Discoverability on the Fediverse and Thought Dump
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I keep harping on this... sorry if this is a useless repeat. But just tossing out ideas and thoughts...
It is too bad that MetaBrainz (who gave us MusicBrainz and ListenBrainz) gave up on AcousticBrainz - https://wiki.musicbrainz.org/AcousticBrainz/Ideas
...I know, I know, but there are algorithms and then there are algorithms.
I am a fan of Plex's "sonic analysis" apart from it being closed source and paid. The main thing I like is that it does not care whether tracks are indie or major label -- if two tracks have acoustic similarity it can find them and play them together in a playlist. The best thing is the sonic journey - pick few tracks and it fills in progressively similar track between them. If the open source community could replicate this capability it would unlock an automatic "Soot" style discoverability / spatial relationship kind of world -- forget genre, what does it sound like? It will happily play a Prince track and then Mel, for example, and rightly so.
It also enables "mood based" and other affinities which some of the links above are doing.
I think there are real challenges in that tho... compute and storage intensive and how do you reliably crowd-source and share the data while making sure it can't be poisoned. I think this is why AcousticBrainz shut down. Plex does not crowd-source for this reason as well-- when you turn the feature on it fires up your CPU for days computing those signatures locally (depending on how big your music collection is). Wasteful really since somebody somewhere has definitely already computed the data for Stairway to Heaven.
If you had that data you could seemingly easily build those UIs from it.
It would awesome for radio stations like TIBR as well... a station could pick two random tracks from the portfolio, generate a 10 song playlist journey and ensure a smooth ride for listeners, before picking two new tracks and repeating... some similarity, some variety, without a constant DJ or doing playlist management, which frankly, burned out the hamster wheel at RFF, I think.
Yeah, it makes sense that it being resource-intensive would massively put anyone off. Need to do some more reading on all of these places being mentioned as I haven't poked around with MusicBrainz since 2013, when I saw it mentioned here: https://freshonthenet.co.uk/musicbrainz/
Interesting reading the updates at the bottom of Every Noise at Once in relation to discoverability too. Glenn should join the Fediverse! https://everynoise.com/#updates
Edit: he is on the Fediverse and so is Every Noise but neither account appears to be active right now.
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Yeah, it makes sense that it being resource-intensive would massively put anyone off. Need to do some more reading on all of these places being mentioned as I haven't poked around with MusicBrainz since 2013, when I saw it mentioned here: https://freshonthenet.co.uk/musicbrainz/
Interesting reading the updates at the bottom of Every Noise at Once in relation to discoverability too. Glenn should join the Fediverse! https://everynoise.com/#updates
Edit: he is on the Fediverse and so is Every Noise but neither account appears to be active right now.
More fodder for thought: XR fragments
add Matrix rooms to your 3D Models using XR Fragments
https://xrfragment.org playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLctjJGlTmeE64XPSQER2BSbjmqVGaWM4J XR Fragments is a specification for 4D URLs & metadata for XR designers, browsers &...
MakerTube (makertube.net)
There are many videos on this channel just posted.
Thinking of this being a possible building block using open web tech to achieve the kinds of things you are talking about. Immersive, hyperlinked, etc.
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Not sure how best to approach this really but I was thinking about discoverability on the Fediverse and taking notice of a lot of the streaming articles coming out of late (plus Liz Pelly's book). At the same time, I'm also seeing interesting visual platforms popping up like https://www.soot.com and https://rooms.xyz (both backed by private investors though
) and wondering about what it would take to pull people away from streaming, if knowing "it's bad" isn't enough. It sort of reminded me of things I liked about the early internet and sites with clickable Flash-based comics and online places such as BowieNet. So, without this turning into a Grandpa Simpson-style ramble, I feel like there needs to be a site that takes the best of the links below and makes a strong, fun visual space where musicians can be found randomly, either by something like location, or by creating clusters of artists or maps of listener recommendations. Mirlo have just started testing out linking musicians to labels (without it being a paid feature like Bandcamp) and I think that's a really exciting start plus the Fediwall from Indie Beat and @limebar is also really cool (in the last day there is also a live app hoping to launch called Subjam which is aiming to link to music venues and their communities) and I was curious if there's a way of building on that and even linking a few different ideas together? Here's a few examples of things that are/were slightly more offbeat ways of discovering things (aside from the aforementioned Soot and Rooms):- Ghostly's now defunct app, where you could select from their catalogue based on "Mood" (but it was actually a colour wheel, because I downloaded it at the time).
