Funkwhale - A federated, decentralized (ActivityPub) libre alternative to Soundcloud

Discuss how to promote using FLOSS to make music.

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Basslint
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Funkwhale - A federated, decentralized (ActivityPub) libre alternative to Soundcloud

Post by Basslint »

Officiale site: https://funkwhale.audio/
Example instance: https://open.audio

Now the question: should we start our own instance? :D
Last edited by Basslint on Sat Nov 14, 2020 7:58 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Funkwhale - A federated, decentralized (ActivityPub) libre alternative to Soundcloud

Post by JimiPb »

Thanks a lot for sharing this! I think this is the route to go for me. Setting up a instance with all of your music available and a paypal link for donations.

A LinuxMusicians radio is also a cool concept!
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Re: Funkwhale - A federated, decentralized (ActivityPub) libre alternative to Soundcloud

Post by GMaq »

Hi,

I'm not sure exactly what context you intend to use this in but I find that 'audience fragmentation' is never helpful.. Many of us post on Youtube the most ubiquitous platform available on every available device and it is a real accomplishment to get 100 plays wordwide... :roll:

I put stuff on Spotify/Apple/Google/etc/etc. because even many family members already find it too cumbersome to find and install Soundcloud and if it takes more than one click it just ain't going to happen... "people don't know what they like, they like what they know" so in my opinion if Soundcloud is too weird and obscure for most people outside of geekdom, than how much less probable to get exposure and plays is putting stuff on something like FunkWhale...?
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Re: Funkwhale - A federated, decentralized (ActivityPub) libre alternative to Soundcloud

Post by Basslint »

GMaq wrote: Thu Nov 12, 2020 9:22 pm Hi,

I'm not sure exactly what context you intend to use this in but I find that 'audience fragmentation' is never helpful.. Many of us post on Youtube the most ubiquitous platform available on every available device and it is a real accomplishment to get 100 plays wordwide... :roll:

I put stuff on Spotify/Apple/Google/etc/etc. because even many family members already find it too cumbersome to find and install Soundcloud and if it takes more than one click it just ain't going to happen... "people don't know what they like, they like what they know" so in my opinion if Soundcloud is too weird and obscure for most people outside of geekdom, than how much less probable to get exposure and plays is putting stuff on something like FunkWhale...?
The things are not mutually exclusive, you could upload your tracks both to Funkwhale and Youtube :D

One problem that Youtube has is centralization and it's becoming more and more problematic. Just to name some issues related to it:
1. If your Google accounts get permabanned, your possibilities to appeal it are limited (https://www.androidauthority.com/google ... d-1054640/)
2. If your songs get tagged 18+, people will need to have a Youtube account to listen to them. In Europe, this requires uploading your ID, which is as privacy-invasive as it gets (https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/22/2144 ... n-creators)
3. Youtube already supports DRM, and it's only up to them to enable it via default (https://old.reddit.com/r/opensource/com ... videos_in/)
4. Youtube has automatic machine-learning-based content identification, which can mistake your music for copyrighted music. If you play some Bach, your music might get flagged for copyright infringement (https://www.vice.com/en/article/xwkbad/ ... ilters-are)
5. Now that youtube-dl is being actively taken down, it will become harder and harder to use Youtube without proprietary software, which might be legal in some countries or even required to comply with the Creative Commons licenses (https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/g ... erican-law)

Soundcloud is better but I don't like the way it compresses audio and I think it has the problem of centralization. It also performs poorly on my GNU/Linux+Firefox combo. I think Funkwhale (or in general, federated services) is the only sustainable way to share music in a social network.

Funkwhale works via HTTP so sharing a song is as easy as sending a link, like this (random song I found on a Funkwhale pod) -> https://open.audio/library/tracks/99451/
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Re: Funkwhale - A federated, decentralized (ActivityPub) libre alternative to Soundcloud

Post by LAM »

@Basslint
Interesting, this could be a good candidate for publishing some works. I agree 100% on what you wrote on Youtube (and similar platforms).

