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.
One problem i see is how do you deal with monetized content? Should monetization be possible on the Fediverse? Because i see no meaningful way to do that. Maybe you could add a link to donations to your uploads, but there’s no “paid subscription” feature AFAIK. And IMHO there shouldn’t be either.
Torrents. You can already find pretty much any album ever made, seeded by many people.
The closest thing I can think of, is Soulseek.
You can find almost anything on there. People share their entire collections, and almost everyone has some niche stuff they like.
I’ve spent hour exploring other people’s curated libraries, finding stuff I’ve never heard.
I don’t see how this would work financially, tho. Soulseek doesn’t make anyone money, except when i go out of my way to buy something on qobuz or bandcamp when I really like something.
Music is art. Like visual artists, it’s simple enough for one or a couple people to produce, but unlike visual art, it’s less commonly done on comission. Which means freely sharing your music, doesn’t typically put food on the table.
Hence, musicians sell albums or singles. Preferably directly to their fans. Souncloud, YT, and Soulseek regularly help me find new artists I like… But for actual listening I pull up Symfonium, hooked up to my Jellyfin server, serving my carefully curated personal collection.
PeerTube has a collaborative wishlist and community votes on new feature proposals. If you want to see this within the PeerTube project, consider adding it to the list, or upvote it if it’s already in there:
Thx very much
Last.fm is probably the closest thing functionality-wise to what you’re looking for as far as reccomendations go.
You can “scrobble” or log what you’ve listened to or enjoyed from a metric ton of sources, and reccomendations are based off the user community and tagging. Covers popular to underground and everything in between.
Not sure what the whole “federated” part of this adds to anything.
Is there an iPhone app for Peertube?
Yes there is:
Yay, thanks!
It’s called pirating. Literally doesn’t get more decentalized than that. Rip your favorites platform or whatever.
I know it’s quite different to what you’re looking for but there is https://bandwagon.fm/ which is a sort of federated bandcamp.
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.
The closest alternative to it would be SoundCloud, but even then, SC is more underground music scene.
Do you think lemmy is in the mainstream?
I would love to help with something like this, but, unfortunately, I lack the time and energy.