- This genre map where you can click around then it gives examples in a playlist.
- Every Noise at Once (although I appreciate we don't necessarily want to fall under genres pushed as part of an end of year ad campaign cough cough Spotify Wrapped).
- Radio Garden - imagine this but with musicians and showing lines that indicate links between them. It's slightly infuriating that you can collaborate with your friends across your projects but on streaming, your musical projects aren't shown as being related in any way. It'd be a neat way of visualising that context and encouraging people to discover how different people are interconnected ("interdependent").
- A Number from the Ghost is one person's site but what if there was something showing fedi musicians videos in this kind of way? Or as floating images in a "constellation" (to use @Alex's terminology) that are scattered around and clickable.
Obviously some are more complex or resource-intensive than others, but it seems like there might be some weirder ideas that could help people get found in the same way you might stumble into a record shop and find something bizarre? It's hard to articulate, so I'm going to end the post here and let other people chime in.
Edited to add in Emma Warren's book, which might also have started some of this.
MusicBrainz was cited before but this would be a fantastic data-viz project based on their data ! Anna's Archive recently put up a call for a paid project like that, explicitely to help them in their fight for piracy.
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More fodder for thought: XR fragments
add Matrix rooms to your 3D Models using XR Fragments
https://xrfragment.org playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLctjJGlTmeE64XPSQER2BSbjmqVGaWM4J XR Fragments is a specification for 4D URLs & metadata for XR designers, browsers &...
MakerTube (makertube.net)
There are many videos on this channel just posted.
Thinking of this being a possible building block using open web tech to achieve the kinds of things you are talking about. Immersive, hyperlinked, etc.
This looks amazing! Just watching the full vid now.
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This looks amazing! Just watching the full vid now.
Many more videos to learn about XR fragments https://makertube.net/a/leondustar/videos?s=1
Including "spatial hypermedia browsers" https://makertube.net/w/6YctkAKZXxuyBwKrssfhx3
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MusicBrainz was cited before but this would be a fantastic data-viz project based on their data ! Anna's Archive recently put up a call for a paid project like that, explicitely to help them in their fight for piracy.
Really love the pixel one. Reminded me of this old relic, The Million Dollar Homepage, but more mystical.
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Many more videos to learn about XR fragments https://makertube.net/a/leondustar/videos?s=1
Including "spatial hypermedia browsers" https://makertube.net/w/6YctkAKZXxuyBwKrssfhx3
This is quite the rabbit hole!
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Not sure how best to approach this really but I was thinking about discoverability on the Fediverse and taking notice of a lot of the streaming articles coming out of late (plus Liz Pelly's book). At the same time, I'm also seeing interesting visual platforms popping up like https://www.soot.com and https://rooms.xyz (both backed by private investors though
) and wondering about what it would take to pull people away from streaming, if knowing "it's bad" isn't enough. It sort of reminded me of things I liked about the early internet and sites with clickable Flash-based comics and online places such as BowieNet. So, without this turning into a Grandpa Simpson-style ramble, I feel like there needs to be a site that takes the best of the links below and makes a strong, fun visual space where musicians can be found randomly, either by something like location, or by creating clusters of artists or maps of listener recommendations. Mirlo have just started testing out linking musicians to labels (without it being a paid feature like Bandcamp) and I think that's a really exciting start plus the Fediwall from Indie Beat and @limebar is also really cool (in the last day there is also a live app hoping to launch called Subjam which is aiming to link to music venues and their communities) and I was curious if there's a way of building on that and even linking a few different ideas together? Here's a few examples of things that are/were slightly more offbeat ways of discovering things (aside from the aforementioned Soot and Rooms):- Ghostly's now defunct app, where you could select from their catalogue based on "Mood" (but it was actually a colour wheel, because I downloaded it at the time).
- This genre map where you can click around then it gives examples in a playlist.
