Wheels will always be the best way to navigate music libraries.

I don't even need it to be portable. In fact, I'm happy with a "component stereo" look with a VFD display. ;-)

The situation for me on Android would be hilarious if it weren't so saddening. Since I purchased a KitKat tablet in 2015, I've more or less stuck to the "Android Files" app to play music files. Yes, that has been the best solution: no app install required, bare bones, no feature demands from me. In fact, rather than making playlists, I would just copy out tracks to a new folder and play them in there. Want to repeat one? Make five copies of it!

On Chromebook I'm using the builtin app, Gallery. It's utterly barebones as well. All I want to do is listen to a track.

This has continued even to the present day, but you know what? Our days are numbered, because apps are staking out moats in terms of file types they will handle. They're looking to reduce generic handling of multiple file types.

I've been trying to conform to this "new normal" by using YouTube Music. With my Premium subscriptions I should be able to download any streamable track, and also listen to files on-device. This is working out poorly. The on-device management is abysmal and makes you want to die. The downloading feature just sort of... fills up my storage, and I don't really even use it. I still fall back on Android Files because Music is such a horrible app, except when I'm using it to stream.

Software for playing audio used to be great even with far fewer engineering resources going into them. That suggests the reason they are getting worse is deliberate and stems from a misalignment between what software users want and what the producers want.

Most music software companies today are two businesses joined together:

1. A software company that makes apps to let people listen to music.

2. A content licensing company that pays artists and record labels to give them access to music and let people listen to it.

If they were only #1 then they would be agnostic to what music people listen to and how much of it. WinAmp didn't give a damn how big your music library was, what songs you listened to, or how often, because that was entirely between you and your MP3 collection.

But, say, Spotify has to pay someone every time you listen to a song and how much they pay depends on what you listen to and how often. That gives them a direct, perverse incentive to build an app that routes you away from expensive audio you might prefer towards cheap stuff that eats up your time but doesn't cost Spotify as much.

That's why every single time I open the fucking Spotify app I see a wall of podcasts even though I have literally never listened to one and never will. They don't put them there for my benefit, but for theirs.

For Spotify, the end game is routing people towards eventually-AI-generated musak that they themselves own the licenses for because it's free for them. This is directly analogous to why Netflix is now constantly pimping their own often-shitty produced shows over movies you might actually prefer.

The reason we aren't saturated with options is that producing a media app without also having deals that give the app direct access to media to play dumps a lot of work back onto users and most users these days simply don't have a local media library or want to maintain one.

And spinning up a new app that does off content directly has huge startup costs. You need an army of lawyers to go out and negotiate deals with every record label out there, and those labels probably hate you out the gate since they are still salty about not making anywhere near as much money as they used to make when they sold CDs.

I just never polished it to publish it, but it is quite easy and I guess ChatGPT can help with the basics as no arcane knowledge is required. (Except maybe the playing while screen is off.)

You also need a small node script, though or something different with system access to scan the media files. I think in browser tools make this now somewhat possible without(beware of security restrictions), but my approach is simply a node script scanning the music folder and generating a list that the media player consumes to find files for the player. I still didn't got around to make it automatic, but I don't add so much music (anymore).

I guess I will give it a try to see, how good it works a mobile player nowdays. I always wanted to upgrade it, so I can connect to spotify from my player as I hate the spotify mobile app.

When I made https://ambiph.one I ended up having to route everything through a MediaStreamAudioDestinationNode to trick Safari into thinking it's a livestream, which is apparently the only type of audio allowed to play in the background

Minimal demo here if it's helpful for anyone: https://codepen.io/matteason/pen/VYwdzVV

I was unaware foobar2000 existed on iOS too, but the Windows version is my favorite audio player on that platform too.