Apple to Linux Journal - Rhythmbox as a local music player
2025-03-27
Okay, let me get this out of the way first: I learned long ago that Apple's Music app is absolute garbage for playing local music shared by a Mac on the network. Absolute and utter garbage. Essentially, it's broken. I would open Music on the iPad and attempt to stream via Home sharing and it would take 3-5 minutes to show my music except when it failed to do that at all which was about 50% of the time. On the iPad I eventually resorted to a 3rd party app which loads the music instantly from the network drive.
I'll take this as a moment to point out that my interpretation of this disfunction is Apple wants you to subscribe to Apple Music. Your local music, even music bought from their store before their streaming service existed, is of no concern to them.
So, you know, fuck you Apple.
Now, back to using Rhythmbox on the LinuxMini. Of course it's free and open source and I believe it came pre-installed with Linux Mint. It works perfectly. The interface is clean, simple and functional. Sources are listed on the left side and include your music library, various online services, internet radio, podcasts (yes, it has a podcast feature) and playlists including smart playlists. The top bar is the usual play/pause control with a album art, scrubber and volume.
After opening app I selected the Import button which allows for browsing to a local network drive to select a folder of music. I browsed to my Apple music library on the external drive attached to the Mac and selected that folder. Did not select the option to Copy files as I want to stream from the network drive and save space on the LinuxMini drive. Rhythmbox spent some time scaning the folder. I came back a few minutes later and the scan appeared to be finished, I clicked the browse button and my music was waiting for me.
Playing music is as easy as opening or switching to the app. The music as always there, waiting to be played with a click. Huh. Imagine that. To reiterate: Apple provides an app that has been intentionally broken to push users away from using their local music to an Apple subscription. Apple and it's users often tout the fact that "it just works". Uh huh. Except when it doesn't. Except when Apple wants you to pay more.
Linux offers a FOSS app that works perfectly for the same task.
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