- Every Noise at Once (although I appreciate we don't necessarily want to fall under genres pushed as part of an end of year ad campaign cough cough Spotify Wrapped).
- Radio Garden - imagine this but with musicians and showing lines that indicate links between them. It's slightly infuriating that you can collaborate with your friends across your projects but on streaming, your musical projects aren't shown as being related in any way. It'd be a neat way of visualising that context and encouraging people to discover how different people are interconnected ("interdependent").
- A Number from the Ghost is one person's site but what if there was something showing fedi musicians videos in this kind of way? Or as floating images in a "constellation" (to use @Alex's terminology) that are scattered around and clickable.
Obviously some are more complex or resource-intensive than others, but it seems like there might be some weirder ideas that could help people get found in the same way you might stumble into a record shop and find something bizarre? It's hard to articulate, so I'm going to end the post here and let other people chime in.
Edited to add in Emma Warren's book, which might also have started some of this.
Slightly different angle/side quest, but this was the aforementioned interactive comic from years ago and there's a whole channel now comprising of interactive stories. Somehow ended up watching this too, about interactive album artwork.
Also, going back to the first MakerTube video around Matrix rooms, @limebar, I can totally see this as a way of displaying a FediWall or something like NHAM, but I might be misunderstanding its potential use? I clicked on the A Number from the Ghost site again too and under the "what is this?" link, you can click through to loads more sites using three.js. This electronic music site is mesmerising.
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Not sure how best to approach this really but I was thinking about discoverability on the Fediverse and taking notice of a lot of the streaming articles coming out of late (plus Liz Pelly's book). At the same time, I'm also seeing interesting visual platforms popping up like https://www.soot.com and https://rooms.xyz (both backed by private investors though
) and wondering about what it would take to pull people away from streaming, if knowing "it's bad" isn't enough. It sort of reminded me of things I liked about the early internet and sites with clickable Flash-based comics and online places such as BowieNet. So, without this turning into a Grandpa Simpson-style ramble, I feel like there needs to be a site that takes the best of the links below and makes a strong, fun visual space where musicians can be found randomly, either by something like location, or by creating clusters of artists or maps of listener recommendations. Mirlo have just started testing out linking musicians to labels (without it being a paid feature like Bandcamp) and I think that's a really exciting start plus the Fediwall from Indie Beat and @limebar is also really cool (in the last day there is also a live app hoping to launch called Subjam which is aiming to link to music venues and their communities) and I was curious if there's a way of building on that and even linking a few different ideas together? Here's a few examples of things that are/were slightly more offbeat ways of discovering things (aside from the aforementioned Soot and Rooms):- Ghostly's now defunct app, where you could select from their catalogue based on "Mood" (but it was actually a colour wheel, because I downloaded it at the time).
- This genre map where you can click around then it gives examples in a playlist.
- Every Noise at Once (although I appreciate we don't necessarily want to fall under genres pushed as part of an end of year ad campaign cough cough Spotify Wrapped).
- Radio Garden - imagine this but with musicians and showing lines that indicate links between them. It's slightly infuriating that you can collaborate with your friends across your projects but on streaming, your musical projects aren't shown as being related in any way. It'd be a neat way of visualising that context and encouraging people to discover how different people are interconnected ("interdependent").
- A Number from the Ghost is one person's site but what if there was something showing fedi musicians videos in this kind of way? Or as floating images in a "constellation" (to use @Alex's terminology) that are scattered around and clickable.
Obviously some are more complex or resource-intensive than others, but it seems like there might be some weirder ideas that could help people get found in the same way you might stumble into a record shop and find something bizarre? It's hard to articulate, so I'm going to end the post here and let other people chime in.
Edited to add in Emma Warren's book, which might also have started some of this.
Just chiming in quickly to say that I think the more artists can be connected TO something the better. Label, location, story, technology, famous artists etc. the easier it is to get into them.
So I think this is somethingg that discovery could use in some way.
F.ex. I discovered synth pioneers like Suzanne Ciani and Morton Subotnick because of Buchla synths, and I discovered Yann Tieresen because of his Youtube videos.
