Now that Bandcamp has had huge layoffs, what about an opensource, Fediverse-friendly replacement? What can a FOSS product bring to the community and do better than Bandcamp?
- Discoverability?
- Broader selection of payments platforms? Direct transfer to avoid processors? (I’m ignorant about the processing system, plus international considerations)
- Ease of spinning up (SaaS?)
- Content deliverability (on the fly transcode from sourced FLAC or WAVs? Rich video/multi track audio?)
Average fediverse user seeing a platform undergo changes they dislike:
“Hey why don’t we just copy a website that has 800k daily visitors?”
How many daily users on twitter or reddit?
We have viable alternatives for those, PeerTube for (opt in) distributed fedi-hosting large media files as well. I don’t see what technical or scalability reasons there are against a band camp replacement.
Don’t you understand? Only a for-profit, privately held (or even better, publicly traded!) company can save us!
It seems you’re being sarcastic, but there’s some truth to it. The fediverse, to me, isn’t primarily about saving “us”. It’s about people saving themselves. If everybody saves themselves, “we” are saved.
An artist posting on LinkedIn is what inspired my post. But I suppose a for-profit private company is probably the solution to it.
For me the most important criterias are:
- ownership: I buy, I get to download (re-download) the files and use then how ever I please
- astists get a fair share: I want to maximize the share of the money I’ve spent going to the artists, and I would like the platform to be transparent, showing me with each purchase how much goes to the artitst for creating more art (if self-hosted by the artist herself/himself, this cost is then deduced)
I personally don’t care for streaming.
I would challenge “unlimited” re-download in a FOSS market. This puts the long-term hosting on the market, vs the user, and is a challenge for current platforms. Perhaps re-download for a time, and of course DRM free is the key.
Man, it’s like the good old days of buying physical media. You lose or scratch your CD, you don’t get a new one for free.
Yeah, I feel like there needs to be a solution to this. Thankfully, artists don’t generally have hugely enormous catalogs that would take up terabytes of space (my entire collection is less than 400GB, which is many, many times larger than any single recording artists catalog, even the Beatles).
One rub I have with limited downloads is that memory of broken CDs. I bought a mobile app that is about $200 and they limit the number of times you can request are-download before you have to buy another license and I think it’s messed up. I’ve had to store that APK on multiple flash drives, off-site, etc.
I would challenge your definition of streaming. I host all my own music and I stream it all the time via Airsonic-advanced (though it does get cached - and it’s constantly downloading new podcast episodes). For me it’s just the level of accessibility I consider as “streaming”.
criterias
Like ‘email’, this noun doesn’t need an ‘s’.
Right about criteria, wrong about emails.
Funkwhale is the fedi alternative for music. You should go post your feature list onto their forum.
I just took a look at faircamp, it seems nice too.
Dogmazic.net is also a music platform (centralised) made with ampache.
Yes! I was wondering how Funkwhale could be leveraged here.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this. I think a fedi-connected, self-hosted Bandcamp alternative would be huge for discoverability and helping fans keep tabs on new releases, tour dates, etc… As a musician it’d be great to be able to have fans be alerted right away when you post a new track or tour date, and as a fan it’d be awesome to be able to follow artists that you like from other fedi-compatible platforms.
I’m not a web dev myself so I don’t really know for sure, but I think the biggest challenge is probably not even content delivery but keeping track of ownership/library. It’s really nice that you can log into Bandcamp and access a library of all of the albums/songs that you’ve previously bought, and I’m not sure how something like that could be emulated in a federated way. It might be possible, I just don’t know how!
Also it’d be nice to be able to stream your library, and when your library is distributed across multiple federated servers I don’t know if that becomes more difficult to implement.
Still, I’m with you. I’d love to see a federated alternative to Bandcamp, even if it takes some years to reach maturity or feature parity.
Huge for discoverability? Mate, googling for shit that’s on Lemmy sucks. Decentralization isn’t the answer to everything.
