Sonixd

Dedicated music players are in a bit of a difficult spot nowadays: with the prevalence of music streaming solutions, users are more focused on the service's music library, recommendation algorithms, and other such elements. The player itself is important too, but more often than not, the majority of users aren't too picky with their choices.

If you're looking to get back into the self-hosting days, and are looking for a client to allow you to stream your library, look no further than Sonixd. It is a cross-platform desktop music player, featuring support for the Subsonic and Jellyfin APIs, therefore allowing users to stream their tracks from their music servers with ease.

This is a solution designed for users who prefer to host their favorite music through Subsonic and Jellyfin, so those who do not self-host their tracks won't see much use out of this. Regardless, those interested in the self-hosting proposition can try demoing through the provided Navidrome demo instance. Connect to https://demo.navidrome.org", and input "demo" in the username and password fields.

Users who already dabble in Subsonic and Jellyfin should feel right at home here. The interface isn't much different from Spotify's, and it is very versatile in terms of how much freedom it affords you in customizing it. A lot can be changed in the Config menus, so feel free to experiment with every setting out there.

Besides modifying the look of the interface, users can also configure how playback is handled: tweak your crossfade and polling interval settings, and change how the player behaves. Discord Rich Presence is supported, so you can share what you're listening to with your friends.

As the app simply displays your self-hosted music library, what you'll find are the songs you know and love. In case you're using the demo library, feel free to look around and see if you like something.

There's only so much you can innovate when it comes to a music player, which is why a lot of the program feels very...familiar. There's a Dashboard that shows your recently played and added music, with separate tabs for your playlists, favorites, albums, artists, and so on.

Sonixd works really well: the interface is clean and very customizable, and it all makes for a nice music player to stream your self-hosted music through.