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Funkwhale – Decentralized, self-hosted music server

funkwhale.audio

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Re: Funkwhale – Decentralized, self-hosted music server

#261

Post by IndySun »

aidenn0 wrote: post #253
IndySun wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like many arguments defending wholesale sharing, they start at the end products and look forward, instead of being even a tiny bit cognisant of the process by which those items came to be. 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…

I certainly don't intend to devalue creativity. Like many (most?) on HN I have a career where I get paid for my creative work. However, creative outputs are qualitatively (and legally) distinct from physical outputs and to pretend otherwise is only going to be a hindrance in properly creating a system to nurture cultural output. Let's start with the car example. I can buy a car, modify it and resell it. I can buy a c…

Ok, ignore the part about physical things being needed for creativity to happen.

I don't feel we're pulling in opposite directions. You make points I agree with. I definitely want to understand more.

Time limits, profits limits, distribution caps, all important and debatable facets.

All I ask is you really try to put yourself, and only you can do it, in the shoes of a someone who's very existence depends on what you are casually, or strongly, or passionately, advocating. Are you the person to decide what 'product' is more valuable, either in recompense or admiration?

Re: Funkwhale – Decentralized, self-hosted music server

#262

Post by altendo »

Lambdanaut wrote: post #178
keyle wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grooveshark was awesome! From the brand, the UI, the service. RIP Grooveshark.

They really were the best, and they had obscure music that I would have never expected they'd have. Old SNES game OST like the super mario rpg soundtrack was there. It felt like if I could think it, I could find it. Ad-free and flawless free experience. Truly a gem.

Yes! And there were the deep cuts of songs too.

It was a wild ride. I am so fortunate to have been there for the time that I had.

Appreciate the love everyone's been sending in the comments. It's good to not be forgotten :)

Re: Funkwhale – Decentralized, self-hosted music server

#263

Post by anonzzz »

I was a longtime Subsonic user and was mostly pleased. For some reason, I stopped using it after moving to a new server.

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.

Re: Funkwhale – Decentralized, self-hosted music server

#264

Post by sjy »

herbstein wrote: post #164
birracerveza wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You like an ANTI -meritocracy statement? We truly have gone backwards.

The word 'meritocracy' was coined as a derogatory term about the education system in England in the 50s in a satirical text. It mocked the idea that such a thing could exist because the system obviously wasn't designed for it. If you value "intelligence", but only give rich people access to good education, then you've just created a two-step process that selects for rich people.

I don’t think this is an accurate summary of the book. The satirical history of the “modern education system” in chapter 3 describes how funding for public education was increased, and students were aggressively streamed into different schools based only on IQ tests. Eventually expensive private schools went out of fashion because they were attended only by students who couldn’t get into the best public schools, so they no longer conferred academic prestige. Early in the book, capital levies are introduced which prevent the building of new fortunes, and in chapter 7, an Equalization of Income Act is passed so that all citizens receive the same basic income. The meritocracy is transformed into an aristocracy not because “merit” is a proxy for heritable wealth, but because “intelligence” (as defined in the book: “the ability to raise [economic] production, directly or indirectly”) is also heritable, and in the book this effect was amplified through eugenics. You can find a more modern and less satirical take on this argument in Fredrik deBoer’s The Cult of Smart.

Re: Funkwhale – Decentralized, self-hosted music server

#265

Post by anderspitman »

dvno42 wrote: post #19

I've been using this for a little over a year and like it a lot but it lacks the music discovery features of commercial platforms (which becomes important when you have terabytes of music) and takes a lot of effort to organize music and create play lists. The music onboarding process typically starts with organizing metadata with Musicbrainz Picard then import the collection into Funkwhale's DB via a cli admin tool.…

> There is an unofficial mobile client called Otter that makes listening to music on Android very pleasent

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?

Re: Funkwhale – Decentralized, self-hosted music server

#266

Post by vidarh »

crispyambulance wrote: post #243
greggman3 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These days, they're all pretty good Your experience is vastly different than mine. Youtube music seems to be recommending nothing but what's popular. Justin Bieber is being recommending to me. I've never listed to him or anything remotely related. No good recommendations on any of the others. Maybe you have a different definition of "good" Good to me means "sounds similar and in the same genre as what I'm currently…

> It does not mean "people who liked this song also liked that song" Actually, yes, it does (and many other things too), but to be fair "good" is a highly subjective judgment which is going to be different for everyone. I don't think, at this point in time, we have recommendation engines that can do much more than fling out recommendations based on an unknown convolution of your listening history combined with music…

The problem with "people who liked this song also liked that song" is that very often I don't want to listen to that song now even if it's something I really love.

If I'm listening to ambient music I don't suddenly want to be ambushed by something uptempo. If I'm listening to e.g. Debussy, you might be excused for suggesting something vaguely new age in a similar mood and tempo, but certainly not rock.