Indeed, discoverability is the largest problem for people in the Fediverse and there doesn’t seem to be a simple solution for it.
Perhaps what’s needed is a charitable, non-profit foundation (properly registered) whose sole purpose is to give artists an opt-in place to register their social links, samples, etc. Then the content can be on the Fediverse in various forms (depending on medium and artist desires) but where catalogues can be easily scanned and followed.
Or it could simply be decentralized in the sense thatb producers could take care of online distribution themselves instead of relying on third party services, or it’s perfectly fine to have centralized services for some things and it’s normal to see some of those services come and go.
The issue is “discoverability”. Producers “taking care of online distribution themselves” are dealing with, you know, the very problem that they are not discoverable. Unless they’re on a third-party service, of course.
A commercial centralized discoverability service would enshittify REALLY quickly because of the profit motive. First they’d make everything nice for both listers and consumers. Make themselves indispensable to listers. Then lock the listers into an abusive relationship with no viable means out. (Kind of like bandcamp, come to think of it!) And once they’ve squeezed every last ounce out of the listers, the consumers get the screws next since there’s no viable option for them to escape to.
A non-profit foundation has no profit motive (by definition) so has no incentive whatsoever to enshittify.
Or, you know, the music creators could seize the means of distribution and take care of it themselves… Again, discoverability for anything that’s decentralized has yet to be proven better than a centralized solution. I never search answers to issues on Lemmy, I search on Reddit or Steam forums (for game issues). I don’t go on Google to look for new music, I go on Spotify.
Anyway, what’s the advantage for the artists exactly? They need to trust Sir_poop_up_my_butt with their music on their server and hope that they don’t just go offline at some point rendering their music inaccessible just like the content of some instances just disappeared because people got bored with Lemmy and hosting their instance?
The. Advantage. Is. Discoverability.
If you can’t figure out from there what the issue is, you’re on your own Sparky. Maybe talk to an artist struggling with the current system and tell them they just have to “take care of it themselves”. I’d advise not saying it in person, though, or you’ll wind up getting … ah … bruised. Slightly. Ever so slightly.
And as I said multiple times, discoverability sucks in a decentralized service because searching for things is nigh impossible.
I think a better solution to the current default model here would be splitting this up.
Give the artists a service where they provide their music, nothing else. They just upload the files, metadata, pricing. Only the technical side of things. Then another service is for the end user to actually listen to the music, but instead of having that content on the end-user service they only connect to the artist platform. For this to work there needs to be a default hub to which every artist service is automatically federated. (On that topic, why is it so hard to just federate entire instances everywhere in the fediverse, I get the moderation workload would be insane but it really works against the idea of decentralization)
Also another problem entirely is dealing with the payment providers, afaik they really don’t play ball with tiny platforms so getting support for those into the service would probably be a pain
Well it’s currently quite new and immature. I’ve said for a while that a decent system for searching the fediverse would be search engines maintaining their own instances purely for indexing purposes. They would retrieve posts via default federation, and if an instance wants to opt out of a given search engine, it’s as simple as defederating from that instance. They would also ideally provide links that users can open on their home instances.
This is more a scale and mainstreaming issue than a federation issue. Once the fediverse is big enough major search engines will have to adapt or be left behind.
Been using self-hosted, static website builder https://simonrepp.com/faircamp/ with satisfying results here
One thing that most reddit alumni won’t care about, but one of the nicest things about doing it decentralized is censorship resistance.
Bandcamp at some point decided that the political views of the artists on their platform are a reason to get rid of some artists.
You might not see a problem since you agree with bandcamp’s politics, but companies change their politics on a dime when it becomes useful to do so.
One problem with open source commercial sites is you’re typically going to need business partners to handle credit card transactions.
What political views did they censor?
They took down tim pools music, and recently I went to buy some mp3s of a guy who opposes covid mandates and he was banned too.
Again, lots of folks might disagree with both those people, but when it comes to shit like this you are always next.
https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-bandcamp-removes-timcast-five-times-august-from-platform
Dim Tool makes music? That’s hilarious. Anyway I don’t have a problem with platforms removing COVID misinformation.