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Re: Funkwhale - A federated, decentralized (ActivityPub) libre alternative to Soundcloud

Post by jonetsu »

As far as popular platforms are concerned I only post to soundcloud at the moment, although I'd like to eventually 'open up' to be able to receive money from people who appreciate what I create. Not looking at much but if in a year it allows me to buy some firewood for winter, I'll be very happy. As such I'm looking for other popular platforms, with perhaps a dedicated web site. Although I have no precise plan at the moment nor do I know much about how to go at it. Although it seems that I'll be offering better arrangements and mixes for paid material.So my question is:

If a version of my creations are up for money/donations somewhere, is it still possible to post it on funkwhale, or is the concept of getting anything in return for the hours one is spending on creating totally frown upon ?
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Re: Funkwhale - A federated, decentralized (ActivityPub) libre alternative to Soundcloud

Post by jonetsu »

Basslint wrote: Sat Nov 14, 2020 7:52 am 5. Now that youtube-dl is being actively taken down, it will become harder and harder to use Youtube without proprietary software, which might be legal in some countries or even required to comply with the Creative Commons licenses
Regarding youtube, adverts are now the norm. They sneaked them in and now they're there to stay. Which often means using youtube-dl to first download the video. Since they haven't figured how to embed adverts into download material. The very, very worse is adding full audio/video adverts when music is playing. This is so disgusting. It happen now and then.

Yesterday I updated youtube-dl w/o any problem. I use the -U switch. I always update youtube-dl when there's a problem downloading. Looks like youtube is playing a cat and mouse game
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Re: Funkwhale - A federated, decentralized (ActivityPub) libre alternative to Soundcloud

Post by GMaq »

To clarify..

I am no fan or defender of Youtube (or Soundcloud or any of them really). I don't prefer these platforms because they are popular I was merely acknowledging that due to their ease of use and popularity they are (unfortunately) a somewhat necessary vehicle if your interest is to get your content out to the largest number of consumers at no cost.. If that's not your aim or goal then indeed go with whatever you like!

That said Youtube is certainly doing daily damage to itself and it's original mandate of giving everyday ordinary folks a platform to do their thing is fast becoming a dim memory... but there still isn't anything coming close to providing that kind of platform-agnostic opportunity for exposure...yet
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Re: Funkwhale - A federated, decentralized (ActivityPub) libre alternative to Soundcloud

Post by Basslint »

jonetsu wrote: Tue Nov 17, 2020 11:57 pm If a version of my creations are up for money/donations somewhere, is it still possible to post it on funkwhale, or is the concept of getting anything in return for the hours one is spending on creating totally frown upon ?
Sure, you own the copyright for your music so you can post it anywhere you like. You can sell it on Bandcamp and then share it on Funkwhale, or maybe have a "donate" button in your Funkwhale page (of course, the instance owners should allow this, it doesn't really depend on Funkwhale but on who manages the server).
GMaq wrote: Wed Nov 18, 2020 2:09 am To clarify..

I am no fan or defender of Youtube (or Soundcloud or any of them really). I don't prefer these platforms because they are popular I was merely acknowledging that due to their ease of use and popularity they are (unfortunately) a somewhat necessary vehicle if your interest is to get your content out to the largest number of consumers at no cost.. If that's not your aim or goal then indeed go with whatever you like!

That said Youtube is certainly doing daily damage to itself and it's original mandate of giving everyday ordinary folks a platform to do their thing is fast becoming a dim memory... but there still isn't anything coming close to providing that kind of platform-agnostic opportunity for exposure...yet
Don't worry, I understood what you were saying :wink: I largely agree with you, even. But I think the stake is too big and if we play our cards well today, maybe in 5-6 years things like Funkwhale will be more mainstream.

