Funkwhale might be the most overlooked Fediverse project
raphael.lullis.net
Funkwhale might be the most overlooked Fediverse project
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Re: Funkwhale might be the most overlooked Fediverse project
#2> it seems that Funkwhale would be the easiest one to get people out of Spotify/Apple Music/Youtube Music/etc, and I am trying to figure out what is missing to get more people interested and using it
As someone who's subscribed to Apple Music despite thinking it's overpriced and would love a good alternative, I guess I can be a case study here.
I use Apple Music for roughly three situations:
- I'm driving and want to listen to music. Usually a mixture of music I hear all the time and like, and new music that is similar to the music I already know I like
- I want a random assortment of chill classical music to lull me to sleep or get into a relaxed mood
- A song comes up in conversation and I want to quickly pull it up ("oh, you think that noise we just heard sounds like that riff from song X? Let's check. Hey siri, play song X")
I'm not very well informed about Funkwhale's feature-set, but I'm under the impression that it wouldn't do any of that well, much less all of it. Am I wrong?
Re: Funkwhale might be the most overlooked Fediverse project
#3> it seems that Funkwhale would be the easiest one to get people out of Spotify/Apple Music/Youtube Music/etc, and I am trying to figure out what is missing to get more people interested and using it As someone who's subscribed to Apple Music despite thinking it's overpriced and would love a good alternative, I guess I can be a case study here. I use Apple Music for roughly three situations: - I'm driving and want to…
The main difference from Funkwhale to the "streaming" services is that you need to "build" your music catalog, either by uploading your own music collection and/or following other people's libraries. So, "out of the box" you are not going to get any music available unless you join some instance which has an extensive catalog of copyright-free music or gives public access to songs they own copyrights.
For your use cases:
> I'm driving and want to listen to (...) mixture of music
Yes, Funkwhale can create "radios" which generates playlists like what you describe. You can choose to generate the playlist according to how often you listen to it or whether it is your "favorites" list or not.
> I want a random assortment of chill classical music to lull me to sleep or get into a relaxed mood.
If you have already access to this music, the radios can be set according to a specific genre.
> A song comes up in conversation and I want to quickly pull it up
That will depend on whether this song is available to you on the instance.
Re: Funkwhale might be the most overlooked Fediverse project
#4> it seems that Funkwhale would be the easiest one to get people out of Spotify/Apple Music/Youtube Music/etc, and I am trying to figure out what is missing to get more people interested and using it As someone who's subscribed to Apple Music despite thinking it's overpriced and would love a good alternative, I guess I can be a case study here. I use Apple Music for roughly three situations: - I'm driving and want to…
The main difference from Funkwhale to the "streaming" services is that you need to "build" your music catalog, either by uploading your own music collection and/or following other people's libraries. So, "out of the box" you are not going to get any music available unless you join some instance which has an extensive catalog of copyright-free music or gives public access to songs they own copyrights. For your use cas…
Well that makes the problem pretty clear. People are sticking with Spotify/Apple Music/Youtube Music because those platforms enable algorithmic discovery of new music that they want to listen to.
Somewhere on my hard drives, I have hundreds of gigs of flacs comprising my "old" music library that I used to maintain, because that's how I used to interact with music. I haven't accessed or updated that library in 5+ years now because manually maintaining a personal music library completely fucking sucks for the casual music listener, even with perfect interfaces. It's a lot of effort, and the end result is that you get to listen to the same songs over and over again and are completely on your own for finding any new music that you want. Compared to algorithmic discovery services that can cut through the monotony of repeat plays with fresh songs that I've never heard or barely remember but am still very likely to enjoy, it's no surprise that a lot of people are moving away from manually curated libraries. I don't want my music listening to be limited only to songs that I've previously discovered myself - I want something that has awareness of more or less "all" music to pick good songs for me without having to lift a finger, and existing services have gotten pretty good at that.
I recognize that for copyright reasons at the very least (not to even get into technical issues), projects like funkwhale can't possibly provide this functionality. That's okay and understandable, but it's also the reason why people aren't switching to it.
