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)
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.
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.
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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.
You should check out Radio Free Fedi: “sound from the fediverse to the universe, celebrating sound, agency and avoiding walled gardens, supporting fedi artists”
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
@Jarmer sounds to me like the analogue solution to that is to find DJs or radio stations (very possibly/probably independant community stations) that play the general kind of stuff you're looking for.
Well the two I mentioned are autogenerated brand new each week, so they never really repeat anything. At least not that I’ve noticed. Other playlists I don’t really listen to much.
I think they’re probably referring to the auto-generated lists based on top artists the user has listened to. Those are extremely repeat heavy and is why I never use them. Weekly and Radar are terrific though, as you said.
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
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.
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