Discoverability on the Fediverse and Thought Dump
-
Yeah I’d be completely happy to sysadmin this and implement your liquidsoap solution! Putting it in the grant application, submitting by end of this month and hopefully get a decision two months after that…
in the meantime, mizkirsten is hopefully able to get a staging server going this weekend so we can see what's what
-
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.
Bringing all this exciting talk of video streaming back to the topic of discoverability, I had a quick skim of @limebar 's thread about LiquidSoap and saw a comment about how their motivation is artist discovery. Which I think was the original goal of MTV too, before enshittification dynamics kicked in.
Maybe something worth discussing here is the UX of seeing a video on VFF, wanting to learn more about either the musical artist or those involved in the video, and clicking through to find them. How could integrations with BandWagon or Mirlo help them find more songs? How could integrations with PeerTube or loops.video help them find crew details for the video?
-
Bringing all this exciting talk of video streaming back to the topic of discoverability, I had a quick skim of @limebar 's thread about LiquidSoap and saw a comment about how their motivation is artist discovery. Which I think was the original goal of MTV too, before enshittification dynamics kicked in.
Maybe something worth discussing here is the UX of seeing a video on VFF, wanting to learn more about either the musical artist or those involved in the video, and clicking through to find them. How could integrations with BandWagon or Mirlo help them find more songs? How could integrations with PeerTube or loops.video help them find crew details for the video?
I loved the way the RFF site displayed the artists’ links in the “now playing” box. I wonder could we embed something similar on the Owncast site?
-
I loved the way the RFF site displayed the artists’ links in the “now playing” box. I wonder could we embed something similar on the Owncast site?
Couple of thoughts... azuracast has a way to publish "now playing" json. The Indie Beat for example (and RFF before) published that and I was able to pick that up to feed into the Roku channel (to display artist link as QR code) and for the indie beat now playing bot: https://mastodon.social/@tibrnowplayingbot and make a fedi wall of it (https://fediwall.social/?servers=mastodon.social&tags=tibrnowplaying&accounts=&hide=replies,boosts&ban=nsfw&title=Now+Playing+on+The+Indie+Beat+Radio&theme=auto&limit=100&interval=30) ...
Now in the LiquidSoap script I am pulling metadata tags from the MP4 files and putting that info onscreen including the artist WWW link as a QR code. Since this metadata is there in the stream... I am wondering if owncast has a similar function to output json.
If so, that could be parsed up and displayed in the chat or on a page on owncast site or... in a bot... or something. Not sure what owncast supports. Another thought is .. the LiquidSoap script could certainly output something but it would need to be coded... so if owncast already has it so much the better.
I wanted to get a QR onscreen in the stream because that way wherever the stream is consumed (like in a roku app, owncast directory site, etc.) it would be visible. Beyond that tho, there could be options.
-
Couple of thoughts... azuracast has a way to publish "now playing" json. The Indie Beat for example (and RFF before) published that and I was able to pick that up to feed into the Roku channel (to display artist link as QR code) and for the indie beat now playing bot: https://mastodon.social/@tibrnowplayingbot and make a fedi wall of it (https://fediwall.social/?servers=mastodon.social&tags=tibrnowplaying&accounts=&hide=replies,boosts&ban=nsfw&title=Now+Playing+on+The+Indie+Beat+Radio&theme=auto&limit=100&interval=30) ...
Now in the LiquidSoap script I am pulling metadata tags from the MP4 files and putting that info onscreen including the artist WWW link as a QR code. Since this metadata is there in the stream... I am wondering if owncast has a similar function to output json.
If so, that could be parsed up and displayed in the chat or on a page on owncast site or... in a bot... or something. Not sure what owncast supports. Another thought is .. the LiquidSoap script could certainly output something but it would need to be coded... so if owncast already has it so much the better.
I wanted to get a QR onscreen in the stream because that way wherever the stream is consumed (like in a roku app, owncast directory site, etc.) it would be visible. Beyond that tho, there could be options.
That’s so cool! QR codes are a great idea, perfect for telly…
Yeah I was working on Le Fractal’s bot, hopefully this year I’ll have time to finish it and pull request etc. There is totally scope to have some sort of “now playing” integration there!
Also, when @Jordan mentioned a Subjam channel in theLiquid Soap thread, got me thinking about possible UIs for a bunch of related 24/7 streaming channels…
Found this in my bookmarks: https://scrobblerad.io/
Also, Network Awesome is gone now, but this article has some screenshots.
-
Also, if you've got any thoughts about finding animators on fedi and need any help with that, then shout!
poking around https://sepiasearch.org/ i found a few accounts posting their own animations https://sepiasearch.org/search?search=animator+animation&page=1
btw if you use firefox desktop you can do this to add a search keyword for sepiasearch which searches across 1200+ peertube instances https://mastodon.social/@limebar/114750018094784677
also you can request them to add any missing peertube instances here: https://instances.joinpeertube.org/instances/add
-
poking around https://sepiasearch.org/ i found a few accounts posting their own animations https://sepiasearch.org/search?search=animator+animation&page=1
btw if you use firefox desktop you can do this to add a search keyword for sepiasearch which searches across 1200+ peertube instances https://mastodon.social/@limebar/114750018094784677
also you can request them to add any missing peertube instances here: https://instances.joinpeertube.org/instances/add
That's great, thanks! I really like the crochet animations one.
-
That’s so cool! QR codes are a great idea, perfect for telly…
Yeah I was working on Le Fractal’s bot, hopefully this year I’ll have time to finish it and pull request etc. There is totally scope to have some sort of “now playing” integration there!