Mastodon for example became more popular after the mainstream social networks started banning people. I think decentralized, standardized technology is the most sustainable and rational and in the long run it's going to win, even if I suspect it might be made illegal in the future in some countries because of lobbyism and power.
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Re: Funkwhale - A federated, decentralized (ActivityPub) libre alternative to Soundcloud

Post by Basslint »

Just wanted to share a thing about Youtube. Today I tried to listen to a song posted on here and Youtube showed me the usual "Sign in" and "I agree" prompts. On Firefox, it just wouldn't let me click "I agree". I opened the same song from Falkon (Chromium-based) and the video started, then I went back to Firefox and "I agree" worked.

I don't know if that was a temporary bug or not, probably so, but Chrome's near-monopoly on the web is also a good reason to avoid Google services entirely. These micro-bugs on Google sites effectively can make a person use Chrome instead of Firefox, strengthening its dominance.
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Re: Funkwhale - A federated, decentralized (ActivityPub) libre alternative to Soundcloud

Post by christobal »

I'm a big fan of the whole decentralized nature of activitypub tbh. All of Mastodon, Peertube and Funkwhale are really cool projects.

A LinuxMusicians instance would be pretty cool. How does Funkwhale handle file storage? Peertube uses torrents afaik.
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Re: Funkwhale - A federated, decentralized (ActivityPub) libre alternative to Soundcloud

Post by bulevardi »

Basslint wrote: Wed Nov 18, 2020 7:13 am

But I think the stake is too big and if we play our cards well today, maybe in 5-6 years things like Funkwhale will be more mainstream.

Mastodon for example became more popular after the mainstream social networks started banning people.

I totally like the idea... but.
We're now around 5 years later and it's still unknown, at all.

Even Mastodon... I got to know about it only 2 weeks ago.

And guess what, there's nothing happening there.
I registered on a couple of platforms since short, Pixelfed, BlueSky, Mastodon, FunkWhale,... but none of my friends or family even knóws about these things, let alone that some would have an (active) account there.

I now added a lot of random unknown people there to follow, just to see some activity coming up.

I really like the idea of FunkWhale though, just added a first song on it today.
But it was already pretty difficult to get it there, I had to watch a how-to video... and then I managed to get it online, but not possible to find the song when searching in the database of music. Apparently I uploaded it the wrong way, there it starts already, people will unhook.

@tseaver mentioned to have a pod for us Linux Musicians on FunkWhale, that would be a nice thing too. But it needs to be hosted on a server by someone, or a paid VPS or something like that:
viewtopic.php?p=168216#p168216

Another question that arises is: what's the audience.
Are there statistics about who are the current listeners on FunkWhale? There is no mainstream music, so you won't attract mainstream audience.
It's already difficult to find a listener on BandCamp or SoundCloud, I mean, why would the average Joe go to FunkWhale?
I guess the people who use FunkWhale are just using it as a backup storage or NAS for their (personal) music so they can play it somewhere.

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Re: Funkwhale - A federated, decentralized (ActivityPub) libre alternative to Soundcloud

Post by Largos »

The problem is these federated services don't really address the main problems with social media sites. In that, you don't own the space. Most of them require you to have a hosting that is not inexpensive and you require a decent amount of knowledge of run. So, you have these situations where people are signing up to funkwhale "pods" or mastodon instances like. I have an account with fosstodon but there's nothing to stop the owner of fosstodon terminating my account in the same way as elon musk can just one day decide to mess with a twitter user

Hosting stuff on your own website is far better, as control over your own space goes. Shared hosting is much more affordable and it's far easier to set up things that can work on it. If you want a place to backup, nextcloud can be installed on shared hosting and is really good. Static web site generators like jekyll and hugo for making easy to update websites with RSS Feeds.

I should probably find or sort out some proper info resource about this.

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Re: Funkwhale - A federated, decentralized (ActivityPub) libre alternative to Soundcloud

Post by bulevardi »

Largos wrote: Tue Feb 04, 2025 3:33 pm

Hosting stuff on your own website is far better, as control over your own space goes. Shared hosting is much more affordable and it's far easier to set up things that can work on it. If you want a place to backup, nextcloud can be installed on shared hosting and is really good. Static web site generators like jekyll and hugo for making easy to update websites with RSS Feeds.

