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--- music_management [2024/01/06 05:25] – add tags qlyoung
+++ music_management [2024/08/25 15:38] (current) – [Phone] fix broken link qlyoung
@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-I'm a big music enjoyer. What I'm not a big enjoyer of is streaming services. Maybe I'll write another article about that, but the short of it is that instead of paying a tech company to rent temporary access their music library which they pay to license from a label who gives some tiny fraction of their revenue to the artist, I prefer a more traditional model where an artist makes some music, you pay the artist for a copy, and then you own that copy. That way the artist gets the money and you own something in return for your money.
+====== music management ======
+I'm a big music enjoyer. What I'm not a big enjoyer of is streaming services. Maybe I'll write another article about that, but the short of it is that instead of paying a company to rent temporary access to their music library,  which they pay to license from a label who in turn pays only some tiny fraction of their revenue to the artist, I prefer a more traditional model:
-One of the benefits of owning music is that you can put it on whatever device you want and use whatever program you prefer to play it. However, if you have multiple devices getting your music collection synced up on all of them can be a little daunting. This article roughly depicts how I do that.
+  - artist makes music
+  - you pay the artist for a copy
+  - you own that copy
-====== Methods ======
+That way the artist gets money and you own something in return for your money.
+One of the benefits of owning music is that you can put it on whatever device you want and use whatever program you prefer to play it. However, if you have multiple devices getting your music collection available on all of them becomes an exercise in file management. This article roughly depicts how I solve it.
+===== Methods =====
 Here's a chart that shows a rough outline of data flow:
@@ Line 16: / Line 23: @@
     end
     subgraph devices["devices_____"]
-        library -.-> |nfs| desktop(("fa:fa-computer desktop")) & laptop(("fa:fa-laptop laptop"))
+        library -.-> |syncthing| desktop(("fa:fa-computer desktop")) & laptop(("fa:fa-laptop laptop"))
         W -.-> |tunefusion| phone(("fa:fa-mobile-phone phone"))
     end
@@ Line 30: / Line 37: @@
 The rest of the diagram depicts how the 3 devices I play my library on end up with access to my music.
-For my desktop and laptop, they have the filesystem where my music library resides mounted using NFS. Once the library is mounted, it's accessible like any other local directory, and then I use my [[https://tauonmusicbox.rocks/|player of choice]] to play the music. For my laptop (well, all my devices) this works even when I am on the other side of the planet because network access is via [[https://tailscale.com/|Tailscale]]; see [[personal infrastructure]] to read more about how that is set up. Latency has never been a issue, but when I'm traveling I'm using my phone for music anyway. My desktop is also on Tailscale but thanks to [[https://tailscale.com/blog/how-nat-traversal-works/|insane magic]] it routes over LAN, so there is no latency penalty.
+==== Desktop & Laptop ====
-The phone is a little trickier. Ideally I would like to run a sync daemon in the background on my server and phone that syncs the music directory to the device, but that's not how things work on iOS. For one, background daemons cannot really exist on iOS (there are exceptions to this - iCloud for example - but nothing worth using). For two, there is not really a place to put the music. Due to how sandboxing works on iOS, you need to pick an app to put the music "into". Since only apps can write to app filesystems, the upshot is that you need an app that also has its own syncing service built in. This is heretical, as a music player should be able to focus on playing music and allow a syncing application to handle data sync, but that's how Apple designed it. That is why the app store has a bunch of terrible apps with names like "Network music player ULTIMATE" that have various support for playback and/or sync to/from NFS, Samba, WebDAV, and whatever else you can think of. I've tried most of them and they all suck.
+My server, desktop and laptop all run [[https://syncthing.net/|Syncthing]]. The ''music'' directory is synchronized to all devices using that.
-I can already hear you saying, why don't you [[just]] play back your music over the network using a network player? There has to be a good app! The answer is that in addition to what I just said about the apps sucking, network conditions on mobile are variable enough that the experience of streaming from a home server sucks. The only reason it works so well with Spotify is that - guessing here - Spotify has global datacenter and edge presence all over the world, like any major web service, which papers over the network. Also, you can't play your music on the airplane. Pinning is not acceptable because I don't want to choose what music to listen to in advance. I don't listen to music like that?
