Personal Data Preservation Plan: Building a Private Music Library

Preface

Listening to music is much more convenient now than before, with various online services available. Most people probably don't need to download music themselves and import it to an MP3 player or phone like they used to.

But as the saying goes, it's always best to have your data under your own control. You never know when your favorite songs might become grayed out on music platforms one day. So, when you come across a song you like, download it locally as soon as possible to prevent it from becoming unavailable due to copyright issues.

This article documents the process of setting up a private music library, including: downloading, organizing, setting up a streaming service, local playback, and more.

Download

Most of my playlists are on NetEase Cloud Music (网抑云), so I currently use the pyncm tool to download them.

Exploration Process

I successively used the following tools:

• Beadd/Creamplayer - Electron-based, relatively basic, can download but frequently errors out. I used it briefly and gave up.
• Java-S12138/Music_Download - Appears to be PyQt-based. After using it, I found it couldn't download and abandoned it.
• magicdawn/yun-playlist-downloader - A node-based command-line tool that can batch download music from playlists. Pretty good. I used it to download a batch of songs, but it seemed unable to write metadata. Eventually, I abandoned it.
• mos9527/pyncm - This is what I ultimately settled on. It's quite convenient, has all the necessary features, and can write metadata. After logging into your account (provided you have a VIP membership), you can download VIP songs.

There's also one recommended by a netizen, but I haven't tried it yet:

QQFlacMusicDownloader - Can be used to download lossless music.

pyncm

This is a Python-based command-line tool that can also be invoked through Python code.

Installation

pip install pyncm
pip install mutagen
pip install tqdm
pip install coloredlogs

The following three are supplementary functional dependencies:

• mutagen: Adds metadata to downloaded music.
• tqdm: Displays real-time download progress.
• coloredlogs: Provides colored log output.

Usage

Download songs from a playlist without logging in, using an anonymous account:

pyncm "https://music.163.com/playlist?id=123908306&userid=82133129" -m 4 -t "{artists} - {track}" --quality exhigh --no-overwrite

Parameter Explanation:

• -m 4: Download 4 songs simultaneously.
• -t "{artists} - {track}": File name format is "Artist - Track Title".
• --quality exhigh: Download audio quality is higher.
  • hires
  • lossless (lossless audio)
  • exhigh (higher quality)
  • standard (standard quality)
• --no-overwrite: Do not overwrite existing music files.

Login to Account

pyncm --phone 123456 --pwd 123456 --save "login-session.conf"

Log in using a phone number and password, then save the login information to a file.

When downloading next time, use the --load xxx.conf parameter to load the saved login information.

Organizing

Local Organization

For organizing music locally, you can use the mp3tag application.

You can install it directly using scoop (this package manager is recommended for Windows users).

If you don't have scoop, you can download it from the official website: https://www.mp3tag.de/en/

scoop install mp3tag

After installation, you can run the following command to add it to the right-click context menu for convenient use.

PS: The specific path should follow the instructions provided after scoop installation.

start 'regsvr32' -Verb 'RunAs' -Args @("C:\Users\Deali\scoop\apps\mp3tag\current\Mp3tagShell.dll", '/s')

Once opened, you can edit the metadata of your songs.

Private Cloud

A music library is best paired with a NAS, naturally.

Once your music files are stored on a NAS, managing them with local metadata software becomes inconvenient. Setting up an online service makes things much easier.

This article recommends the project: xhongc/music-tag-web

Deploy using docker-compose:

version: '3'

services:
  music-tag:
    image: xhongc/music_tag_web:latest
    container_name: music-tag-web
    ports:
      - "8001:8001"
    volumes:
      - /path/to/your/music:/app/media:rw
      - /path/to/your/config:/app/data
    command: /start
    restart: always

Start it up in one go, and that’s it. For more details, check the project homepage documentation.

Setting Up a Streaming Media Service

For the streaming media part, I referred to the experiences of many fellow internet users.

jasonyang9 on V2EX provided a very detailed approach.

