Where can I donate some money?
https://funkwhale.audio/support-us/
(not affiliated with funkwhale, just found the link from their site)
Note that there are a few projects like this one, for example Subsonic or Mopidy.
(Funkywhale certainly looks nice though!)
Is there some reason servers like this require a special client? Can't you just provide URLs to m3u8s which in turn have URLs to mp3s? Is it just that there isn't an agreed-upon protocol for listing directories? Or maybe auth concerns?
Considering all these features that needs to be supported it makes sense IMO that it's a specific protocol.
I still heavily use Spotify. Yet I hate knowing some tracks are not playable (permission/copyright issue perhaps?).
Time to re-organize my MP3 collection, then.
Playlists: Discover Weekly tends to result in ~3-5 (new to me) musicians/week that I hadn't heard of that I would actually listen to. That's a pretty high ratio IMO.
Release Radar tends to result in ~1 (new to me)/week. Granted, it's supposedly mostly ones I listen to, but still has several I've never heard of.
Daily Mix 1-6 are a mixed bag and sometimes result in something new, but mostly just things I like (and may have forgotten about too).
* Freeform radio stations (preferably with live playlists): WMFO, WFMU are my favorites. Even people who are immersed in music can't help to hear something new every hour. For me, it's a constant wave of new-to-me music. Many free form radio stations are also layering tracks, interviews, noise, and other audio treats that make for unique experiences that may never (or should never, haha) happen again. Just under free form radio there are countless excellent LPFM and college stations around the country - Hollow Earth Radio, nearly every college radio station from Boston to Milford PA.
* I also use Bandcamp for getting deeper into a genre or trying out new ones. They write up articles that profile maybe a dozen artists that represent the boundaries of a style - whether you read them through or just listen, it's an amazing value. Easily on the level of what the New York Times does for classical music. Bandcamp is obviously growing like a weird and wonderful weed the last year - I would really like them to add a few more features for building random playlists within a few criteria.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/05/arts/music/five-minutes-c...
Then it became trendy to provide discovery based on what other people who listen similar things like. Not so amazing ever since. Not _bad_... just not great. I haven't found any (even GPM) that do a good job at pulling together suggestions that fit into my eclectic listening habits.
I go through phases where I deep dive into genre's. Each Daily Mix ends up representing one of the genre's I've been listening to lately pulling in music that I like and other songs that I may like.
That being said, that may be due to the fact that I deep dive into genres that don't have that much of a cross over, e.g. Japanese Hip-Hop & Lo-fi beats, R&B, 90's indie rock, etc. Still, the Daily Mixes are a great way to listen to music I like separated by genre.
Last.fm's discovery feature is pretty neat too. I don't use it as much as Spotify's because I don't listen to music on Last.fm but I think the key feature of Last.fm over other music discovery tools is that it has a profile for many artists.
Spotify, Apple Music, etc. are limited by what music is on their platform. If an artist isn't on Spotify, then they won't have a profile. Last.fm isn't limited that way so you can find even more artists, including artists that may be more underground or niche.
My best experience has been talking with people or listening to artist interviews on influences.
Strongly agree that music discovery is, in some sense, generally 'broken' across most platforms and not very good. I have been deeply dissatisfied with just about every system. I found Google Play music to be okay.
My best luck these days is what I would call a "brute force" search through record labels, last.fm similar artists, bandcamp pages for genres, sputnik listings for particular genres, etc.
It's very hit or miss, but I feel like it leads to me to my occasional lightning strikes, which are what I really want. These discoveries are quite different from the guesses put forward my recommendation engines, which seem to smooth out the interesting edges and signatures of personality and gradually draws toward a lowest common denominator, with no lightning strikes.
It depends on what you mean by "work".
Discovery capabilities have certainly gotten vastly better. 10+ years ago, the only decent one was the now (effectively) defunct Last.fm. These days, they're all pretty good. Spotify, pandora, google music, and now youtube music will do a good job of giving you recommendations based strictly on what you've been cue-ing up.
But the recommendations from these services are the equivalent of going into a record store and getting advice from a dim-witted and disinterested employee. You'll get all the obvious stuff, maybe things you forgot about, and if you happen to like popular stuff the recommendations will work OK. But you won't get challenging, provocative recommendations that expand your taste. You'll get cloying recommendations that try to cater to your taste like it was a static attribute. Oh, yeah, and there's "the surveillance capitalism thing" which happens to be the centerpiece of all these services. Is that a problem? Yes.
The best "discovery algorithm" is still HUMAN BEINGS.
If your cool friends aren't available, then the next best thing is a mag like pitchfork (https://pitchfork.com/), xlr8r (https://xlr8r.com/) or in-depth reviews like Anthony Fantano's channel (https://www.youtube.com/user/theneedledrop).
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17933574 - a short but somewhat good thread from 2018
Any FOSS service with this set of features?
But it looks like this supports the same Subsonic protocol, which is pretty great. It's cool to not only take inspiration from predecessors but to also support and build on the same ecosystem.