Does saying a false thing about COVID mean that everything you’ve ever said can now be banned everywhere forever?
Since not every one of the guys songs were about COVID, but they were all taken down.
Does this apply to disinformation like “If you get the vaccine you won’t get COVID”? How about “If you get the vaccine you won’t spread COVID to others”?
Who was going around saying those two things specifically? That sounds like either a strawman or someone misunderstanding how vaccines work, rather than deliberately spreading bad information a la Tim Pool. All respected medical professionals were saying, repeatedly, that you can still get and spread COVID after getting the vaccine, but your chances for both are lower. Also you’re likely to have a milder case after getting the vaccine, if you do end up getting COVID.
This whole things sounds like you’re wrapped up in conservative talking points.
https://www.newsweek.com/joe-biden-2021-video-saying-vaccinations-prevent-covid-resurfaces-1726900
I’ll just assume this doesn’t count so I won’t bother finding those clips of Fauci, Wallinsky and countless other officials.
Yo I’m not going to defend something dumb that Biden said, but he’s not a medical professional – he was trying to sell people on vaccines. You can find me the clip of Fauci saying that if you want. Fauci also had really poor messaging about masks at the beginning of the pandemic, so I don’t fully doubt that he said something stupid about vaccines.
Not sure why you’re getting downvoted, because you’re making a ton of sense. It’s not about Tim Pool, who is a dumb incel POS. It’s about the HUGE dangers of giving a company unilateral power to ban someone based solely on speech.
What if Bandcamp’s new owners are more like Facebook? They could ban work that promotes women’s rights and abortion access, which is exactly what Facebook has done.
What if Bandcamp’s new owners (or the owners after them) are more like Twitter? They could ban antifascist activists or journalists.
It truly doesn’t matter how you feel about one person. It matters how you feel about principles.
At the end of the day, what you’re talking about is exactly right.
It feels like a win if people you don’t like get silenced, but it’s a two sided sword that rarely ends up back in the scabbard without tasting friendly blood – as you’ve shown.
Take a look at this project started with many of those goals in mind: https://code.communitymedia.network/MountainTownTechnology/aural_isle
Sounds good, tho they’re not finished yet, hope it works out for them.
Has there been any purchasable content in the Fediverse so far?
Good question, I don’t know. I know I’ve seen people selling things in Mastodon but that’s been my extent of experience.
Do you know this: https://radiofreefedi.net/
Excellent link, thanks!
All of these ideas are great and all but at the end of the day I will be forced to use what ever the scene I am into decides is best and therefore I can find the biggest selection of music to buy.
Currently band camp is the defacto for most releases (except for some idiotic vinyl only bullshit) within the scene I am into, but even if a great alternative is made if they don’t start selling the music I want on there then it’ll be impossible for me to use.
I think as much effort to expose a band camp alternative to artists is needed as there is needed to create the thing so people and artists can come together in said place.
Time to go back to limewire
Perhaps some sort of collectively owned service.
Or a non profit like Wikipedia that all it does is host and sell music.
Whatever it is needs to be resistant to the standard shifty capitalism problems. It should focus on providing a good service and making enough money to support itself. Not infinite profits forever.
A shame this is now defunct.
Wait, hear me out. Direct buy from artists using crypto. Then you don’t have to deal with payment processors.
Cryptoscam shill is shilling the cryptoscam.
It’s amazing to me that anybody considers crypto"currency" to be a viable currency these days after all the failures of the (… uh … you know that “exchanges” are payment processors right? RIGHT!? …) ecosystem to the tune of now billions of dollars.
But hey, you can at least send your funny money on a public ledger (for PRIVACY! LOL!) and have it get processed painfully slowly while contributing to more greenhouse gases than most medium-sized nations!
There’s literally no downside!
You don’t need to use an exchange to get paid in crypto or use a crypto with a pubic ledger
Monero is far more private than letting a credit card processor have your information. Ethereum doesn’t use mining anymore so the electricity used for it is less than paying with credit card. It also takes a few seconds to process.
