I just finished setting up my own Jellyfin server. Lately I’ve been getting into using open source software and this weekend I thought it would be nice to self host on an old thinkpad I had from my college days. There were a few roadblocks I encountered, but ultimately I got it working. Now with the Finamp/Jellyfin app I can have a Spotify/Netflix-like experience completely free (well minus the domain name cost). I highly recommend it if you have been thinking about doing it for a while like I was. I’m so glad we have open source software like Lemmy and Jellyfin available to us.
The Jellyfin web app is ok for music playback, if you mostly listen to albums. It’s a video first platform.
There are third party music apps that can access your Jellyfin music library. I like both Finamp (iOS) and Feisin (Linux). Those being music centric, are a bit better than the web UI, but they are still hampered by Jellyfin’s album centric design.
There is no real easy way to build playlists , regardless of what front end you use. Importing playlists is borderline impossible due to the playlist being a table in Jellyfin’s database.
If you prefer to listen to music through playlists, I’d recommend Navidrome as a separate service for music. While building playlists can still be painful, it can import playlist files so your not just limited to whatever workflow your frontend pushes.
Ohh, Navidrome looks great. Thanks for the suggestion!