Thanks for all the advice here!

Soulseek/Nicotine+ has been excellent for filling out my library of music, Syncthing is a very clear winner for syncing all of my music to my phone, I’ve begun using Symphony for playing my music too.

It’s honestly revived my love for music! Goodbye spotify

Have you considered a DAP (Digital Audio Player)? It’s an MP3 player. The beginner ones people like are typically the Innioasis Y1 and the Fiio Snowsky Echo. There’s a million options. I have the Y1. I like it so much that I’ll probably invest in a high quality.

Connect with USB and drag and drop.

However I want the option to expand it as I find new music here and there.

With Jellyfin or other self hosted media player you’ll be able to add files as you like. I usually buy music in FLAC format from Bandcamp and Qobuz to add to my own library. That’s in addition to other music I ripped from CDs over the years.

but are there good options to “sync” the library to my phone other than just simply drag and drop the media?

Some Jellyfin apps have an offline mode (Finamp is one of them) so you can stream music online from your Jellyfin server or mark albums/songs to download within the app and then be able to play that music offline. I use it since I don’t have unlimited mobile data but still want to have some music on my phone for offline play. Not sure if that’s the best way but so far it works for my usage.

Jellyfin, then use Syncthing to sync it to any other device you want, whether that’s your phone, or another PC/laptop.

I have that exact system myself, and it works quite well. However, the main downside is that unless you’re using a client that can support it somehow, your playlists won’t sync, only the music files themselves, so if you make a playlist on your phone’s music player, it wouldn’t sync to your PC’s Jellyfin instance, and vice versa.

My combo is Jellyfin+Symfonium

With Symfonium you can manually download playlists and favorites for offline, and/or have a “rolling cache” where the most frequent listens are automatically kept synced for offline listening.

My collection is far too large to keep on my phone in its entirety, but with Symfonium I don’t need to, and if I’m ever caught without internet, I’ve still plenty to listen to.

Jellyfin does not organize the music, it’s a way to browse and access it. For a nice client for desktop, look at Feishin.

To actually organize the music, you want something like Picard.

I think a couple of the Android MP3 player apps offer library syncing with PC music library managers. I think that Gone Mad Music Player will sync with MusicBee over Wi-Fi.

Personally, I wound up just loading files directly to a DAP because it’s just easier with the amount of music I’m loading at any given time.

If you have a ugreen nas. I suggest the ugreen nas app as the music player. It has one feature i have been missing from all other players:

Delete from your playing source (network storage)

Musopen DVD

For some PD classical music.

You can use Tailscale to connect to a server remotely and just stream all of your music.

And I would recommend Syncthing to sync a “favorites” folder to your phone so you always have your favorite music.

I’m not sure if Plex is still viable to stream your own music content without paying…but it is an option.

I think one of the aspects here is you want for drag and drop. Self hosting and jellyfin etc do take time and some resources inc storage and vpn to setup. It’s not as simple as I just want that song.

There is a hunt through soulseek to find the right song. Then there is the making sure it goes to the right place. Then the file name, matching albums covers etc and general library management. Then setting up vpn etc to your phone

It’s a learning curve and then is still not a setup where it’s just find an add. But it’s a step away from big tech.