Yes. The scam has mutated. All scams do. It’s still a Ponzi scheme and suckers like you are still trying to fill out the bottom of the pyramid so that you’re not the one holding the bag when it collapses.
When.
Not if.
Go shill crypto on that distributed messaging system specifically set up to shill crypto, dude. You’ll find more receptive suckers there.
And now let’s address your second favourite crypto-Ponzi: Ethereum. This would be the Ethereum whose “smart” contracts are so fucking dumb that it’s almost routine to find stories of them being owned by kiddies? (Ask Hope Lend, Fantom Foundation, Balancer, Huobi, Remitano, and a cast of thousands.) Or would this be the Ethereum that filled to the brim with suspect entities like TrueUSD/$TEURO (which they laughably claim aren’t related despite both coming from the same address), Milady NFTs (or, let’s face it, ANY fucking NFT!), or any number of other rug pullers and such? Or are you talking the Ethereum that is so lazy an implementation that people trivially write snipe bots to manipulate values for things? Or are you talking the Ethereum so fucking lax (and convoluted in actual use) that even its founder got himself Twitter-hacked to wind up draining people’s accounts dry from a scam?
Yeah. Absolutely the org I’d trust with finance. Great suggestion, Sparky? Why not just resurrect Capone and tell people to put cash in this bag he’s holding out?
Ethereum is not an organization, you don’t need to use NFTs or smart contracts if you don’t want to
Ethereum is not an organization […]
Right. Ethereum is not an “organization”. It’s several organizations (like the Ethereum Foundation, say) with suspicious overlap in membership (like Vitalik Buterin, say) whose top 100 ETH addresses (out of about what? a quarter million? a third of a million?) own ~40% of the ETH making them one motherfucking powerful voting bloc. (Even Bitcoin, with some whales that are making people look askance at it, has only about 14% held in the top 100 addresses!)
And this doesn’t even begin to address the clusterfuck that is the enormous problem of PoS having “the rich get richer” built into its very core.
…you don’t need to use NFTs or smart contracts if you don’t want to
Agreed. And indeed you don’t need to use any cryptoscam bullshit at all. Which is what most people do. Because most people aren’t clueless idiots and can actually smell a scam. The cryptoshills are obvious scammers at the level of Nigerian Princes-in-Exile!
Here’s a suggestion for you, Sparky. Why don’t you toddle off back to nostr where the rest of your cryptobro buddies and their victims hang out instead of trying to infect yet another domain with your criminal scam?
So, let’s look over the first of your favourite funny money Ponzi schemes: Monero.
Is this the Monero that people are increasingly certain is doing the digital equivalent of printing currency? (C.f. “Monerun” for details.) The Monero that has a single mining pool that’s within striking distance of pulling off a 50%+1 attack? That Monero? 'Cause that “privacy” you tout for it works both ways. Yes, user details are private … but so are the operator’s details so there’s no way of knowing what’s really going on under the covers. Like, I don’t know, say, “paper Monero”…
Doesn’t even sound slightly scammy. Not in the slightest. I know I’d trust them with monetary matters!
@ttmrichter @iopq seems I remember them as well as a ‘money exchange’ never used them but the name rings a bell from a few years ago then I may be wrong?
I honestly lose track of the everchanging landcape of crypto grifters these days. There’s so many of them and the recent meltdown all across the crypto sphere has made them desperately come out of the woodwork trying to get ANYBODY to buy their shit before they’re left holding … sorry, hodling … the bag.
Monero is the one that is a private ledger, though, which means not only can’t other people see your transactions, you can’t see the transactions of the people running it to see if they’re scamming or not. They’re less transparent than a commercial bank and that takes a lot of effort!
I predict within a year Monero will rugpull and disappear into the digital æther. The whole crypto sphere is in a tailspin and the people at the head of the various pyramids are going to be leaving soon, leaving only the suckers behind.