If you think you won't miss accessing your tracks by directory, navidrome (written in go) has a smaller footprint and is quite actively developed (but the web UI is rather awkward)
But does it work? My airsonic install consistently fails to play the next track at my work computer using the browser client.
But I could see myself setting this up on a newer Pi and plugging in my 1.5TB external into it to share out all my music with my family. Right now I've got a Samba share on my Windows HTPC for my internal network, but something the rest of the family can use would be sweet.
These days, I have been very pleased with https://radioparadise.com. It is an eclectic mix with a couple of different channels. This station offers familiar tunes mixed with new ones. It is a nice gem that I love to tell other music lovers about.
Note: I am in no way affiliated with Radio Paradise. Just a listener/fanboy.
Notes:
- Gonic doesn't support many routes. The *sonic protocol supports special routes for Podcasts/Audiobooks/Radio Stations for eg. [0] details missing routes
- It heavily uses `folder.jpg` as the album art. Doesn't work well always. I used sacad[1], but it wasn't perfect.
- Not all players will work perfectly with Gonic. I use play:Sub and it had some issues with album names being blank because Gonic used `name` field in album info while keeping title blank (I think). This is now fixed mostly, but I still have a few blank albums that I need to investigate
- I liked the transcoding options on the server side. You can set it per-client and that client will forever get MP3 for eg.
- It doesn't do artist art. Not sure why
I haven't faced any breaking-issues other than the blank album names so far (and that was fixed).
Thus far I've been using mStream https://mstream.io/ with decent success. You can federate collections with your friends. My tries with NFS or SSHFS doesn't work reliably on windows/mobile hosts, especially across the (mobile) internet.
I know there is at least a few other projects in this space, some mentioned in the comments (Ampache.)
My vision for music (and other things) sharing is your personal library is on your personal private server, and you can give access to whoever you want individually. Now your streaming source is your library and your friends library--and if a friend likes one of your tracks they can "save" it to their library and give access to their friends.
I've been trying to build this for status updates (like a Facebook alternative) as a simple private blog+rss[1] that's easy to self-host (raspberry PI or AWS) but I can see a world where everyone has their own server enabling an amazing multitude of distributed usage--music sharing, personal restaurant recomendations, the ability to post and share things with only your friends without a mega-corp in between is a future I would get really excited about.
wonder how long will this get taken down like popcorn time?
With that said, it appears there is the ability to share music socially - which seems like p2p sharing.
Which is fine as there is plenty of music that is allowed to be shared free.
Scary thought, being able to purchase music these days rather than a streaming service lease, I know...
From the top of their landing page.
Every DSP (Digital Service Provider) is required to register with the Mechanical Licensing collective, and the administrative fee is $5,000 per year if you fall under the threshold number of streams. If you pass that, then it's $60,000 to unlimited...
Of course you'll have to file monthly reports and pay the royalties due under the blanket license as well.
Some comments here are making assumptions about the motivations/ethical principles of the developers, but how about reading directly what they say?
It turns out that they've been thinking quite a lot about this problem: https://agate.blue/blog/2018/05/11/funkwhale-content-monetiz...
https://github.com/benkaiser/stretto
Planning on removing the Google auth dependency it uses right now for syncing and song searching.
> Gracefully accepting constructive feedback.
> Showing empathy and kindness towards other community members.
Yada yada, seemingly inclusive and tolerant then goes on to add a catch all list where every possible action can be deemed unacceptable, getting you expelled everywhere and "identification of the participant as a harasser to other members or the general public."
Anti meritocracy is a cover for the most intolerant.
> Anti meritocracy is a cover for the most intolerant.
Having a written set of guidelines that define the behavior expected seems like...I dunno, a good idea?
Unfortunately life drove me away from the project, especially now that I work remote and barely leave my home, but every now and then I feel like contributing again just because of how nice everyone is.
We know[1] that a more diverse group creates better group outcomes than a non-diverse group where specific individuals may have better performance. Even from a wholly selfish perspective for the people running a project, prizing diversity of qualified individuals over a pure meritocracy is the right play.
From a "making the world a better place" perspective where some altruism is shown, it also helps to acknowledge that not everyone has all the same advantages and tailwinds so that it is fundamentally more difficult for them to have had all the same opportunities and advantages, and providing those opportunities and advantages to them gives them that chance to even the playing field. The amount of unconscious bias built in to humans also means it is difficult for us to be effective judges of ability for those that are not like us. You don't have to be racist/exist/homophobic/transphobic/etc. to have built in biases - you just have to be human. They're difficult to overcome without explicitly stating goals around it.
[1] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0,44&as_vis=...
And, yes, I believe the world would be a better place if we followed these rules with many projects regardless of the field.
Btw, there are some interesting facts about the history of the word, "meritocracy": https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy#....
Such as creating a platform for people to listen to music for free by sharing it with others without paying the artist?
It says that sexual harassment is bad and that racism is bad, and using jokes to "ironically" do things like that is also bad.
