I have now deleted both my SongTradr and my DistroKid accounts.
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Ben Pate 🤘🏻replied to fluffy 💜 last edited by [email protected]
@[email protected]@plush.city Thats really good to hear. What would you say doesn’t match for independent musicians?
Not trying to hijack your post, but I’m the solo developer building Bandwagon. I want it to be a community-driven project that bends to different people’s needs, so I’d love to hear where you think it’s a mismatch, or where it’s falling down.
And, I’ll be happy to help promote Bandcrash and any other solutions for artists, in addition to mine
The more the better! -
@benpate Ah! The main things about it are that it doesn't feel like it is going to be very useful for organizing my stuff, and I'm not a fan of how it feels like it's fediverse-first rather than being a thing set up for having a browseable collection. It's also been a while since I've poked at it but I felt like the album setup was just super limiting? Or maybe it's just that the flow didn't make sense because all of the stuff I felt like is missing is actually there.
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@benpate I do have a couple of albums uploaded to it at https://bandwagon.fm/@fluffy and I remember the process of uploading to be kind of hairy and annoying.
But I was also coming at it while I was working on building my own Publ-based site for my band (which I still need to finish making, ugh) and so maybe I was hyperfocused too much on my own specific needs.
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@benpate Also I think the lack of payments at the time was a big turnoff (it just felt like yet another place to put your music online "for free" only with the eventual need to pay money for that hosting), but if payments are coming later then obviously that's not a valid concern.
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@benpate I guess my main question is, what does the Fediverse aspect bring to the table? I'm unable to follow @[email protected] from Mastodon at present, and Fediverse doesn't seem like a good fit for publishing or finding rarely-updated/posted content. Maybe my view on Fediverse is too narrow but I feel like IndieWeb concepts are a better fit for music in particular, with things like social graphs and browseable collections.
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@fluffy This makes sense, and it’s super helpful. Thank you.
It sounds like some of the missing pieces from the roadmap will help fill in the gaps - like tags, discovery, search, and online sales. You’re right that it’s an incomplete solution (for now)
I also have a ticket to make it easier to get started - for instance reading metadata from mp3s to populate your album data. But omg, reading mp3 metadata is sooo awful, so that part is just gonna be slow.
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@fluffy I’d love to see the site you end up with!
One of my goals for search and discovery is to cross app boundaries, so (hypothetically) a Bandwagon genre search could pull up results from Faircamp, Mirlo, or others.
I’ll have to get permission, of course, but I’d love to figure out how to index your site too.
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@benpate most of the data is ready to go (although I need to finish genre tagging my many many songs), but I still need to finish building the HTML templates (about 60% done) and CSS (haven’t started). Right now my main priority is getting my next album finished.
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@fluffy This is 100% true. My hands won’t move fast enough on the keyboard to make it happen any sooner.
Artists should be able to sell their work online without paying an additional cut to their landlord. Use your own PayPal or Strip account and get paid directly.
As soon as SOMEONE does this, nearly everyone will have to follow.
It’ll be glorious
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@[email protected] @[email protected] Hmm.. I followed your bandwagon profile from mastodon.social. And, I’ve just closed the loop with “secure mode” servers, so you SHOULD be able to follow. I can try making a test account on your server if you’re still having trouble.
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@[email protected] @[email protected] As far as “why on the Fediverse?”
I think we’re still undervaluing the ability to follow, like, and boost on an open network -- mostly because Fediverse 1.0 has worked so hard to mirror corporate social media.
But there is more power in artists’ hands if everything happens on the open web. I believe you can reach more people, with fewer intermediaries, and retain more control when your “social graph” isn’t tied to a single server.
We’ll have to build it to find out 🥸
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@fluffy Go get it. I’ll love to see it when it’s done!
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@benpate I just had a "cancel follow" indicator but it looks like something's gotten unstuck now.
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@benpate I mean yeah I'm not a big fan of the Twitter-style social media for following but I still feel like RSS/Atom are a better model for the sharing of trickles of large amounts of content. I know ActivityPub itself intends to support blog-style things but I haven't seen any ecosystem for that sort of stuff within AP, and everything seems to collapse down to How Mastodon Does It.
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@fluffy Yup. And unfortunately, following Mastodon is our near-future, too
But..
As more services come online, we can change the paradigm. Bandwagon is an example of using Mastodon as a “notifications-only” channel, while keeping richer interactions (like listening to music, making playlists, etc) on the more specialized server.
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@fluffy Awesome!!
The technical details get really nerdy, but I got this issue sorted out a week or two ago. So if you had trouble following in the past, the universal solution “turn it off, then turn it on again” works.
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@benpate ActivityPub just seems so much more complicated than RSS/Atom, especially when interop with Mastodon is the main goal
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@fluffy Yes. So much more complicated.
The big difference is in real time push (WebSub notwithstanding) and the richer vocabulary of “likes“ , “replies”, and “boosts”
There certainly could have been a protocol that delivered those things without ActivityPub’s complexity. But it’s still worth the extra work for those richer features.
I think we just treat Mastodon as the lowest common denominator, guarantee support, then add extra stuff that give richer clients a better experience.
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@benpate IndieWeb adds all those things to plain ol' feeds though, without needing a huge amount of supercomplexity.
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@fluffy Yes. I built out WebSub/WebMention support in Emissary/Bandwagon, too.
But somehow IndieWeb doesn’t seem widely supported. I think it’s because there’s no critical mass for IndieWeb to gather around.
And that’s what’s so interesting to me about ActivityPub. It’s so very imperfect, but Mastodon is a starter mass that could make so many other projects more viable, when they might have failed otherwise.
