By that I mean randomly generated playlists. Based on either one or multiple tags, songs or artists. Finite or infinite.
Ideally it would allow combining local sources with remote ones for discovering new music. Thinking along the lines of audioscrobbler, Bandcamp and SoundCloud. Maybe one could even hook into Spotify’s API, of they allow that.
Does something like this exist? I’m currently running Navidrome and while it’s pretty and functional, it’s very much a classic Mediaplayer, that just happens to be a website.
Outside of Plexamp, I’m not sure of any self hosted music solutions that can generate random & context-aware playlists, most of the ones I’m aware of (Navidrome and the various apps that support it) appear to be mostly classic media players as you mentioned. There’s also Funkwhale, but that’s more of a self hosted, federated SoundCloud alternative I think.
Music discoverability is something I kind of stuggle with when looking to expand my library, so I tend to rely on apps to do this. I personally use Newpipe, as it works for YouTube, SoundCloud and Bandcamp, allowing me to jump between the platforms looking for remixes and the like.
For a more spotify-like discovery experience, the Spotube app combines Spotify’s API with YouTube Music to play spotify-suggested playlists, and there’s another app SimpMusic that does the same for YouTube music
It’s also primarily for self-publishing. When sharing music that’s not your own I suspect you quickly run into the same issues as with torrents. With probably similar solutions.
I’ll check out Spotube and SimpMusic, although the local music part is missing from your description.