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Comment by wolverine876 | Hacker News Reader

Can someone recommend a dead-simple music library for a user whose technical skill level prevents them from using the web? This would be for Apple products, preferably cross-Apple-platform (iPad, Mac, iPhone).

I don't even want GUI elements to ignore; they just cause confusion. Just sort music by track name/album name/performers, and play/pause, and that would be optimal.

Better would be something that integrates with some streaming/download service, so the user can also easily find and play music they don't already own.

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Initial setup takes some skill (installing software) but after that it's dead simple.

1. Install a media player that supports Youtube-DL; most mpv-based players (like SMPlayer/SMTube) support this.

2. Install an "open in MPV" browser addon.

3. Just dump all your music in your Music folder and open the media player in that folder.

Now you can list tracks and sort them, and you can open a Youtube/Soundcloud/etc link to stream. No need to sign up for a service, manage a username/password, etc.

Plus, you can use an SMPlayer skin that hides everything except the controls you want.

Just click a desktop shortcut then play/pause/shuffle. If you know the controls on a boom-box or remote, all you'll have to learn is sorting.

Apple Music.

Absolutely, and I say this as someone with tons of custom ripped music in various esoteric formats from 15+ years of managing my music digitally (and a 5 year stint or so in the iTunes world).

If you're on Apple hardware and you just want music stuff that works, use their software. It makes the easy things incredibly easy.

Agreed. Although I echo another commenter about wanting real tagging functionality in a manager. Also Music app has some ongoing bugs that just seem to never be fixed, the main one for me related to embedded artwork.

For quickly tagging / getting artwork for random stuff like individual songs ripped from YouTube I use Yate’s [0] Discogs Wizard. It’s very configurable and fast to use once you set things up.

Edit: will add that Yate is actively developed and I only remember paying for my license once. I would happily pay for upgrades given its utility over the years.

[0] https://2manyrobots.com/yate/

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