Hello fellow lemmings <3
I have been struggling with how to listen to music in a while now. I am on spotify but I don’t want to be. I despise the app for being inefficient, battery hog bloated crap that I don’t need in my phone and that’s not even beginning with my issues with the company.
So I have been looking into other solutions for my music needs.
I tried setting up my own server for streaming music, but it’s too much manual work, that still uses a lot of resources for a subpar experience. Going through the albums and sorting them and fixing the metadata and all that because musicbrainz insists this live track is the same as the studio one is not fun and I’m just over it.
So I’m going back to the roots, physical music player. I am looking into buying a device just like those old mp3 players but I’m not sure which way to go.
For me the most important feature (other than quality ofc) is it having FOSS software. I won’t be tweaking with the hardware but being able to modify the software, at least to a degree, for me is the main attraction. If it already has an active community then even better.
Do you guys have similar experiences or anecdotes? Perhaps device recommendations? Other solutions are also welcome I am still shopping for ideas
Thanks y’all!
if you can find one for cheap nearby, an ipod is decent. the full sized models can take large ssds and run foss rockbox fw. the price is insane in my area though so i can’t have one, but my friend uses it and it’s great.
I’ve been thinking about it. I’ve been considering lately buying a cheap second hand phone compatible with lineageOS and use it exclusively as an mp3 player without a sim card.
I haven’t bought one in a while because I’m still using the one I bought a decade ago, but Cowon makes really good media players. They can play lossless media, too, if that’s your thing.
When buying hardware in the present age, shop for FOSS software you want to run first. Then, clone the git in full. Finally, use the gource package to create a visual tree video that plays against the commit history. This will show you who is getting their pulls merged, how often, and how they contribute to the project.
What you’re looking for is who is consistent, and what they are using for hardware. It will always be obvious on larger projects. They will make little tweaks and changes a bunch between the hardware and software.
You may see stuff like company employees and subcontracting devs come in and make large commits that support some specific hardware, but if you watch carefully, these are only a handful of commits, and then they never return. They likely had a checklist in a contract, completed it, and got paid. They will never return. Likewise, if one of the main devs gets a new device, they will shift to it and you’re unlikely to see them make any further commits to the old stuff. The timespan between this transition infers much about the state of the old device support. Maybe just ask them why they switched and what is missing on the old stuff, or just
cdto the hardware supporting directory and do$ grep -rin todoor similar types of stuff like code comments or words like hack or need.Hardware specs and advertising nonsense are worthless and irrelevant. Don’t let highway robbers dictate your expectations. The only products that exist are those with FOSS support, so start with the FOSS and ignore everything else as criminal warlords. Who gives a fuck what products and deals the proprietary fascists churn out of Auschwitz or a Palestinian camp.
Love the energy man
I know, seems like a lot, but it really isn’t if you just try it once. It is the same routine every time.
FOSS has no marketing department.
No your points are completely valid. I just couldn’t find what I was looking for, that’s why I am asking the community directly. As I mentioned in my post this isn’t a spontaneous decision, I have been exploring every possibility that I could and didn’t find something to my exact needs.
The closest thing I saw was android devices, but they bring bloat and not really FOSS under the hood anyway
On that level, maybe invert your mindset and look in Maker spaces. Search by hardware like ESP32. You will likely get better (different) results if you search for devices that target EE students instead of those that target Makers in general. Like it is well known that Texas Instruments will send free samples of most common chips requested, to anyone with a .edu email. Projects on hardware like a Beagle Bone tend to be more advanced than more common Maker hardware. While a BB is like half of a Rπ in terms of hardware architecture, if a purpose made device is created without all of the extra overhead fluff, it is pretty good. The STM32 H7 stuff tends to have advanced projects at the handheld gaming level. The Nordic BT BLE chips are usually more popular with the advanced crowd.
You might look at the hardware commits for Micropython or Circuit Python for people adding DACs or other peripherals. These are likely to lead to their project spaces.
I’ve seen someone doing a drive swap on an old iPod to SSD and a software chain, but I think that was still only doing the Apple compatibility thing.
OpenWRT is not a bad place to look either. Any small embedded Linux device is likely to run on OpenWRT, so you may find something interesting just by shopping their hardware support and commit history.
Hmm… right
Tuckerm also suggested an interesting device. It looks to be open hardware as well. I’m not that knowledgeable with hardware but I guess I could try to build something myself.
Thanks for all the tips ( ദ്ദി ˙ᗜ˙ )
Unfortunately, the only open source physical media player I’m aware of is the Tangara. Their most recent blog post is from July, 2025, and mentions some tweaks they want to make before doing another production run. So there might be more units coming, but there will be a wait.
Oh my… that is exactly what I was looking for… and I can’t have it :((
Take a look at the Fiio Echo Mini. They’re under $100 and have every feature you requested. They just so happen to also look and sound amazing.
Buyer beware though. The controls are very mid-00’s meaning it will take some time to build muscle memory and get used to the menu navigation.
Edit: I just noticed your FOSS mention. This one doesn’t have that but I’ll leave this here only because I don’t know of any FOSS options that aren’t DIY or prohibitively expensive.
The Echo Mini is pretty good and they’ve been updating the firmware to add stuff for a while now. My biggest gripes with it would be there is a hard limit of a little over 8000 songs even if there is enough space for more on your SD card. It’s something to do with how it indexes the library. It also doesn’t really support playlists, although I think the most recent update allows you to play everything within a genre so you could do some shenanigans with that.
Yeah a bit of FOSS issue, but while we’re on this topic if I can’t find my ideal device I have been eyeing the hifi h2 thingy. Seems to do the job but yeah the echo mini looks adorable
Have you considered just putting the files on your phone? If you are okay with MP3 compression, the files won’t take much space. But you could also use an SD card or a USB-C USB-Stick.
And I’m sure there are plenty of FOSS media player apps out there. Especially if you are willing to install APKs from outside the play store.
I do that already to some extent. The issue is the space tbh. My phone doesn’t support SD cards and the base storage isn’t that big :(
Then maybe try a USB-Stick?
It blocks the charging port, of course. And it will draw the battery slightly, especially when you are reading from it (probably ~80 mA). If Spotify is a concern for you, because of battery drain, this might be as well.
It definitely is a solution. I might give it a try for a few days see if I can find my happiness there haha
I agree that spending time fixing metadata is not great. It is easily fixable by ripping from qobuz/others and/or using better torrenting websites, with higher quality uploads.
I have been trying to get into red for the past two months but I never ever get to the interview. I understand it is run by volunteers but my god every time I am in single digits after a few days I have to leave. I honestly can’t be bothered anymore
I should also add some nice to haves I guess haha, I prefer physical buttons to touch screen. SD card support would be a big plus. I am not an audiophile so by quality I mean build quality rather than audio quality. I even use BT headphones (forgive my sins)
Wildly, I recall there’s still a community out there that use the Zune. Software is still available and you can find them on eBay. Honestly miss mine. Had the 1TB version and that thing was great
Ah the ancient tech, I haven’t heard that name in a long time haha but I don’t think they have good BT compatibility these days
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