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Comment by raffraffraff | Hacker News Reader

When Google Play Music shut down I decided to buy a 128gb SD card and a Jelly Pro (tiny phone) to use as an MP3 player.

The battery life on the phone is shit, but since I only needed it for music, I could do something about that. I rooted it, added some automation: automatically launch music player and scrobbler on startup, activate airplane mode except when plugged in, add sshd service so I can rsync files to it, and turn the device off if music issn't playing for three consecutive checks (each 15m apart)

The only thing I need was a decent music player. I tried Musicolet, but it didn't suit me. For a start, it just doesn't work well on a small screen. Almost every piece of text was truncated. I also found that it didn't pick up media changes a lot of the time (eg sync a new playlist). I ended up going with phonograph because it's perfect on a small screen, has good controls and is really simple.

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There are fewer apps designed for small phones. For my 4.6" phone with a large UI scale, I found foobar2000[1] very functional. It truncates even less than Phonograph and has high contrast themes.

[1]]http://foobar2000.com/get-android

> add sshd service so I can rsync files to it,

Google Play Music, apart from being a good local music player it's sync feature seemed to have been much sought after. With the app's removal, the local playback is addressed by apps like Musicolet but there is a need gap[1] for syncing local library and addressing it would be a great way to monetize such music player apps or perhaps even build a new one to address it?

[1] https://needgap.com/problems/179-upload-local-music-and-sync... (Disclaimer: I built this problem validation platform).

I just point my player app to a folder that syncthing manages.

That's the simplest way to do it, But it's still beyond the capacity of many as there are those who have local cache of digital songs from the 2000s in their memory cards, have a phone and the tablet; But don't know how to sync that across devices.

It now has the option to avoid (laggy) Android media service framework, and to use its own scanner to detect media changes instead. That should be immediate.

Try DSub and your own airsonic music server. Optionally open up cached files in foobar2k instead.

The version of DSub on F-Droid is unfortunately years out of date since the dev had to pull in some Google library for Chromecast support.

There's Ultrasonic (Subsonic client), MALP (MPD client) and Squeezer (LMS client) on Fdroid that are still active. Also Dsub might still work.

https://f-droid.org/packages/org.moire.ultrasonic/

https://f-droid.org/packages/org.gateshipone.malp/

https://f-droid.org/packages/uk.org.ngo.squeezer/

Also checkout Ampache. They support Subsonic android app after enabling some setting. Ampache has been going strong since 2001.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampache

Also checkout MPD (Music Player Daemon) and Logitech Media Server (LMS). All are FLOSS.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_Player_Daemon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logitech_Media_Server

That last fully FOSS DSub build does still work with my Airsonic server, yeah. Sorry my wording implied otherwise. It’s just out of date compared to the version you’d find on Google Play is all, but my phone is old too so I don’t mind :)

That's something I might do, but for music on the go, running a server somewhere is a huge amount of extra setup. It's also something i need to connect to. The battery saving from not running wifi/4g is huge. It's also one more thing that can break

Airsonic lets you precache albums with ease. It's really more of a wireless music management software which you only need to run when you want. Music is cached in a readable folder which any music app can pick up.

Honest question, why kit just get a DAP like one of the Higby, FiiO, Shanking, or Xduoo devices?

I got a DAP. The Shanling Q1. Sounds great and is an absolutely beautiful device. But it's heavy, and has the worst interface I've ever used on any music player. It's fucking awful. So it sits in a box on the shelf and I'll only ever take it out to show people how it's possible to get 90% of the way to brilliance and then totally shit the bed.

I recommend RockBox on a Sandisk Sansa Clip+. Goes to 11 on brilliance.

For years I used Sansa clip with RockBox. That was also the last player my wife used. But it's getting insanely expensive to replace them now, an it's essentially a dead technology. I did a massive search for RockBox compatible players before going the Jelly Pro route, but I didn't find anything recent. It felt like fighting against the tide. Way easier to use an Android app.

try odyssey

It's much easier to not try odyssey than to try odyssey (on a 2 word recommendation)

That's cool, I tried phonograph (on a 0 word recommendation) and it's basically the exact same UI as odyssey.

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