, I just deal with the crappy UX. The music is the point anyway. I organized all my music into genre folders and just make playlists from the command line and then import them.
True, I found my way around that by using DSub for synchronizing only. It can synchronize to a “public” folder so other apps can access the music files as well.
That said, I subbed to YouTube Music Premium Family for like 2€ / month (₹ 189,00) recently and never looked back.
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YT Music doesn’t show/sort by genre, otherwise it works … (No ads for my own uploaded music.)
Yeah just connect to a VPN to get the Indian rate. I’m in Europe myself and it’s like 12€ / month if I’d buy directly.
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Yeah I used a VPN to buy from Argentina. It’s about £1.79/m for the family plan.
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How long you been doing that for, I did something similar for Netflix Turkey VPN since it’s cheaper in Turkish lira but after about 6 months Netflix killed my account.