Pre-processing:

• Pre-processing - Transcoding: Transcoding is not recommended; the streaming server will automatically handle it dynamically for clients.
• Pre-processing - Splitting: CUE to individual MP3 tracks, etc., using mp3splt.
• Pre-processing - Splitting (Exceptions): Albums like Enigma should not be split, as there is transitional content between tracks.
• Pre-processing - Tagging: Using Picard for fully automatic or semi-automatic tagging.
• Pre-processing - Tagging Standard: albumartist-date-album-tracknumber-title-genre.
• Pre-processing - Unified ReplayGain: mp3gain, aacgain.

Streaming Server: Navidrome, Lightweight Music Server, Gonic (Docker or compiled installation), etc.

Client: Any player that supports Subsonic, Airsonic, Madsonic. Client Recommendations: DSub (Android), Strawberry (Linux), Clementine (currently the only legacy player supporting Windows 7).

I tried deploying both Navidrome and Gonic, and based on my experience, Navidrome is more user-friendly.

Deploy Navidrome using Docker

I followed the configuration provided on the official website.

version: "3"
services:
  navidrome:
    image: deluan/navidrome:latest
    user: 1000:1000 # should be owner of volumes
    ports:
      - "4533:4533"
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      # Optional: put your config options customization here. Examples:
      ND_SCANSCHEDULE: 1h
      ND_LOGLEVEL: info  
      ND_SESSIONTIMEOUT: 24h
      ND_BASEURL: ""
    volumes:
      - "/path/to/data:/data"
      - "/path/to/music:/music:ro"

Once started, it will automatically scan the music.

Web UI

Playback directly on the web is also supported.

It's pretty good, similar to software like Jellyfin.

Clients

It's time for the open-source community to shine. Navidrome supports multiple protocols, such as Subsonic, Airsonic, and Madsonic, so any client that supports these protocols can be used.

Below is a list of some clients I've gathered from the internet. You can choose based on your own needs.

• iOS: play:Sub, substreamer, Amperfy and iSub
• Android: DSub, Subtracks, substreamer, Ultrasonic and Audinaut
• Web: Subplayer, Airsonic Refix, Aurial, Jamstash and Subfire
• Desktop: Sublime Music (Linux) and Sonixd (Windows/Linux/macOS)
• CLI: Jellycli (Windows/Linux) and STMP (Linux/macOS)
• Connected Speakers:
  • Sonos: bonob
  • Alexa: AskSonic
• Other:
  • Subsonic Kodi Plugin
  • Navidrome Kodi Plugin
  • HTTPDirFS

Android Clients

I mainly tried several clients on my phone, and the experience was quite good for all of them.

Most are open source, and for open source apps on Android, it's recommended to use the F-droid store for downloading.

PS: Obtainium is also nice; you can manually add the GitHub or GitLab pages of open source app projects to it and directly track project updates.

tempo

This app has a decent interface but tends to crash easily. I'm not sure if it's an issue with my phone.

subtracks

It's open source and decent, but it seems like there's no complete music list—everything is displayed by albums or artists.

substreamer

This one is not open source and needs to be downloaded from Google Play.

Official website: https://substreamerapp.com/

substreamer Your Music. Your Way.

The best free client app for the subsonic music server. Get your music, your way with subsonic and substreamer.

Summary

I have finally advanced my "Personal Data Preservation Plan" another step. This solution may not be perfect, but it is effective. It allows me to manage my favorite music independently, so I no longer have to worry about it suddenly becoming grayed out or removed from shelves one day~

The internet belongs to everyone, yet not everyone can control it.

After trying several Android streaming clients, the experience has been rather mediocre. Perhaps copying music directly to the phone and pairing it with a local player would offer a better experience (such as Jiaoyan Music (椒盐音乐)).

Modern phones have ample storage, and mine even supports expandable storage cards (a legacy of the Mate series). A thousand lossless music tracks take up only a few dozen gigabytes, which is quite manageable given today’s ridiculously affordable storage space~

References

• https://v2ex.com/t/964870
• Music Migration Project (音乐迁移计划) - https://blog.wayner.cn/music-go
• https://github.com/QiuChenlyOpenSource/QQFlacMusicDownloader
• https://github.com/mos9527/pyncm
• Still listening to local music in 2023: What are some good Android music player options?
• Navidrome – Open-source music server, build your own cloud music player