Polar Sonics Tour 2025: Chapter 1
Shot and edit by Coline Béalwith Yann TiersenAnna SabotLucie Marsal-Connect w/ Yann:Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/yanntiersen....Twitter: https://twitte...
YouTube (www.youtube.com)
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Just chiming in quickly to say that I think the more artists can be connected TO something the better. Label, location, story, technology, famous artists etc. the easier it is to get into them.
So I think this is somethingg that discovery could use in some way.
F.ex. I discovered synth pioneers like Suzanne Ciani and Morton Subotnick because of Buchla synths, and I discovered Yann Tieresen because of his Youtube videos.
Polar Sonics Tour 2025: Chapter 1
Shot and edit by Coline Béalwith Yann TiersenAnna SabotLucie Marsal-Connect w/ Yann:Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/yanntiersen....Twitter: https://twitte...
YouTube (www.youtube.com)
I keep going back to the thought that many music makers are going solo and doing a lot of non-musical work themselves that traditionally a label would do. But labels also had to reinvent themselves, and just like with music distribution platforms, some of them also aim to be social, fair, cooperative, even artist-run.
I miss these labels in TSMN, or at least discussion about them.
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I keep going back to the thought that many music makers are going solo and doing a lot of non-musical work themselves that traditionally a label would do. But labels also had to reinvent themselves, and just like with music distribution platforms, some of them also aim to be social, fair, cooperative, even artist-run.
I miss these labels in TSMN, or at least discussion about them.
I also think that much of the function of a label could be recreated in different ways. Like webrings, collectives, some sort of shared social media account or blog etc.
Not saying it is easy though as people needs to organise and agree.
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Not sure how best to approach this really but I was thinking about discoverability on the Fediverse and taking notice of a lot of the streaming articles coming out of late (plus Liz Pelly's book). At the same time, I'm also seeing interesting visual platforms popping up like https://www.soot.com and https://rooms.xyz (both backed by private investors though
) and wondering about what it would take to pull people away from streaming, if knowing "it's bad" isn't enough. It sort of reminded me of things I liked about the early internet and sites with clickable Flash-based comics and online places such as BowieNet. So, without this turning into a Grandpa Simpson-style ramble, I feel like there needs to be a site that takes the best of the links below and makes a strong, fun visual space where musicians can be found randomly, either by something like location, or by creating clusters of artists or maps of listener recommendations. Mirlo have just started testing out linking musicians to labels (without it being a paid feature like Bandcamp) and I think that's a really exciting start plus the Fediwall from Indie Beat and @limebar is also really cool (in the last day there is also a live app hoping to launch called Subjam which is aiming to link to music venues and their communities) and I was curious if there's a way of building on that and even linking a few different ideas together? Here's a few examples of things that are/were slightly more offbeat ways of discovering things (aside from the aforementioned Soot and Rooms):- Ghostly's now defunct app, where you could select from their catalogue based on "Mood" (but it was actually a colour wheel, because I downloaded it at the time).
- This genre map where you can click around then it gives examples in a playlist.
- Every Noise at Once (although I appreciate we don't necessarily want to fall under genres pushed as part of an end of year ad campaign cough cough Spotify Wrapped).
- Radio Garden - imagine this but with musicians and showing lines that indicate links between them. It's slightly infuriating that you can collaborate with your friends across your projects but on streaming, your musical projects aren't shown as being related in any way. It'd be a neat way of visualising that context and encouraging people to discover how different people are interconnected ("interdependent").
- A Number from the Ghost is one person's site but what if there was something showing fedi musicians videos in this kind of way? Or as floating images in a "constellation" (to use @Alex's terminology) that are scattered around and clickable.
Obviously some are more complex or resource-intensive than others, but it seems like there might be some weirder ideas that could help people get found in the same way you might stumble into a record shop and find something bizarre? It's hard to articulate, so I'm going to end the post here and let other people chime in.
Edited to add in Emma Warren's book, which might also have started some of this.
Part 2 from Yann Tiersen released just now:
Polar Sonics Tour 2025: Chapter 2
Shot and edit by Coline Béalwith Yann TiersenAnna SabotLucie MarsalSpecial Thanks to:Marie-Kell (Emka)-Connect w/ Yann:Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/yan...
