how to set up your own streaming service
i really dislike spotify and other streaming services
a ton of reasons and also cds and bandcamp are way cooler
if you have a openbsd box or really any other linux box
you can quite quickly set up something that is good enough (tm)
this is not a beginner friendly guide, maybe i will improve once my setup breaks again
storage
if you do not have accessible 1 tb of storage hetzner offer their file service (its called storagebox for 4.92 per month which is okay. it works fine from germany -> amsterdam on sshfs both for flacs and other formats
the command to mount it once you can keep stuff there using sshfs, solene made a good article on this (keep in mind its running on port 23 there)
software
backend
syncing
rsync -Pvr --size-only ~/Music music-host:/path/to/music/dir
streaming
you can use navidrome which is a streaming client with most simplest setup, you can read the documentation and set it up your way to whatever you need
you can just throw music into music directory owned by music user and run the service as music user
frontend
the web frontend is good enough to use on computer
you can also use clementine/strawberry music clients if you like normal uis
for ios devices (it is 2025 after all) Amperfy is ok client
for android devices i think substreamer is good
have a wonderful day