I’m using airsonic, a foss alternative to subsonic. It can have multiple accounts and shared playlists

I use bandcamp regularly, although i tend to just buy and download from the webpage, and then I let beets organise and copy the files into predefined directories. It also can do zip files.

Yesterday I got into a “funny image” post showing someone who couldn’t use the correct date format online and quickly found a comment, with tailors, about the most efficient way of searching through a date-time format. I stopped and just thought that was the most "Reddit"moment I’ve had so far here and it felt nice

Bandcamp is where I do most of my shopping. Not sure where you are located. In Europe, for alternatives I use Qobuz and have used Bleep.
I tend to use it for more “commercial” albums.

Any tips? Anything that stands out to you?

I was using Nicotine+ but having slskd on my server is a plus

I’m currently using beets to tag my music and airsonic for streaming

I’m using airsonic with symfonium, gotta check Gonic (it’s been mentioned twice in the comments)

As others have commented, stick with the Mac.
I recommend installing proxmox on it and run the apps you want. You can run pihole in a VM.
Do you need a NAS? Not really, but if you have cash available maybe get a used tower, use the disks you have and install TrueNAS. And this will only cost you max €200

https://www.alpinelinux.org/about/ Check out Alpine. Might just be enough for what you want

https://konstakang.com/devices/rpi4/LineageOS20-ATV/

Maybe this might be something to consider

Have you tried enabling the FtInTitle Plugin? https://beets.readthedocs.io/en/stable/plugins/ftintitle.html

Slskd was such a find for me. Paired with beets it’s been my favourite storage/sorting method.

Exactly my thoughts. Bandcamp is my goto for independent artists and labels.

Just remember to pay forward. Go to local music shows, buy merch from the bands you like

You’re right. My bad. I mixed up the news.

Gitlab will be down for a week (or more) due to server migration operates under a freemium model. GitHub is having weird Microsoft money making issues. Codeberg is the “non corporate” alternative and I see it being mentioned more and more.

I get you. It’s a question of finding the one app that works for your workflow. sometimes it takes years to find it

I mentioned Scribus but I never worked with it. I did use MS Publisher and InDesign because mixing images and text in a document editor was a pain. I used it for creating “collages”.

How about something like a page editor? You can create a page with various elements, and manipulate them. Have a look at Scribus (for Linux) or other apps similar to Adobe Indesign.