YouTube (www.youtube.com)
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Slightly different angle/side quest, but this was the aforementioned interactive comic from years ago and there's a whole channel now comprising of interactive stories. Somehow ended up watching this too, about interactive album artwork.
Also, going back to the first MakerTube video around Matrix rooms, @limebar, I can totally see this as a way of displaying a FediWall or something like NHAM, but I might be misunderstanding its potential use? I clicked on the A Number from the Ghost site again too and under the "what is this?" link, you can click through to loads more sites using three.js. This electronic music site is mesmerising.
Wow. What a collection of links! I could look at that stuff ALL DAY AND NIGHT.
As for the potential use... I may be way wrong about this... but... the XR Fragments video I posted was less about "Matrix" and more about an open web toolset. As I understand it, XR fragments are a way to pass 3D spatial data openly between resources to collectively define an interactive space. So... looking at that link with all of the three.js sites you posted -- imagine they could be interlinked in some way and coexist in the same space?
I think this is what XR fragments, as a tech, is trying to do.
So I was thinking of it as a potential building block for a universe of interrelated music sites... a space for music discovery where users can hop from place to place by some kind of affinity.
Also, I am entirely full of shit.
I don't know for sure if this is what it means to do but I think so...If that "some kind of affinity" could be something like the similarity cloud site you sent or the plex sonic analysis type data etc... that could be great, or could be artists linking to one another...
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Wow. What a collection of links! I could look at that stuff ALL DAY AND NIGHT.
As for the potential use... I may be way wrong about this... but... the XR Fragments video I posted was less about "Matrix" and more about an open web toolset. As I understand it, XR fragments are a way to pass 3D spatial data openly between resources to collectively define an interactive space. So... looking at that link with all of the three.js sites you posted -- imagine they could be interlinked in some way and coexist in the same space?
I think this is what XR fragments, as a tech, is trying to do.
So I was thinking of it as a potential building block for a universe of interrelated music sites... a space for music discovery where users can hop from place to place by some kind of affinity.
Also, I am entirely full of shit.
I don't know for sure if this is what it means to do but I think so...If that "some kind of affinity" could be something like the similarity cloud site you sent or the plex sonic analysis type data etc... that could be great, or could be artists linking to one another...
Yeah, you're exactly right in terms of potential benefit to fedi folks (and I can picture it), but I have zero technical expertise to even begin describing how to do it (aside from proving examples of stuff that might be close)! To use that "constellation" analogy again and maybe referencing something like Soot, the first "cluster" visual could be something a general Fediverse overview, with offshoots for musicians, labels, radio or whatever, and when you click on the "radio" node, you see Indie Beat, Audio Interface and NHAM Mixtape grouped together, or if you click "musicians", you can search by genre, location or by affinity (something like artists who have collaborated or remixed one another, or grouping by CC and all right reserved even - there's so many parameters it could work on).
And, haha, same, but it's exciting nonetheless!
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Not sure how best to approach this really but I was thinking about discoverability on the Fediverse and taking notice of a lot of the streaming articles coming out of late (plus Liz Pelly's book). At the same time, I'm also seeing interesting visual platforms popping up like https://www.soot.com and https://rooms.xyz (both backed by private investors though
) and wondering about what it would take to pull people away from streaming, if knowing "it's bad" isn't enough. It sort of reminded me of things I liked about the early internet and sites with clickable Flash-based comics and online places such as BowieNet. So, without this turning into a Grandpa Simpson-style ramble, I feel like there needs to be a site that takes the best of the links below and makes a strong, fun visual space where musicians can be found randomly, either by something like location, or by creating clusters of artists or maps of listener recommendations. Mirlo have just started testing out linking musicians to labels (without it being a paid feature like Bandcamp) and I think that's a really exciting start plus the Fediwall from Indie Beat and @limebar is also really cool (in the last day there is also a live app hoping to launch called Subjam which is aiming to link to music venues and their communities) and I was curious if there's a way of building on that and even linking a few different ideas together? Here's a few examples of things that are/were slightly more offbeat ways of discovering things (aside from the aforementioned Soot and Rooms):- Ghostly's now defunct app, where you could select from their catalogue based on "Mood" (but it was actually a colour wheel, because I downloaded it at the time).