+In the past, both of these devices mounted the directory containing music via NFS. Since they're all on a [[https://tailscale.com/kb/1136/tailnet|Tailnet]] together this worked as long as both the server and client were both online, regardless of the routing environment. This worked pretty well - latency was never an issue, and in any case I rarely needed to play from my laptop since I usually use my phone when I'm outside my home network. However, I didn't like the network requirement and realized disk space is plentiful while bandwidth is a scarce commodity. Since I generally frown upon streaming when it isn't necessary I put my money where my mouth was and switched to file synchronization.
+For playback on the computer, I prefer [[https://tauonmusicbox.rocks/|tauon music box]].
+==== Phone ====
+The phone is a little trickier. Ideally I would use the same approach as for my desktop and laptop - run a sync program to keep the music library up to date on my iPhone disk. Unfortunately, that's not how things work on iOS, for two reasons:
+  - background daemons cannot really exist on iOS
+  - the concept of a filesystem that is shared between apps does not exist on iOS
+Regarding backgrounding, in general iOS is very strict about apps performing any work in the background. Since sync programs are designed around running in the background, this more or less precludes the file synchronization strategy. It's worth noting that this could be worked around using iCloud, but since I don't use iCloud, that doesn't work for me.
+Even if a sync program was viable on iOS, we would hit another blocker. iOS does not have the concept of a shared filesystem. Apps are only able to write to their own sandboxed filesystems. Consequently any files downloaded by a sync app would not be accessible by a music player app.
+The upshot is that to solve this problem you need a music playback app that also has its own syncing service built in. Obviously this is [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy|heretical]]. A music player should focus solely on playing music, while a syncing application should handle data sync. The result of that being impossible is the app store has a bunch of terrible apps with names like "[[https://apps.apple.com/bf/app/music-player-tube-mp3-player/id1572190372|Network music player ULTIMATE]]" that have varying levels of support for playback and/or sync to/from various data sources - Samba, WebDAV, whatever else you can think of. I've tried most of them and they all suck.
+I can already hear you saying, "why don't you [[just]] play back your music over the network using a network player"? In addition to the available apps sucking, network conditions on mobile are variable enough that streaming from a home server results in a generally poor experience. Industrial streaming services like Spotify have to go to [[https://engineering.atspotify.com/2020/02/how-spotify-aligned-cdn-services-for-a-lightning-fast-streaming-experience/|extreme lengths]] to paper over the network enough to deliver a good experience. "Pinning" - where you stream but select specific items to keep locally on disk - doesn't really work for me because I don't want to choose what music to listen each time I anticipate a no-network scenario.
-Anyway, as luck would have it, the [[https://apps.apple.com/us/app/foobar2000/id1072807669|best music player on iOS]] also has the [[https://www.dbpoweramp.com/tunefusion.htm|best sync solution]] I've seen. The downside is that the companion program that runs on your server is 1) Windows only, 2) closed source and 3) costs money. However, it is surprisingly full featured and works very well. Since it's Windows only, I run it inside a windows VM on the same server that has my music library and mount the share with the music into the VM.
+Anyway, as luck would have it, the [[https://apps.apple.com/us/app/foobar2000/id1072807669|best music player on iOS]] also has [[https://www.dbpoweramp.com/tunefusion.htm|the best sync solution]] I've seen. The downside is that the companion program that runs on your server
+  - is Windows only
+  - is closed source
+  - costs money
+However, it is surprisingly full featured and works very well. Since it's Windows only, I run it inside a windows VM on my hypervisor (which also hosts the file server with my music library). The VM has the music directory mounted from the file server via Samba.
 The end result is that every time I open the foobar2000 app on iOS, any new music in my library downloads to my device. After that it's available for local playback. Since my phone is also on Tailscale, this works anywhere.

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