I was hoping to go all in with Jellyfin, but it’s been absolutely maddening to try to get it to play nice with my curated library. It just makes too many dumb assumptions about artist metadata.
Any other suggestions?
EDIT: I installed Navidrome, then poured over the documentation for the config file and micromanaged every setting. This has allowed me to get damn near close to the exact unobtrusive behavior I had hoped for.
EDIT 2: AFA mobile client goes, I’d absolutely consider paying for Symphonium, if it didn’t seem to require my having a Google Play account (fuck that). So instead I’m trying Tempo.
Gonic for server, Ultrasonic for client (android)
I would use Navidrome if it supported browsing by folder structure, but they refuse to implement it. My metadata is so scrambled it might as well not exist and it would take months to fix it. I pretend it doesn’t exist, because I don’t use it.
Just curious, why folder structure? Are your directories not artist/album?
It’s
.../music/artist/album/song.flac
This does not work with Navidrome if the metadata is weird. I have a lot of songs that Navidrome refuses to even list because their metadata is bad.
I browse my music by folder structure, not metadata. Folder structure is universal and does not care about inconsistent metadata.
It can’t handle radio shows or VA mixes well either.
Ah, I write the metadata on import in lidarr, so kind of a non-issue for me.
I also switched to gonic over navidrome (even though I liked it a lot) because iirc I couldn’t get navidrome to pull Artist pictures in correctly. gonic i could just connect to lastfm and everything worked - and i could still connect to listenbrainz for my actual scrobbling.
You’re complaining about a player feature, and blaming the server.
I use Symfonium and Navidrome, and I absolutely can browse my Navidrome library by folder if I wanted to.
I’m complaining about what the literal developer of Navidrome told me when I asked about this. I’m not sorry for believing him.
Can you show me a screenshot?

Thank you.
It is strange to me that the developers themselves would tell me that this wouldn’t work, and that folder browsing requires Navidrome to support it inherently for clients to be able to do it.
Picard or beets will help you with your metadata.
Picard will not, it’s possibly the worst thing you can do to a folder of untagged music.
Use kid3, it can use musicbrainz without making a mess of everything.
Picard has always worked pretty well for me. No complains.