Jam-Pod
A player for people who keep their own music collection
116 followers
A player for people who keep their own music collection
116 followers
Jam-Pod is a distraction-free music player with a joystick-driven, monochrome interface. No feed, no algorithm, just your library. Play local Apple Music, hi-res lossless files (FLAC, WAV, ALAC), Apple Music catalog, and podcasts — all from one screen. Custom and smart playlists, retro color themes, haptic navigation. Your music back, not another feed to scroll.
Jam-Pod
@gianpaolo_campoli Appreciate the straight answer - the build-playlists-inside-the-app over a correctly-tagged library flow is enough for me day one, import can come later. Two small things that decide daily use: does it play a folder gaplessly with no gap between tracks on a live album, and does it order tracks by the track-number tag or by filename? Messy libraries usually have good tags but chaotic filenames, so tag-based ordering would save me a cleanup pass.
Jam-Pod
@leo404 Hi! and thanks for your feedback. you gave some really good point to work with. First importing messy library with missing or partial metadata. I am already thinking to implement a new featured that rebuilds metadata where missing, could be very interesting. Regards the gap at the moment the is a micro silence between tracks. But also this could be a nice feature to have, especially for audiophile! Thanks I really appreciated your comments!
Jam-Pod
@leo404 and yes it play album by track-number of course!
The joystick + monochrome screen over your own library is exactly the anti-algorithm thing I want on day one — scrolling my collection instead of being fed picks. Practical question with a messy local library: does Jam-Pod read my existing folders and playlists as-is, or do I have to re-import and rebuild playlists inside the app? And for the hi-res FLAC/ALAC files, does it play them bit-perfect or resample to the device output?
Jam-Pod
@leo404 Hey! thanks for the feedback and for your questions. For the moment Jam-Pod doesn't support playlist import, nor from local or Apple Music, but you can build your own inside the app. It could be an interesting implementation for the future. Even with a messy library but correct metadata, Jam-Pod should work fine, putting them together in order for you :) For the second question, unfortunately it's a no. It's not bit-perfect as it wasn't my priority for the launch, but it is one of that things I want to put hands on soon.
love the anti-feed premise here, feels like a real reaction to how bloated Apple Music/Spotify have gotten. question on the lossless side - if I've got a library of FLAC/hi-res files sitting outside the Apple Music library entirely (just files on my NAS or synced via Files app), is importing those into Jam-Pod straightforward, or does it really want everything routed through Apple Music first?
Jam-Pod
@omri_ben_shoham1 hey! thanks for the comment! you can put all your FLAC files directly into the app via finder. the apple part is separate. you will have 2 different library (local and apple download) so you will know where to find your music. also you can just turn off Apple Music if you don't use :)
the anti-feed pitch is great but the line that jumped out to me was "even with a messy library but correct metadata, it should work fine" - that correct metadata part is doing a lot of work. anyone with years of ripped FLACs has some fraction with missing album art, wrong genre tags, or inconsistent artist naming. does Jam-Pod just quietly drop those into an unsorted bucket, or does browsing break down in a more annoying way when the tags aren't clean
Jam-Pod
@galdayan Fair point, you caught something real!
Missing tags (no album/artist/title) are handled cleanly: they land in an "Unknown Album/Artist" bucket, no crashes, nothing disappears. Missing art just falls back to a placeholder icon.
Inconsistent naming is the actual gap: grouping is exact string match, so "The Beatles" vs "Beatles, The" (or a stray typo/space) creates separate entries. No normalization yet.
Thanks, genuinely hadn't thought hard enough about this. "Correct metadata" was carrying more weight than I realized. Adding normalization to the list. thanks for your feedback!
@gianpaolo_campoli makes sense, and honestly the naming-normalization gap is the more common one in practice. most people's "messy library" problem is inconsistent artist strings, not missing tags outright. good that it's on the list, that alone will save a lot of duplicate-artist annoyance once it ships
I really like the old-school direction here. There is something genuinely nice about browsing your own music again instead of being pushed toward whatever the algorithm wants you to hear. A couple of things I’d be curious about: how well does it handle a really large local library, and does it keep things like playlists, favourites and play counts in sync with Apple Music?
Jam-Pod
@os_ishmael hey! thanks for your feedback! I am glad you appreciate the old-school style of the app. Answering your question, Jam-Pod will work fine with large local library. In short: everything's async off the main thread, artwork and derived data are cached, and lists render lazily (only visible rows) — so JamPod stays smooth even with libraries of thousands of tracks. With Apple Music my choice was to use it only as an intentional search in the catalog, to discover new music, so I didn't implement many features. The only extra at the moment is the downloaded Apple library you have already on the iPhone. But I will think about extra features like the one you listed! thanks!
Love the focus on getting back to actual music ownership. One thing I'd love is an option to export listening stats as a simple CSV so I can track what I actually play over time without needing a backend.
Jam-Pod
@pelinxjgr Thanks, really glad that resonated! CSV export for listening stats is a great idea! I'm noting it down... no promises on timing yet, but it fits the philosophy of the app well, so it's a strong candidate for a future update.
honestly the joystick nav sounds super cool, one thing i'd love is a sleep timer built into the playback screen since i fall asleep to music pretty much every night. would fit the whole retro vibe too
Jam-Pod
@aleynafranko Thanks for the feedback, I really appreciate! yeah definitely a sleep timer is missing here and for sure will be in the next update! :)