There was a brief period a couple of years ago where I had a cheap DAP/MP3 player from Aliexpress - it broke after about 12 months and I’ve basically just been using Bandcamp as a streaming service since. I still have all my music on a hard drive, and have recently been trying to make moves towards reducing time spent on my phone (for mental health), so I’ve been looking into what options are available in 2024.
The options for DAPs have gotten so much better (and cheaper!) but I’m still hesitant to spend AUD $150+ on something that has a wonky user experience, like the new Hiby R1. Spend any more than that and I may as well get a pre-built refurbished iPod (AUD $200-300). At that price I may as well be looking at the Hiby M300 or similar, an Android based device that could also install the Bandcamp app and would effectively meet all my requirements, but this is starting to look like a lot of money that I can’t afford to spend.
Here’s my solution: I recently started paying for additional storage on Google Drive and it’s dirt cheap - 100GB for $2.50 AUD per month. That got me thinking, is there an app that can stream from cloud storage? The answer is yes, there’s a few.
I tried a few out and the one that meets my privacy, price, and UX requirements is Symfonium. They don’t collect your data and you can purchase a permanent licence for AUD $8.99. There’s multiple options as to how you can store your music (I think it’s intended for a NAS or home server), but I’m a noob and this is all supposed to be cheap and easy, so Google Drive it is.
The app gives you a lot of options in terms of how you can customise it which felt a bit overwhelming at first, but after a bit of poking around it all made sense. The first thing it asks you to do when you install the app is to add a folder. I gave the app access to the music folder I’d created in Google Drive, waited 20 minutes for it to sync, and done. Streaming is relatively quick, it can stream lossless (I think there are transcoding options) and it can also cache a few songs in advance if you change some settings, so that you can have gapless playback.
Tl:dr Symfonium + Google Drive 100GB plan is a great option if you want an easy, noob-proof way to stream your music library for cheap. Yes you’re paying a subscription for Google Drive, but even accounting for the cost of the app it would take 8.6 years before you’ve spent the equivalent of AUD $250, or the price of a cheap DAP/refurbed iPod.
Edit: I know that I started this post by saying that my intention was to spend less time on my phone and that the solution I am suggesting for my music streaming problem is to use my phone - the former was a trigger to investigate mp3 players and this is just the most cost effective solution for that problem.
