The recent debacle with Plex has gotten me looking into alternatives again. However they have one really killer feature that, last I looked into it, had no alternatives, which is the sonic analysis features that you can use with Plexamp.
I’m specifically talking about the feature that scans each song in your music library (using a deep learning algorithm) and determines detailed metadata about its qualities like genre, instruments, types of vocals, mood, and other timbral qualities, and then lets you generate playlists based on this data. Here’s the page detailing the feature.
My favorite so far is being able to create a “Sonic Adventure” playlist, which lets you pick two or more tracks and then generate a playlist of tracks between them that gradually moves from one track you picked to the next.
Has anyone made an attempt at an open source or self-hosted version of this so far? (Is there even an open source tool for scanning audio to obtain this sort of metadata?)
Not that I’ve found. Plexamp + Sonic analysis (and everything that comes along with that) is one of the major factors that keeps me committed to Plex as my primary media server. I run Jellyfin alongside, but the music experience (as well as other things) just can’t stand up to Plex yet
Not that I know of. But maybe also ask in /r/musichoarders
The recent debacle with Plex
what debacle?
Plex sent out emails to server owners with information about what their users have been watching. It was a “Check out what your users have been watching most!” kind of thing.
Basically the data everyone already knows Plex collects was sent back to them as a feature and everyone freaked out.