Before anyone says it: yes, I know about Funkwhale.
Funkwhale is great, but what I’m imagining is slightly different.
I’m not just talking about a platform where users upload their own music, but something closer to how YouTube Music actually works. Artists would upload their own music and videos, either to a shared instance or to their own instance, and listeners could then stream them across the fediverse.
Something similar to how Peertube, Lemmy, Pixelfed, Mastodon, etc work.
One of the big appeals of YouTube Music (at least IMO) is that since it runs off YouTube, you get an absolutely wild mix of content. Official tracks, obscure uploads, forgotten demos, weird one-off videos, hyper-niche stuff that would never exist on Spotify or Apple Music.
The closest alternative to it would be SoundCloud, but even then, SC is more underground music scene.
In theory, I could imagine a potential federated alternative that hooks into PeerTube. Maybe users log in with their PeerTube account or instance, and music-focused instances federate with video-focused ones.
Something like “PeerTube Music” or a dedicated ActivityPub music service that interoperates with PeerTube.
Obviously, you’re not going to get big-name artists right away (or maybe ever), but that’s true of basically every fediverse project at the start. You’d still get regular users, indie artists, experimental musicians, archive uploads, and all the strange internet music culture that YouTube Music accidentally preserves.
Curious what people here think:
Could PeerTube realistically be extended in this direction?
Is it feasible with current ActivityPub tooling?
Are there projects I’m missing that already aim for this, beyond Funkwhale?
Or does Funkwhale already cover more of this than I’m giving it credit for?
Interested to hear thoughts.
I would love to help with something like this, but, unfortunately, I lack the time and energy.
There are actual radios, like FIP.fr or plenty of other ones that just give you the m3u8 and their playlist. It’s not federated but it’s less centralized than most platforms like SoundCloud or Apple Music.
If you do want a specific song and album you can pay for it via BandCamp and get the actual file, DRM free, to play on any device.
If you do want a song or album it BandCamp does not have, or you already have a copy of, e.g. physical CD, and you want something less centralize SoulSeek still works.
PS: I have been running my own PeerTube instance for years now but I don’t use it for music, just videos.