- This genre map where you can click around then it gives examples in a playlist.
- Every Noise at Once (although I appreciate we don't necessarily want to fall under genres pushed as part of an end of year ad campaign cough cough Spotify Wrapped).
- Radio Garden - imagine this but with musicians and showing lines that indicate links between them. It's slightly infuriating that you can collaborate with your friends across your projects but on streaming, your musical projects aren't shown as being related in any way. It'd be a neat way of visualising that context and encouraging people to discover how different people are interconnected ("interdependent").
- A Number from the Ghost is one person's site but what if there was something showing fedi musicians videos in this kind of way? Or as floating images in a "constellation" (to use @Alex's terminology) that are scattered around and clickable.
Obviously some are more complex or resource-intensive than others, but it seems like there might be some weirder ideas that could help people get found in the same way you might stumble into a record shop and find something bizarre? It's hard to articulate, so I'm going to end the post here and let other people chime in.
Edited to add in Emma Warren's book, which might also have started some of this.
Thanks for mentioning Subjam, I've poured my heart into this project for many years.
There's definitely a lot of potential here for collaboration. I talked with Simon yesterday and got a good idea of what Mirlo is trying to accomplish, and it's astonishing to me that it fits so perfectly with the sentiment of Subjam and its social purposes (It's organized as a "Social Purpose Corporation / SPC" and have outlined specific social purposes in our charter). I personally am a decades long F/OSS advocate, open media / anti-DRM advocate, and also am looking for the perfect way to support musicians/artists/bands without having to submit to the music industry's status quo. It's great to be in like company here and I'm excited to talk more about possibilities.
Regarding local - This is what I'm focused on: building and supporting local music communities. Musicians/artists/bands, music fans, independently owned venues, labels, record and instrument shops, nonprofit music focused efforts and collectives, everyone who works in this space (sound engineers/lighting/booking/etc.)... Subjam is going to be a one-stop-shop for all of these people to meet up, coordinate, promote and socialize. It just so happens that I'm starting with live audio broadcasting, like a community radio station network.
I love how the Fediverse operates and I've thought more than once how great it would be to integrate what Subjam does into the Fediverse. The whole architecture is wonderfully distributed and resilient, while its parts are at the same time so intimately connected. Just like the Mirlo folks though, money is the challenge to overcome. Money is the necessary evil to grow and maintain a platform like this that would integrate well into the Fediverse. I'm very inspired by Dan over at Pixelfed though, he's had great success so far with raising money.
-
Not sure how best to approach this really but I was thinking about discoverability on the Fediverse and taking notice of a lot of the streaming articles coming out of late (plus Liz Pelly's book). At the same time, I'm also seeing interesting visual platforms popping up like https://www.soot.com and https://rooms.xyz (both backed by private investors though
) and wondering about what it would take to pull people away from streaming, if knowing "it's bad" isn't enough. It sort of reminded me of things I liked about the early internet and sites with clickable Flash-based comics and online places such as BowieNet. So, without this turning into a Grandpa Simpson-style ramble, I feel like there needs to be a site that takes the best of the links below and makes a strong, fun visual space where musicians can be found randomly, either by something like location, or by creating clusters of artists or maps of listener recommendations. Mirlo have just started testing out linking musicians to labels (without it being a paid feature like Bandcamp) and I think that's a really exciting start plus the Fediwall from Indie Beat and @limebar is also really cool (in the last day there is also a live app hoping to launch called Subjam which is aiming to link to music venues and their communities) and I was curious if there's a way of building on that and even linking a few different ideas together? Here's a few examples of things that are/were slightly more offbeat ways of discovering things (aside from the aforementioned Soot and Rooms):- Ghostly's now defunct app, where you could select from their catalogue based on "Mood" (but it was actually a colour wheel, because I downloaded it at the time).
- This genre map where you can click around then it gives examples in a playlist.
- Every Noise at Once (although I appreciate we don't necessarily want to fall under genres pushed as part of an end of year ad campaign cough cough Spotify Wrapped).