Re: Funkwhale might be the most overlooked Fediverse project
#5Good idea, 15 years too late.
Re: Funkwhale might be the most overlooked Fediverse project
#6> I think that its main problem is that no instance provides a “public” catalog of songs that can be streamed/downloaded by its users, but its “social aspect” is really cool. You can, e.g, connect with your friends and choose to share your private libraries with each other. So if you have a good mix of friends who kept/ripped their CD/Vynil collection or bought songs from their favorite indie musicians, you can end up with a pretty extensive library. This makes it a decent (and legal) alternative to sneaker-net piracy.
This sounds like it shares a lot of the UX of piracy, so I'd be interested to know the bounds of it's legality. What happens when I join the largest instance and upload Universal Media Group's catalog?
Re: Funkwhale might be the most overlooked Fediverse project
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
The main difference from Funkwhale to the "streaming" services is that you need to "build" your music catalog, either by uploading your own music collection and/or following other people's libraries. So, "out of the box" you are not going to get any music available unless you join some instance which has an extensive catalog of copyright-free music or gives public access to songs they own copyrights. For your use cas…
Well that makes the problem pretty clear. People are sticking with Spotify/Apple Music/Youtube Music because those platforms enable algorithmic discovery of new music that they want to listen to. Somewhere on my hard drives, I have hundreds of gigs of flacs comprising my "old" music library that I used to maintain, because that's how I used to interact with music. I haven't accessed or updated that library in 5+ year…
Funny I lean on YouTube for music discovery but mostly listen out of my own library. The worst problem I have managing it technically is that M.F. Doom hasn’t recorded two albums under the same name.
Re: Funkwhale might be the most overlooked Fediverse project
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
The main difference from Funkwhale to the "streaming" services is that you need to "build" your music catalog, either by uploading your own music collection and/or following other people's libraries. So, "out of the box" you are not going to get any music available unless you join some instance which has an extensive catalog of copyright-free music or gives public access to songs they own copyrights. For your use cas…
Well that makes the problem pretty clear. People are sticking with Spotify/Apple Music/Youtube Music because those platforms enable algorithmic discovery of new music that they want to listen to. Somewhere on my hard drives, I have hundreds of gigs of flacs comprising my "old" music library that I used to maintain, because that's how I used to interact with music. I haven't accessed or updated that library in 5+ year…
I don't think I was clear. If you already have the music collection, your "job" will be mostly about uploading it, but after you do that you will be able to enjoy similar features as the ones you are describing. The "radios" are meant exactly to give some "algorithmic generated playlist" that requires very little input from the user.
Re: Funkwhale might be the most overlooked Fediverse project
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well that makes the problem pretty clear. People are sticking with Spotify/Apple Music/Youtube Music because those platforms enable algorithmic discovery of new music that they want to listen to. Somewhere on my hard drives, I have hundreds of gigs of flacs comprising my "old" music library that I used to maintain, because that's how I used to interact with music. I haven't accessed or updated that library in 5+ year…
Funny I lean on YouTube for music discovery but mostly listen out of my own library. The worst problem I have managing it technically is that M.F. Doom hasn’t recorded two albums under the same name.
What does your process look like for discovering music on youtube and then getting that music into your personal library? If you're not discovering while you're typically listening, then you must be setting aside some separate time for discovery, and then curating those discovered songs, acquiring their files somehow, and integrating them into your library, right?
Re: Funkwhale might be the most overlooked Fediverse project
#10> I think that its main problem is that no instance provides a “public” catalog of songs that can be streamed/downloaded by its users, but its “social aspect” is really cool. You can, e.g, connect with your friends and choose to share your private libraries with each other. So if you have a good mix of friends who kept/ripped their CD/Vynil collection or bought songs from their favorite indie musicians, you can end u…
It's probably not legal.
What would happen? Nothing until it becomes a thing than it gets sued into oblivion.
They didn't find a magic loophole.