Yesterday I came around YunoHost, that also offers easy installation of lots of applications like FunkWhale.
There was a free plan, and paid options. But I didn't look at the details. Probably, the free plan is that limited that you soon come to a point where your data or bandwidth exceeds its limits and you need a paid plan.
A shared hosting is also not 100% continuation assured.

My internet provider, where I have been a customer for over 20 years, offered free web space, 50Mb, peanuts, but ideal for a mini website consisting of a few pages html and other stuff.
For years I had this website full of info, where regular visitors came back to.
Until a couple of years ago they just stopped offering that, and all the customers lost their hosting.
Their reasoning was that their customers could just host their data and pictures elsewhere, on free google drives or blogs and so.
I stopped with the site as I didn't want to port it elsewhere again, as I was a bit demotivated and was about to quit my webdesign hobby for other reasons.

Anyway, I'm soon going to leave that provider, I can get the same internetservice a lot cheaper, in a package for my phone and other family members, but that's another story.

Now that I think about it, I feel the fire again... to create another st00pid website again, from scratch in Notepad++.

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Re: Funkwhale - A federated, decentralized (ActivityPub) libre alternative to Soundcloud

Post by Audiojunkie »

bulevardi wrote: Tue Feb 04, 2025 2:04 pm
Basslint wrote: Wed Nov 18, 2020 7:13 am

But I think the stake is too big and if we play our cards well today, maybe in 5-6 years things like Funkwhale will be more mainstream.

Mastodon for example became more popular after the mainstream social networks started banning people.

I totally like the idea... but.
We're now around 5 years later and it's still unknown, at all.

Even Mastodon... I got to know about it only 2 weeks ago.

And guess what, there's nothing happening there.
I registered on a couple of platforms since short, Pixelfed, BlueSky, Mastodon, FunkWhale,... but none of my friends or family even knóws about these things, let alone that some would have an (active) account there.

I now added a lot of random unknown people there to follow, just to see some activity coming up.

I really like the idea of FunkWhale though, just added a first song on it today.
But it was already pretty difficult to get it there, I had to watch a how-to video... and then I managed to get it online, but not possible to find the song when searching in the database of music. Apparently I uploaded it the wrong way, there it starts already, people will unhook.

@tseaver mentioned to have a pod for us Linux Musicians on FunkWhale, that would be a nice thing too. But it needs to be hosted on a server by someone, or a paid VPS or something like that:
viewtopic.php?p=168216#p168216

Another question that arises is: what's the audience.
Are there statistics about who are the current listeners on FunkWhale? There is no mainstream music, so you won't attract mainstream audience.
It's already difficult to find a listener on BandCamp or SoundCloud, I mean, why would the average Joe go to FunkWhale?
I guess the people who use FunkWhale are just using it as a backup storage or NAS for their (personal) music so they can play it somewhere.

You keep saying that nothing is happening in the Fediverse. I explained to you why you are experiencing this. But despite what you say, and what you feel, you are completely incorrect. The Fediverse rewards you for the effort you put into it. Just in the last two days, I've had interesting conversations with both Peter Kirn and Jyoti Mishra. I've got several friends from all around the world that I've known for several years, and we chat all the time. I've got so many posts that I can't read them all. I get most of my computer news from the Fediverse. I've put my time in to find interesting people to follow, and I enjoy their posts. If you Pooh Pooh on it all, after only a couple of days, and with only following a few people, it is no wonder you have a bad experience with it. The Fediverse is like Karma--what you put into it is what you get back. Put some time into finding interesting people to follow. Follow a lot of people. Chat with them. Contribute by post things interesting to you so that people will actually want to follow you. Did you write an interesting profile so that people will have an interest in following you? I can tell you that you haven't yet put in the effort to gain from the Fediverse. There are no algorithms--just the way I like it. The service is not going to figure out what you like and then shove it in your face. You need to get things a fair shake before you can diss it. I will say again it is a busy, active service.

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