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                  |___| ... Gopher Hole

14th January 2026 - Setting up my Jellyfin Server

INTRODUCTION
So, I'm massively in to my music, but some of my music tastes
are quite "underground" and not available on any streaming
platforms, so I thought I'd catalog my MP3s (and other digital
files) and start putting them somewhere I can play from anywhere
on my network.

I have a lot of old 90s Rave Tape Packs that I've digitised into
MP3 files so I can listen to them more convieniently (and lets
face it, the tapes are getting knackered now) but these are not
really out there much.

WHAT TO CHOOSE?
So, whilst I've had the MP3s (and FLACs) around for a long time,
I thought it was about time I looked at how I was gonne sort out a
more convienient way to play these back.

Sure, I could keep several copies of the files, or I could play
them over a Samba share or an NFS share with VLC, but that's a
hassle. I wanted something different.

Now, I've checked out Plex before, and whilst it's good for films,
it's shockingly bad for music, and I'm more of a music person
anyway, so I needed something better, not to mention, Plex like
to hide features behind a bloody paywall, so I wanted something a
little more "open source", which is where Jellyfin comes in.

SETTING UP JELLYFIN
Well, whilst I checked out the instructions for this, I realised
it was actually much easier in my instance, as my home server runs
CasaOS, and there's already a Jellyfin container in the "App
Store", which made it as easy as clicking the "Install" button
and letting it do it's thing.

CATALOGING THE MUSIC
I've always been a bit OCD about making sure all my ID3 tags are
correct, so it required very little time to catalog it all, as I'd
already inadvertantly done it for the albums and singles.

The bit that was a minor hassle was the tape packs, as some were
missing artwork or just outright not tagged at all, so I spent a
few hours fixing that situation, but it was a fun task for me
(yeah, I'm odd like that)

PLAYBACK
Super easy, I point my web browser at the IP address, click on
the library and click the album and hey presto, it's playing.

What I like the most here is how it doesn't seem to use any
local resources at all, so even my cranky old iMac from 2008
can play this stuff without stuttering (it could anyway, but
there's even less CPU usage now)

ACCESSING FROM OUTSIDE MY NETWORK
I've not set this up yet, that's a project for another day,
although, I think it'll be rather easy for me anyway.