Somehow I hadn't heard of funkwhale, I'll have to give it a shot. Have you used navidrome? That's what I'm running now, wondering how it compares.

For me my big wish when I have time is create some kind of automated soulseek flow. Keeping my library up to date is a manual pain for now.

afaik, funkwhale and navidrome have overlapping usecases, but don't have the same goals. funkwhale with its federation features wants to be more than a web player for your library

Yes, although I don't use the federation features from Funkwhale. I just enjoy its clean and awesome interface. Funkwhale is a joy to use and fits very well my music habits (listening to selected albums instead of all over the place - though this is supported too, of course).

I pair Funkwhale with Snapcast-Mopidy-Iris stack, in case I want to have multi-room audio or listen to other sources, beyond my own library.