- Radio Garden - imagine this but with musicians and showing lines that indicate links between them. It's slightly infuriating that you can collaborate with your friends across your projects but on streaming, your musical projects aren't shown as being related in any way. It'd be a neat way of visualising that context and encouraging people to discover how different people are interconnected ("interdependent").
- A Number from the Ghost is one person's site but what if there was something showing fedi musicians videos in this kind of way? Or as floating images in a "constellation" (to use @Alex's terminology) that are scattered around and clickable.
Obviously some are more complex or resource-intensive than others, but it seems like there might be some weirder ideas that could help people get found in the same way you might stumble into a record shop and find something bizarre? It's hard to articulate, so I'm going to end the post here and let other people chime in.
Edited to add in Emma Warren's book, which might also have started some of this.
Found another one that looks pretty cool (owing to the use of different colours and sizing), using KEXP's Song of the Day data. https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/midora.dubose/viz/KEXPGenreExplorer/KEXPGenreExplorer
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Thanks for mentioning Subjam, I've poured my heart into this project for many years.
There's definitely a lot of potential here for collaboration. I talked with Simon yesterday and got a good idea of what Mirlo is trying to accomplish, and it's astonishing to me that it fits so perfectly with the sentiment of Subjam and its social purposes (It's organized as a "Social Purpose Corporation / SPC" and have outlined specific social purposes in our charter). I personally am a decades long F/OSS advocate, open media / anti-DRM advocate, and also am looking for the perfect way to support musicians/artists/bands without having to submit to the music industry's status quo. It's great to be in like company here and I'm excited to talk more about possibilities.
Regarding local - This is what I'm focused on: building and supporting local music communities. Musicians/artists/bands, music fans, independently owned venues, labels, record and instrument shops, nonprofit music focused efforts and collectives, everyone who works in this space (sound engineers/lighting/booking/etc.)... Subjam is going to be a one-stop-shop for all of these people to meet up, coordinate, promote and socialize. It just so happens that I'm starting with live audio broadcasting, like a community radio station network.
I love how the Fediverse operates and I've thought more than once how great it would be to integrate what Subjam does into the Fediverse. The whole architecture is wonderfully distributed and resilient, while its parts are at the same time so intimately connected. Just like the Mirlo folks though, money is the challenge to overcome. Money is the necessary evil to grow and maintain a platform like this that would integrate well into the Fediverse. I'm very inspired by Dan over at Pixelfed though, he's had great success so far with raising money.
There's definitely a lot of support for projects like this on the Fediverse! Might be worth starting a thread for Subjam on here and getting some of the folks that do live-streaming to give feedback, like @Mel, @AxWax and @KristofferLislegaard? Would also be cool to see an in-depth demo of how it works (and link to your fedi platform on the contact page of the website to help people find you).
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Not sure how best to approach this really but I was thinking about discoverability on the Fediverse and taking notice of a lot of the streaming articles coming out of late (plus Liz Pelly's book). At the same time, I'm also seeing interesting visual platforms popping up like https://www.soot.com and https://rooms.xyz (both backed by private investors though
) and wondering about what it would take to pull people away from streaming, if knowing "it's bad" isn't enough. It sort of reminded me of things I liked about the early internet and sites with clickable Flash-based comics and online places such as BowieNet. So, without this turning into a Grandpa Simpson-style ramble, I feel like there needs to be a site that takes the best of the links below and makes a strong, fun visual space where musicians can be found randomly, either by something like location, or by creating clusters of artists or maps of listener recommendations. Mirlo have just started testing out linking musicians to labels (without it being a paid feature like Bandcamp) and I think that's a really exciting start plus the Fediwall from Indie Beat and @limebar is also really cool (in the last day there is also a live app hoping to launch called Subjam which is aiming to link to music venues and their communities) and I was curious if there's a way of building on that and even linking a few different ideas together? Here's a few examples of things that are/were slightly more offbeat ways of discovering things (aside from the aforementioned Soot and Rooms):- Ghostly's now defunct app, where you could select from their catalogue based on "Mood" (but it was actually a colour wheel, because I downloaded it at the time).
- This genre map where you can click around then it gives examples in a playlist.
- Every Noise at Once (although I appreciate we don't necessarily want to fall under genres pushed as part of an end of year ad campaign cough cough Spotify Wrapped).
