Sorry if I’m mistaken on this, but I’m still new to self-hosting.
Currently I use SyncThing and I love it. My files are accessible to me wherever I am in the world, and it costs me nothing.
I’d like to move more of my life to self-hosted servers. I’m looking at leaving Spotify for Funkwhale. But if I’m reading the materials correctly, I’ll need to set up a domain and pay some upfront costs to make my library accessible outside my home.
Why is that? Is there a way to make my costs 0, the way they are with SyncThing?
You sound like you want something more like navidrome which is closer to a private Spotify whereas Funkwhale is closer to a public social platform like Lemmy or Mastodon where you share music and follow others (or a little like a free bandcamp).
You still need to solve the public access problem either way, however, as others have talked about.
Thank you! I’m still figuring out my goals here… Could I ask for your recommendation, given the following?
Primary goal: Access my music library from any of my devices (Android, MacOS, Linux), wherever I am in the world, hopefully without paying anyone (or at least not paying a LOT).
Secondary goal (Not sure if I want to do this yet): Let a group of about 12 friends access my library