My Music in 2025/26

hello@mikebell.io (Mike Bell) — Sat, 10 Jan 2026 21:13:11 +0000

Spurred on by this great article from Jessica Journals I’ve decided to document how I handle my music collection in 2025/26. I’ve split the post up into what seem like logical sections.

Getting Music
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Bandcamp is still my primary means of getting music at the moment, I’ve spent a lot of money on music over the year. It feels good knowing that the artists are getting something for their work. A by-product of this is that I also get notified when new releases come out so I can keep up to date with my favourite artists and labels. It’s meant I can pick up releases like “||cↄc||oo3|| by CONDUIT” which was only available for a limited time for charity.

Storing Music
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All music goes on my NAS, I don’t back it up yet, I’m going to make it a priority for 2026 since I have a second smaller NAS at a remote location now.

Organising Music
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I did used to use beets but I was never really happy with the results, it’s too opinionated for me and I never got around to configuring all the different plugins to make it work exactly how I wanted it. Instead I use Musicbrainz Picard which I is a really powerful tool (it’s incredibly dangerous as well so take backups first!). I just point the app to my music share mounted and then go through every album I have to update the metadata. Some more obscure releases are a bit difficult to identify but it’s managed a large part of my library with really good results.

Library
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Late 2025 I was managing three music libraries:

Navidrome
Jellyfin
Moode

As of 2026 I’ve ditched Jellyfin and Moode for music playing and managing for Symfonium more on that later. My goal when designing this whole setup was to have one canonical source for my library and I’ve finally achieved it.

Software Player
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For software players I use Feishin on Mac/Linux (I use Arch btw) and on Android I use Symfonium. Both support the subsonic api which is what Navidrome uses meaning that I have one source of music but multiple methods of playing. Today I found out that Symfonium also has an Android TV app which works really well meaning I can finally ditch Jellyfin (amazing for TV and Movies!) and Moode. Even my wife likes the look of Symfonium on the tv shame she doesn’t like my taste in music.

Hardware Player
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Early in 2025 I was using my Pixel 7 Pro and a Qudelix-5K and while it was a really good setup I found the distractions of having music on my phone annoying.

I ended up getting a Hiby R4 digital audio player so I have a dedicated way to listen to music. I really like it but it’s a bit slow and janky in places. I use Symfonium set to download any new albums from Navidrome onto the SD card (no transcoding, pure flac!) so I can have high quality music with me whether I have an internet connection or not. I’m currently looking into buying a Fiio M21 because an audiophiles journey is never over!

I finally got rid of my Raspberry Pi Zero w2 and hifiberry dac in favour of playing through my TV to my Cambridge Audio Azur 540a via optical to dac. I’m really happy with this setup.

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Symfonium on Mike Bell - Blog & Stuff

My Music in 2025/26

Getting Music #

Storing Music #

Organising Music #

Library #