Is there a Decentralised Spotify / Music Platform Alternative?
So I know about Mastodon, Lemmy / Kbin, PeerTube, and Element but is there a Fediverse alternative to Music & Podcasts (preferably one that doesn't connect to Crypto)
The answer is yes! It's called FunkWhale.
I doubt it'll be what you're imagining, though, because of the licensing requirements for music hosted in a decentralized system. In particular, everything in the fediverse is public, so all music and podcasts hosted in the fediverse has to be licensed under the creative commons, and can't be gated to paying customers, which does not include most music or podcasts.
I think it's best acknowledged that FunkWhale is much closer to a federated Soundcloud than a federated Spotify. Still a very cool project.
This is a better analogy, thanks!
Thank you, I will check this out. Yeah I didn't know if it would work fully like Spotify or some other way as currently, the Fediverse doesn't have a fully paid way yet.
I would suggest piracy.
I was thinking, Kazaa and Napster were pretty decentralized...
Aww man seeing that name again brings back great memories, I credit that app for my taste in music.
You'd spend more time looking through people's immaculately sorted folders of music.
There's on guy in Germany who is solely responsible for the punk bands I listen to.
I didn't know soulseek and downloaded music for the first time in ages, tried listening to some FLACs of songs I only ever streamed and damn now I think I understand audiophiles
downloading yt music playlists thru seal and i use blackplayer to play music
I don't know the answer to your question, but I'd be willing to wager a small sum that based on music licensing, it would be No. I could be wrong though.
Yeah, I don't think it would be a huge platform with every song but it would be nice to know if they have something like that out there,
Not like what you think, and you can thank Disney and the Record Label companies for destroying US and international laws regarding copyrighted material.
There may be a streaming service in the fediverse that streams music it owns the rights to, or unknown soundcloud artists and other people who dont have a record label, but any licensed music is going to have some pretty severe limitations. I would imagine that there may never be a fediverse equivalent of Spotify or Youtube Music.
While true, there are many good independent artists whose work is available. It just needs to be collected.
If you're looking for podcasts, and you know the ones you are looking for, many have RSS feeds you can subscribe to. I don't know if there is an open-source podcast player with discovery features, but there might be?
there are some. I tried all and ended up keeping AntennaPod 👉 https://f-droid.org/app/de.danoeh.antennapod
it has search and discovery too.
AntennaPod is pretty great. Apparently it's compatible with a synchronizing service called gpodder, which I believe you can run yourself.
and unlike other players, it downloads podcasts with their names which helps when you want to archive (or share) a specific podcast
Yeah that's a fair point, I sometimes forget RSS feeds are a thing.
Funkwhale. It supports federation as well.
Thanks will look into it as soon as I can as it looks kind of cool
Licensing issues aside, the most important thing to me about Spotify is the recommendation engine. Their weekly playlists that are autogenerated "Discovery Weekly" and "Release Radar" are amazing and places where I have discovered a TON of new really good music. Any service that I ever switch to would have to have something similar.
Really? Every time I've tried Spotify the playlists have been utterly dire. They just repeat the same select few songs over and over.
Yeah that's completely fair enough, they do have some good suggestions and I guess it is the way people discover artists these days.
if you're down with electronic music, theres countless hours of good tunes from the demoscene.. check out modarchive.org for example. you can browse by genre.
Thanks I'll check it out.
not fediverse, but still: SoundCloud, a gold mine
I've personally been using this app :
https://f-droid.org/packages/oss.krtirtho.spotube/
No premium required. Can download. Has lyrics. Can import all your saved likes and playlists from Spotify.
That's really cool, I'll take a look.
Everyone is bringing up licensing
But couldn’t you just stream music you own, to one person at a time? Like lending a friend a cd, which has always been ok.
If I own a cd with 12 songs, maybe to preserve parity with the aforementioned example, one person could listen to a song from that cd while I’m not listening to it. You couldn’t have 12 people listening to different songs from that cd, because you can’t lend the real cd to 12 people at once.
Such a library could get really huge by raising donations to buy out thrift store music collections, records and tapes and cds, to build a big catalog quickly.
And yes I know the music industry would still get mad, but on paper it makes sense.
I could let 12 friends listen in the same room and that's basically how Spotify's Listen Along works though I can't say I know how many people can use it concurrently.
I believe it would have to be more the artists wanting to publish there music on the platform, as letting people 'borrow' your music will quickly get to a cease and desist. So it would be more of a platform for artists to be able to publish there music and podcasts that is open for anyone to create there own instance from the source code such as Mastodon does for the Micro-Bloggers, It would mean artists control there music but also can release it to the public to listen too, the only main problem I can see is money, the main thing I can see across the whole Fediverse is money tbh, like who pays for the servers and stuff, where do they get that money from and how does that effect the Fediverse. Really do hope we get a PeerTube like thing for Music but maybe in the future.
You can do that. And pirate radio, both regular and internet, do exist. But I think the spirit of the question implies legal methods.
Yes and I’m saying if lending one friend a cd is ok, you’d thing streaming your legal copy of one cd to one person should be ok too
I know the reason it isn’t legal is because of digital copying, but maybe you can get around that by deleting your music when you send it to them. Then they can send it to someone else.
You can basically roll your own private one with Plex running PlexAmp. You can even share it with friends (or family or whoever... Based on your interpretation of the laws in your area)
It's not decentralized, and you have to bring your own music, but it's something.
Yeah that's at least something and I have been wanting to look further into running a Plex server.
You should check out Radio Free Fedi: “sound from the fediverse to the universe, celebrating sound, agency and avoiding walled gardens, supporting fedi artists”
I'll check it out, thank you.
Podcasts are already decentralised. You can use a podcasting app like AntennaPod (Android) and if you search for a podcast, it'll look through several databases and feeds to find it. Afaik most podcast apps work this way, and there's also a standard format to import/export subscriptions.
As for music, as other suggested - piracy, haha.
Yeah I didn't really think when I said about Podcasts tbh but it's nice to know that I can choose what I want to use.
oops, wrong thread