In 2025, playing your own music on an iPhone is surprisingly hard, unless you pay Apple or navigate a maze of limitations. So I built my own player from scratch, with full text search, iCloud support, and a local-first experience. GitHub link
Why I Built My Own Audio Player Like many people, I’ve picked up too many subscriptions, some through Apple (iCloud, Apple Music), others got lost in random platforms (like Netflix, which I forgot I was still paying for). I actually used Apple Music regularly (and previously Spotify), but the streaming turned out to be more convenience than necessity. With a curated local library, I didn’t lose much, just the lock-in.
Sadly, you have to. Plex wants a subscription if you want to stream outside of your home network now
I could be wrong, but I don’t believe that’s correct. Their page that has the latest updates around the Plex pass and remote pass still has music streaming under the free tier:
There’s no specific mention of remote music streaming being paywalled.
Could be wrong though, but I can’t test since I have a pass.
The initial announcement is talking about “media” and I assumed that this did include music. That was my motivation to install Jellyfin and that works so great for me that I didn’t try to use Plexamp remotely