- Radio Garden - imagine this but with musicians and showing lines that indicate links between them. It's slightly infuriating that you can collaborate with your friends across your projects but on streaming, your musical projects aren't shown as being related in any way. It'd be a neat way of visualising that context and encouraging people to discover how different people are interconnected ("interdependent").
- A Number from the Ghost is one person's site but what if there was something showing fedi musicians videos in this kind of way? Or as floating images in a "constellation" (to use @Alex's terminology) that are scattered around and clickable.
Obviously some are more complex or resource-intensive than others, but it seems like there might be some weirder ideas that could help people get found in the same way you might stumble into a record shop and find something bizarre? It's hard to articulate, so I'm going to end the post here and let other people chime in.
Edited to add in Emma Warren's book, which might also have started some of this.
Posted by @stefan earlier.
Stefan Bohacek (@stefan@stefanbohacek.online)
A nice visual exploration of 1,656 conversations: 7+ million words, 850 hours. "By the end of these conversations, several participants seemed to realize that they may never see their conversation partner again, and had to say their bittersweet goodbyes." https://pudding.cool/2025/06/hello-stranger/ Data: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adf3197 #data #dataviz #DataVisualization #strangers #conversation
Stefan's Personal Mastodon Server (stefanbohacek.online)
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There's definitely a lot of support for projects like this on the Fediverse! Might be worth starting a thread for Subjam on here and getting some of the folks that do live-streaming to give feedback, like @Mel, @AxWax and @KristofferLislegaard? Would also be cool to see an in-depth demo of how it works (and link to your fedi platform on the contact page of the website to help people find you).
thanks for tagging me on this, it looks super interesting!
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Not sure how best to approach this really but I was thinking about discoverability on the Fediverse and taking notice of a lot of the streaming articles coming out of late (plus Liz Pelly's book). At the same time, I'm also seeing interesting visual platforms popping up like https://www.soot.com and https://rooms.xyz (both backed by private investors though
) and wondering about what it would take to pull people away from streaming, if knowing "it's bad" isn't enough. It sort of reminded me of things I liked about the early internet and sites with clickable Flash-based comics and online places such as BowieNet. So, without this turning into a Grandpa Simpson-style ramble, I feel like there needs to be a site that takes the best of the links below and makes a strong, fun visual space where musicians can be found randomly, either by something like location, or by creating clusters of artists or maps of listener recommendations. Mirlo have just started testing out linking musicians to labels (without it being a paid feature like Bandcamp) and I think that's a really exciting start plus the Fediwall from Indie Beat and @limebar is also really cool (in the last day there is also a live app hoping to launch called Subjam which is aiming to link to music venues and their communities) and I was curious if there's a way of building on that and even linking a few different ideas together? Here's a few examples of things that are/were slightly more offbeat ways of discovering things (aside from the aforementioned Soot and Rooms):- Ghostly's now defunct app, where you could select from their catalogue based on "Mood" (but it was actually a colour wheel, because I downloaded it at the time).
- This genre map where you can click around then it gives examples in a playlist.
- Every Noise at Once (although I appreciate we don't necessarily want to fall under genres pushed as part of an end of year ad campaign cough cough Spotify Wrapped).
- Radio Garden - imagine this but with musicians and showing lines that indicate links between them. It's slightly infuriating that you can collaborate with your friends across your projects but on streaming, your musical projects aren't shown as being related in any way. It'd be a neat way of visualising that context and encouraging people to discover how different people are interconnected ("interdependent").
- A Number from the Ghost is one person's site but what if there was something showing fedi musicians videos in this kind of way? Or as floating images in a "constellation" (to use @Alex's terminology) that are scattered around and clickable.
Obviously some are more complex or resource-intensive than others, but it seems like there might be some weirder ideas that could help people get found in the same way you might stumble into a record shop and find something bizarre? It's hard to articulate, so I'm going to end the post here and let other people chime in.
Edited to add in Emma Warren's book, which might also have started some of this.
Maybe openverse (https://openverse.org) could be motivated to add another category to its search, one for music. I use the image search quite a bit. Though they only do CC and public domain stuff.
