What would be the easiest self hosted way to share a music collection privately?
I am thinking of just granting guest access to the nas folder via wireguard or a simple caddy instance but also more sophisticated versions.
It would be good (but not a must) to have a search feature enabled.
Any recommendations?
I’m running a plex server on my NAS and use plexamp to stream music.
Subsonic or similar?
Navidrome is another server that works pretty well, implements the subsonic protocol ( so all the apps that can cache and stream to your mobile device work). You can have multiple logins, or just share out playlists and albums individually to non-authenticated users.
Subsonic is perfect for this. Interface is a bit… dated, but the functionality is there.
Subsonic is also a protocol (and opensubsonic) which supports many other clients, if you want. Personally my music collection is just hosted on gonic, a server-only subsonic implementation and I stream it to whatever clients I want.
But use Airsonic instead, it’s a fork that’s free in both the beer and speech sense.
There’s also Navidrome, which is a unique backend, but works with existing Subsonic clients. Check out both, see which one you like better.
I was just about to reply that I liked supporting the developer of the original code and that it wasn’t too expensive (I bought a “lifetime premium” for something like $30 USD I think) . But it seems the licensing has gotten ridiculous since then and is now a subscription. :-(
I bought a “lifetime premium” for something like $30 USD I think
Same
I use jellyfin
Jellyfin is ideal for privately sharing music. Plex is similar but not FOSS.
There have been a few mentions of Navidrome. I find it works well for sharing at an album or even artist level. It can do playlists as well. But you must explicitly choose what to share, at which point it’s generates a unique URL and will generate a web player and zip if you enable the option to download.
You can, of course, just make user accounts and distribute credentials.
If you’re needing to offer browsable folders to easily copy, basically a filesystem-like experience, it’s probably not the best tool.
Edit: one more thing to point out is that navidrome, jellyfin, and airsonic all construct music libraries differently. Navidrome is using tags, jellyfin uses file names, airsonic uses directory structure. Not sure about Plex.
Sharing over LAN or Internet? To desktops, mobile devices? For file sync or streaming?
Over the internet for file sync. Desktop devices.
Then I would approach it as just regular file syncing. Syncthing is probably the most popular piece of software, though I haven’t used personally used it over the Internet.
If you don’t want to sync every file, perhaps your NAS has a native desktop file sync client? Or I’d run something basic like Filebrowser and let them download the individual files/folders they want, though it doesn’t do syncing.
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This is the correct answer
Imho easy mode is just throwing it on Plex and making sure your port is set up on your router for external access, then just sharing your music folder in Plex.
No need for a domain or anything
Plex should not be accessed externally using a port forward. Always use app.plex.tv as it prevents unauthenticated users from seeing the instance.
If I don’t port forward, my friends that I’ve shared with can’t see the instance
You do not need to port forward to share a Plex instance over the Internet. App.plex.tv manages the inbound connections automatically. All you need to do is manage invites to your friends. They log in with their email/password or with Google SSO to app.plex.tv and your content will be available over a secure connection with no port forwarding.
Good to know, I’ll turn it off when I get home from work, thanks
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters NAS Network-Attached Storage NAT Network Address Translation Plex Brand of media server package SSO Single Sign-On VPN Virtual Private Network
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Does castopod work for this?
I don’t know why people are recommending apps like Navidrome and Jellyfin when it isn’t a music server that you’re looking for but a way to share the music collection.
With that said, I can think of 2 approaches, and (likely) the easier option will be to use the help of such a server. Both will require a VPN server in the cloud which will be redirected via NAT/reverse-proxy into your network.
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Use something like Navidrome with LDAP/Auth solutions like Authelia. User has to authenticate themselves to access their account on the service like something in the cloud.
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To offer more barebones access to the underlying storage directly: set up NFSv4 for Kerberos.
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I also use jellyfin, and I can listen to stuff along side some friends too with SyncPlay!
Funkwhale is pretty cool.