Except musicians apparently
>We're sorry but funkwhale.audio doesn't work properly without JavaScript enabled. Please enable it to continue.
Am I just misinterpreting it or do people supporting it just not thought more deeply about what it is they're supporting?
Really? All social change is good for the field of software development? Utter nonsense. This product itself is, if anything, a rejection of the social change towards centralized ad-supported streaming services.
> We understand that working in our field is a privilege, not a right.
I don't have a right to work as a software developer? Last I checked, I lived in a free country where I can do what I want. This is some authoritarian language, implying that people should be ejected from the industry if they don't play according to one person's set of rules.
EDIT: Never mind. It's another "pipe curl into bash" type of app, since nobody knows how to package software any more.
According to https://docs.funkwhale.audio/installation/ , the curl|bash is only one of the ways to install it. They also provide an ansible role, install instructions on Debian and Arch without the curl|bash, an AUR package, a NixOS package, a Yunohost package, and a Docker image
I love coming here, lots of interesting articles, but the most fun is reading the twisted english as people convince themselves digital theft is somehow not to be equated to physical theft.
Do you honestly thing the two are in any way equivalent? If I steal a physical item from you, you no longer have that item. If I download a copyrighted item that I never would have purchased, and you are entitled to royalties from then you lose nothing. If I download 100 items and I otherwise would have bought 5% of them, then you lose 5% of it.
Note also that libraries work similarly. I have checked out many hundreds of books out from the public library and read them. That also cost authors money, but we do not equate that to stealing. I have bought 100s of used CDs. I saved a lot of money and the record companies and artists collected no money for that either.
I also object to the concept that a creator has any moral right to monopolize their creations. There is no such moral right. The US provides for granting such a monopoly for a limited time in order to encourage people to create things. This has somehow morphed into the belief that someone creating something intangible has an indefinite monopoly on its use.
Such policy is actively harmful to the arts to the point of being detrimental to creators! Disney's Sleeping Beauty was a delightful film, if not a box office hit, but it would never had happened if the copyright laws (that Disney lobbied for!) we have today existed then, because Tchaikovsky's ballet would still have been under copyright.
The thinking is along the lines of, look at this car and look at this mp3, they're so different. But obviously they share important similarities, those being that both needed ingenious human thought plus plenty of physical objects for them to come into existence. True, how they are sold is another question. How they are received. How are they shared. How they function. What is their purpose?
Let's swap funkwhale to carwhale - yes, I can, because one day in the future, we will be able to push a button and have an exact copy of any car just by pointing a scanner at it. Suppose you worked on that car, all your life, in the hope others could enjoy it, and love it the way you have. And if you got it right, might be compensated for your time and efforts.
But no, this is not in the future because everything should be free. Everything? Or just the mp3s? Just digital? Who's going to make that music? Or that car? Or perform your heart op?
Most people, sadly here, are not respectful of creativity and its worth, I feel its more important than that car. And throughout history culture has been the most important aspect of any society; its strength and survival depend on it.
The project explicitly mentions many examples of sharing through federation and it seems to me they’re explicitly advocating for illegal sharing of music.
Now, I certainly have plenty of issues with copyright and I tend to lean more towards “piracy isn’t a huge deal since we all want convenient (not free) access to media.” However, this project seems to be positioning themselves as a free music sharing service. I can’t imagine this ends well for them.
Some may mention other means of sharing music such as Plex or Jellyfin. I think Plex etc are flirting with the edge a bit with their sharing features. However, their sharing features are meant to selectively share with say family members in your household. Funkwhale is positioning the hoster to share with anyone on the internet. Don’t be surprised to get a DMCA notice if you open up a music library to the whole internet.
It’s too bad because there definitely is a space for someone to create a really nice self-hosted music library. Plex and Plexamp work ok but still leave a lot to be desired in terms of discovery.
They're explicitly against that in their docs:
>If you are uploading content purchased from other platforms or stores, you should upload it in a private library
>As a rule of thumb, only use public and local libraries for content for which you own the copyright or for content you know you can share with a wider audience.
They also noted that they have made changes to funkwhale out of copyright concerns:
>Managing the library at instance was cumbersome and dangerous: sharing an instance library over federation would quickly pose copyright issues, as well as opening public instances. It also made it impossible to only share a subset of the music.
It really isn't, though. If you steal my car, I won't have a car. If you copy my car, I'll have a car.
To claim that the two are equivalent is pretty indefensible, in my opinion.
The deal is, work is rewarded, not stealing work, or did I miss a meeting?
DRM is not Licensing, but a mechanism to enforce a license.
I think OP is implying that the sharing provided in funkwhale is likely violating the typical license terms of any purchased music, therefore is preventing a musician from making money from streaming services which have appropriately licensed the music for streaming.
Buying a license doesn't mean that you own the work, just that you have the right to play it in specific circumstances (most of which nobody pays attention to anyway). I'm sure we've all played a song on a loud speaker for others to hear, but again that's against typical license terms.
I do think, however that your comment might have been better-received if delivered with less snark.