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Comment by c0nsumer | Hacker News Reader

Yes, this is the big one for me. Seemingly unlike a lot of folks, Plex is my main music server. Years ago I ripped all my CDs (1800+, IIRC) and Plex + Plexamp is really, really, really good for listening. I haven't yet found anything else that works as well.

I use Plexamp on desktop/laptop computers and then the Android and iOS apps for on-the-go music. I tried Symfonium [1] because it seemed promising and would give me a Jellyfin path, but it was weird and kinda buggy and ate my phone's battery.

I'm hopeful there'll be a good replacement available eventually, but for now, I just have to stick with Plex.

[1] https://www.symfonium.app/

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I use (and contribute to) Finamp the Jellyfin PlexAmp alternative and it's just done a 1.0.0 release which brings it up to parity with PlexAmp for me. I've previously been a long time PlexAmp user but FinAmp now does everything I want it to.

That 1.0.0, and 1.0.1 is in Beta. Is that ready to be moved into stable? Or am I looking at the wrong project? https://github.com/finamp-app/finamp/releases#release-1.0.1-...

This is promising. Thanks! I'll check it out. I hope it gets the major features and works well.

Looks like it isn't on the android play store though? Any info on this? Play tells me there is a version for a prior version of android, which is won't let me install. Not helpful...

Yeah PlexAmp is amazing. Feels like it's the only music client around these days that has a functional "shuffle by album" option, instead of treating my library as only a collection of individual songs.

woahhh this exists? I have an Apple Music playlist called Sunday Albums and have always wanted exactly this.

Lyrion (fka Logitech Media Server ) does album shuffle

Another up-vote from me for Plexamp.

I find the mainstream subscription players to be excruciating to use to play what I want at the time.

Yeah me to... Also I love plexamp for the android auto support.

> Feels like it's the only music client around these days that has a functional "shuffle by album" option

foobar2000 has this!

After trying dozens of music clients (including PlexAmp) I eventually settled on simply using foobar2000 pointed to an smb share - nothing else seems capable of properly handling playback by folder structure. (e.g. I've got all my Led Zeppelin albums in the "Led Zeppelin" folder, and I want to just select it and play their discography in album release order.)

My audio needs have been satisfied for many years with subsonic, then airsonic, and now navidrome. They all expose the same subsonic API, which gives quite some flexibility on the audio player client to use. At the moment, Tempus (Android) seems well maintained, but I miss from DSub the lower clarity as to what is cached for offline consumption.

yeah I'm in a boat of similar shape. plex and plexamp is very simple and plug and play - it handles the IP stuff for remote play, which is the tough part for me.

I don't mind lacking features in the server or the client honestly, if I can find and play an album or playlist I'm good. But the connectivity piece can be hard if you're not familiar with self host stuff. I tried to do Jellyfin and Tailscale and some client and it... kind of worked? But it was definitely not as seamless.

I do hope every year that it's my last year paying for Plex. Maybe this year!

I'm fortunate that somehow I ended up with a lifetime PlexPass for... I want to say like $50 a bunch of years back?

Because yes, the remote stuff -- and PlexAmp just working the same wherever I am -- is the huge part of it. Music sits on my NAS and things... just work.

I also really like how easy the caching and offline mode is, because I frequently find myself driving in areas without mobile data service. I keep a couple favorite albums downloaded to my phone, then knowing the app will cache the next ~2 albums of queued tracks generally makes it Just Work.

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