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.
You need to pay the subscription to Apple Music to do it if I recall correctly.
You can also get an iTunes Match subscription. No idea what it goes for these days but it’s a bit cheaper than Apple Music (doesn’t give you access to any music but lets you sync your music in iTunes to all your devices - still requires a Mac or PC to use though).
Or just use it like OG ITunes and don’t pay for cloud hosting.
Oh absolutely, I’m not suggesting it’s a product worth using in this day and age when you probably have good quality music available locally. It was a potentially useful tool back when we all used to download music of questionable quality off the internet, but less relevant these days.
You can still use the music app just like iTunes. You don’t need a subscription.
Not true. Plain and simple.