Another problem is that you can't just take raw overlap in tastes, because some people like "everything", and the fact their tastes overlap with mine does not mean I'll like everything else they like.

I've yet to hear a recommendation system that chooses music I want to listen to reliably enough that I can generally stand to listen to them for more than a few songs at a time without it turning into an endless annoying sequence of skipping.

Respecting genre (segues need to be gradual, if at all), respecting mood and tempo needs to come first. Then you can consider what others who likes the same songs within those constraints also likes within those constraints. Honestly if I have to choose between personalised recommendation and precise control of genre and mood/tempo, I'd take genre and mood/tempo over personalisation any day.

Another pet peeve of mine is lack of visibility into how to teach a system what I want. E.g. if I dislike or skip a song, will it get that it doesn't fit my current mood or what I want to listen to now, or will it wrongly infer I don't like the song at all?

Sometimes it feels as if the people designing these systems don't use them.

Re: Funkwhale – Decentralized, self-hosted music server

#267

Post by aidenn0 »

IndySun wrote: post #261
aidenn0 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I certainly don't intend to devalue creativity. Like many (most?) on HN I have a career where I get paid for my creative work. However, creative outputs are qualitatively (and legally) distinct from physical outputs and to pretend otherwise is only going to be a hindrance in properly creating a system to nurture cultural output. Let's start with the car example. I can buy a car, modify it and resell it. I can buy a c…

Ok, ignore the part about physical things being needed for creativity to happen. I don't feel we're pulling in opposite directions. You make points I agree with. I definitely want to understand more. Time limits, profits limits, distribution caps, all important and debatable facets. All I ask is you really try to put yourself, and only you can do it, in the shoes of a someone who's very existence depends on what you…

We probably aren't pulling in very different directions at all.

As far as this:

> All I ask is you really try to put yourself, and only you can do it, in the shoes of a someone who's very existence depends on what you are casually, or strongly, or passionately, advocating. Are you the person to decide what 'product' is more valuable, either in recompense or admiration?

I think that all individuals have a responsibility to decide what is and isn't more valuable and align their actions accordingly. The fact that an action causes harm to someone else does not make it necessarily immoral though. I can afford to buy every book I want to read. Nevertheless, I still frequent my local public library. This causes quantifiable harm to authors, yet few would call it immoral.

I could probably come up with a dozen reasons why it's a good thing to frequent the library (libraries are awesome, and making them a ghetto of people too poor to afford to buy books would be to their detriment), but the simple fact is I don't want to spend $8 on a book I'm probably going to only read once when I can get it for free.

This is a selfish action with quantifiable harm that most people do not consider immoral. I can come up with many post-facto justifications for why libraries are good and piracy is bad, but IMO the real reason why society falls this way is one is an old and revered institution, while the other is something teenagers do to get access to media because they are time-rich and money-poor.

And at the end of all of this, I'm still not going to advocate for general piracy, but I will say that it's mostly two sides each inflating or deflating the actual harm done in order to justify a position they hold that was never grounded in any sort of utilitarianism in the first place.

Re: Funkwhale – Decentralized, self-hosted music server

#268

Post by ephaeton »

IndySun wrote: post #113

"Hi, we're Funkwhale. We use cool words like decentralized, self-hosted, music, server, and of course, funk & whale. If we named it more honestly, then our defunding of musicians and creatives that depended on sales wouldn't get any love (not publicly anyway), plus the ethically vacant developers would have to work on it secretly. And to be sure, we ourselves do not create or rely on income from artistic endeavours,…

Speaking as a musician here, I align with the decentralized approach personally, and we've just uploaded our best album so far as CC-BY, using the gracious offer of the funkwhale guys to join their libre audio effort under https://open.audio/channels/wergiftfresch_music/ There's other ways for us to get paid if you insist on it. I'm sure we'll find a way. And if you don't want to pay us, well, just enjoy some positive music :)

Re: Funkwhale – Decentralized, self-hosted music server

#269

Post by Findeton »

IndySun wrote: post #225
Findeton wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well if I am not listening to them why would they complain about me pirating their music?

Is it because you're not interested in a cohesive society?

What is it that I said that you're trying to guess the motivations for?

Re: Funkwhale – Decentralized, self-hosted music server

#270

Post by dvdgsng »

Kaze404 wrote: post #109
JacobSuperslav wrote: post #9

I know this kind of thing might not be very popular on HN, but I like their anti-meritocracy statement: https://funkwhale.audio/en_US/code-of-conduct

Me too! I used to frequent their Matrix room a year or so ago and it was a very nice place. Very refreshing to find a tech community that made me feel like I could say what I wanted without being interjected by STEM and debate lords. 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 n…

Well, they banned folks for really minor reasons from their Matrix channel, e.g. saying "Hi guys, I have a question about ..." can get you banned. So no, this CoC leaves a very bitter taste in my mouth for the entire project.
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