Why is there no music-based platform like PeerTube?

Reverse Module@discuss.tchncs.de to Linux@lemmy.ml – 156 points –

I'm not sure where to discuss this so I'm posting here since this is the hub of FOSS advocates.

I had a really interesting conversation with a friend about the Bandcamp situation and as we were discussing it occured to me that something like PeerTube but for music doesn't really exist. Which doesn't make sense in my mind as it's so much less cost to host and so useful. Half of Youtube's audience mainly goes there for music.

So, I don't know, does it make sense for anyone else to work on something Fediverse-based (Activity Pub) that is aimed at music creators?

I would even go as far as allow the creators to host ads on their page so as to attract as many of them as possible. Controversial but we have to take one step at a time to change mindsets. Right now, the situation is that you have to put up with massive advertising or go the FOSS way and depend on donations.

What do you guys think?

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https://funkwhale.audio/

I just signed up at open.audio . This is pretty lackluster for the moment but has tremendous potential. Thank you so much for letting me know of it! :)

Just remember that this instance only hosts creative commons music. Both good and bad if your looking for music.

Is this based on Activity Pub?

Yes.

Actually, this seems like Spotify, I was talking abou something with comments and likes, kinda social. That would be even better imo.

Awesome, do you have a link to find instances?

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@ReverseModule @linux the main feature of Bandcamp is that you can sell music. Selling anything from your own website requires a lot of red tape. That's why these websites exist to get economies of scale on the red tape.

I want to go off of this slightly and ask a similar question. Why is there no shopping network using activitypub? An open source replacement for facebook marketplace, ebay, etsy, and ideally amazon too. Seems like something that could really put a dent in mega corporations revenue and userbase, or maybe I'm just dreaming too much lol.

Federated marketplaces would make a ton of sense. Network effect is a huge issue with selling stuff.

I think this is a great topic. I think it comes down to incentives. Artists going to the trouble of writing music, practicing, recording, editing and publishing probably expect to make some money. Individual artists who have low overhead and are doing it for the love of it probably have a better experience on Youtube as that’s where the audience is?

Not wrong but it would be a nice alternative at the very least. That's why I talked about ads so they also have an incentive beyond donations if they want to monetize. Perhaps a download button with the itch.io system would also be an option. It's just something that doesn't exist yet and I think has great potential.

That’s why I talked about ads so they also have an incentive beyond donations if they want to monetize.

Ads are a technical challenge. It is easy to track how many users are listening to a stream, and therefore how many users hear an ad. The hard part is keeping instance admins from faking these results to overcharge for ads, since they have full control over the computing equipment that are tracking listeners to ads.

Should just be each instance has its own ads and transmits them to the stream you're listening to

Should just be each instance has its own ads and transmits them to the stream you’re listening to

But no one will buy ad space on your instance unless they can confirm that their ads are reaching your audience.

The best way I can think of to sell ad space is to put digital markers in the stream to denote an ad. Then the advertiser can retrieve the stream, search for the markers in the stream, and confirm that the ad was broadcast to the audience, and how often. Or you could just use machine learning now to detect whether your ad was played, but using markers is probably way simpler and cheaper to do.

The hard part is getting everyone to agree on the technical details, like the stream protocol, of how markers can be included in a stream and how to detect them.

The question is whether you trust the instances with their numbers. If you don't, you need tracking that calls back to a third party server. Not everyone will agree to being tracked like this, though

Musicians (and all artists) ultimately want to get their art in front of an audience.

Right now the existing big platforms serve that purpose.

Any new service is in a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation trying to attract an audience with no content and trying to attract content with no audience.

What's the "Bandcamp situation"?

They just laid off half their staff

Edit: after they got bought out. Hooray capitalism! https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/half-of-bandcamps-staff-laid-off-after-songtradr-acquisition/ar-AA1ijuTX

And unionized

And that too.

Bandcamp's U.S. employees, who launched a union that went public earlier this year, announced early in October that they had sent a letter to Songtradr outlining a list of demands around the sale of the company

JFC, brutal response.

My idea is that every artist host a server and sell music on it and listeners can subscribe to many servers and see all updates from artists from their feed

Discovery becomes a huge drawback in that scenario.

isn't that a solved problem? band does advertising and includes qr codes?

Isn't this thread pretty anti-advertising?

Or at least anti-being advertised to?

I think even anti-advertising people wouldn't be against a band handing stuff out at their shows

outside of that context? yeah, i actually agree with you

From the listener perspective, I must rather listen to genuine music with advertising that they actually picked rather than listen and be fed shit like YouTube does.

It's not what you're looking for, but I think in this context Jamendo deserves a mention.

I found lots of great songs and artists there that I listen to daily.

I nominate itch to cannibalise the fucker