RemindMe@programming.dev 1 year
I just looked up Monerun
Monero is not doing “printing currency”. Some exchanges that promise to pay you monero may not hold it. That’s the same what your bank does. The bank seldom has enough dollar bills to pay all of its depositors money.
But again, this is between an exchange and its customers. You can gasp use another exchange and withdraw your money immediately after using it
Monero is not doing “printing currency”.
And you know this because…?
Right. You don’t. Because Monero is obstinately opaque in its operations. You’re taking it on faith (or, rather, you’re trying to make sure you’re not the bottom of the pyramid when everything goes to Hell).
That’s not how that works, you prove your claim that monero has coins created in excess of what the protocol allowed. You can’t just make shit up and expect me to debunk it
The system is set up so it cannot be proved until it’s too late. Like a hi-tech Madoff scheme. It has zero transparency. None.
In the absence of transparency, the only safe and sane assumption is “a scam is in operation”.
why though? Direct buy sure but why crypto? Just because you can send Disney bucks directly to someone?
Just use Kofi or Patreon and you are golden.
If we are going down that route: why Kofi or Patreon? Just use bank transfers. Payment via SEPA is commonplace, FedNow is already a thing. Even “third-world”, “backwards” countries like Brazil and India have digital payment networks.
Just use bank transfers. Payment via SEPA is commonplace
I mean, yeah, that would work as well. But would you trust any stranger/on the internet with your IBAN which is tightly linked to your person?
What can people do with an IBAN? They are not meant to be sensitive/protected information.
That Indian payment network won’t be able to deliver money to an American band
Then use Wise.
Doesn’t support every country and currency pair
Neither does Patreon, Ko-Fi, or any payment processor out there. ;)
Ah, I see. You are making the case for cryptocurrency by trying to justify on the general exception instead of the practical rule… I tried that before, didn’t go so well.
The payment processors take a big fee, like 3% + $0.30
You can’t just sell one song for a penny.
What are the “gas” fees for Ethereum like again. You know, one of the two you touted above as being viable alternatives to actual money.
If you think that’s too much, use a different crypto. I’ve exchanged some crypto with a friend for local currency and it cost me less than a penny to make a transaction.
Typical crytobro bullshit. Moving goalposts.
YOU touted Ethereum. Then you talked about “one cent songs”.
Be at least a little consistent in pushing your scam? I mean this constant whirling around is just making you dizzy and making your scam ever so obvious to onlookers.
It depends on what crypto you use, they all have upsides and downsides. Bitcoin cash has incredibly long confirmation times like Bitcoin, you can only sell cheap stuff with no confirmation because it’s not safe (you can double spend if you’re a miner)
I exchanged Bitcoin cash with extremely low fees for moving it. But I don’t know if it actually has a future, most people are not really bullish on it. Cryptos have to be used as a form of exchange to have value on the market. I thought Nano with no fees had a future, but that’s a feature most people didn’t care about
But you don’t have to choose, offer bch, monero, Bitcoin lightning, etc. and let the user decide what crypto they want to pay with
Yes. Brilliant plan! Take the creatives’ time spent on making art and have them decode every single fucking crypto scam’s procedures, security models, etc.! That way they’ll be so distracted by the bullshit choices placed before them they won’t realize that a) none of them are good choices, and b) they’ve not actually created anything since they started dealing with all that horseshit.
Nostr is thataway, Sparky. Go talk to your fellow cryptobros.
The best part of Ethereum:
When a transaction has failed due to an “Out of Gas” error, this means the gas limit set for a transaction is below the required gas needed to execute it. The transaction value does not leave your address but gas fee is deducted because of the computational cost incurred.
You pay the gas fee whether your transaction goes through or not. What. A. Fucking. Scam.
Because I’ve tried getting money from countries like Kazakhstan and it’s not straightforward
Sure, if you have a merchant account and want to pay 3%+ on a credit card purchase it would work, just set up visa and Mastercard
But for the smaller band, they would not be taking credit card payments themselves