Also, when @Jordan mentioned a Subjam channel in theLiquid Soap thread, got me thinking about possible UIs for a bunch of related 24/7 streaming channels…
Found this in my bookmarks: https://scrobblerad.io/
Also, Network Awesome is gone now, but this article has some screenshots.
Thanks for mentioning ScrobbleRadio @Mel. Just saw some traffic from here in my logs and thought I'd check it out. If there's any stations you think would be good to add, let me know and I'll see what I can do.
-
Couple of thoughts... azuracast has a way to publish "now playing" json. The Indie Beat for example (and RFF before) published that and I was able to pick that up to feed into the Roku channel (to display artist link as QR code) and for the indie beat now playing bot: https://mastodon.social/@tibrnowplayingbot and make a fedi wall of it (https://fediwall.social/?servers=mastodon.social&tags=tibrnowplaying&accounts=&hide=replies,boosts&ban=nsfw&title=Now+Playing+on+The+Indie+Beat+Radio&theme=auto&limit=100&interval=30) ...
Now in the LiquidSoap script I am pulling metadata tags from the MP4 files and putting that info onscreen including the artist WWW link as a QR code. Since this metadata is there in the stream... I am wondering if owncast has a similar function to output json.
If so, that could be parsed up and displayed in the chat or on a page on owncast site or... in a bot... or something. Not sure what owncast supports. Another thought is .. the LiquidSoap script could certainly output something but it would need to be coded... so if owncast already has it so much the better.
I wanted to get a QR onscreen in the stream because that way wherever the stream is consumed (like in a roku app, owncast directory site, etc.) it would be visible. Beyond that tho, there could be options.
Answering that question is above my paygrade. But I do know that OwnCast has support for ActivityPub, which is based on sending buckets of JSON around. There's a 'Listen' Activity in the ActivityStreams vocabulary that I'm guessing could be used to represent song info.
So if OC doesn't do exactly what you need for this, the devs may be willing to work with you to add the functionality. Which would then be available to anyone using the software for this kind of thing.
-
Thanks for mentioning ScrobbleRadio @Mel. Just saw some traffic from here in my logs and thought I'd check it out. If there's any stations you think would be good to add, let me know and I'll see what I can do.
Great to see you here @jbwharris ! Brilliant site.
-
Thanks for mentioning ScrobbleRadio @Mel. Just saw some traffic from here in my logs and thought I'd check it out. If there's any stations you think would be good to add, let me know and I'll see what I can do.
does it have https://theindiebeat.fm stations yet?
https://labr.online/ is another fedi adjacent site
https://anonradio.net/ is another (SDF crowd) but I'm not sure they have the info needed ... could be wrong
-
does it have https://theindiebeat.fm stations yet?
https://labr.online/ is another fedi adjacent site
https://anonradio.net/ is another (SDF crowd) but I'm not sure they have the info needed ... could be wrong
@limebar I'd be totally cool with adding those stations, though I worry it's not in line with the ethos of those stations, in that I'm typically not focused on sharing backlinks to individual artists, but focused on highlighting the station itself. It's not that I don't support the artists, it's more that my app is focused on being able to scrobble and also highlight the radio station. Ideally I want to add links to streaming and bandcamp per song, but getting that pulled in from a source has been something I haven't been able to reconcile.
-
@limebar I'd be totally cool with adding those stations, though I worry it's not in line with the ethos of those stations, in that I'm typically not focused on sharing backlinks to individual artists, but focused on highlighting the station itself. It's not that I don't support the artists, it's more that my app is focused on being able to scrobble and also highlight the radio station. Ideally I want to add links to streaming and bandcamp per song, but getting that pulled in from a source has been something I haven't been able to reconcile.
good point
fwiw the artist link for the indie beat radio channels is in the now_playing | custom_fields | ext_links json field... but yeah since this is custom I could see how that is not reliable across all stations, so you'd only be able to pull those links if your code has a station-specific location selector (like xpath for json... )
-
in the meantime, mizkirsten is hopefully able to get a staging server going this weekend so we can see what's what
Hi, friends!
Thanks to @Mel for bringing this discussion to my attention
I've been a little (ok, a lot) distracted the last couple of months. I'm selling my house (after 16 years) and trying to hopefully move my family to Spain (from the U.S.). It's a LOT, ha. I also run a business for income (reachyourapex.com).
I didn't get a staging server running yet. But this discussion has me psyched up! So I'll carve out some time this week to do so.
If $20/month is an accurate estimate of costs, then I've got no worries. Can totally handle that.
Y'all are so inspiring
-
Hi, friends!
Thanks to @Mel for bringing this discussion to my attention
I've been a little (ok, a lot) distracted the last couple of months. I'm selling my house (after 16 years) and trying to hopefully move my family to Spain (from the U.S.). It's a LOT, ha. I also run a business for income (reachyourapex.com).
I didn't get a staging server running yet. But this discussion has me psyched up! So I'll carve out some time this week to do so.
If $20/month is an accurate estimate of costs, then I've got no worries. Can totally handle that.
Y'all are so inspiring
Life stuff will always slow us down... but luckily we are not in any rush! We are all just happily nerding out here hahah
Best of luck with everything Kirsten
-
I know a lot of people use Owncast for 24-hour streams, do you reckon that’s the best thing for it? To me, the social aspect is the best thing about Owncast (chats, “gone live!” notifications, etc), but I dunno if I’m atypical in how I use it.
Had a quick look into discoverability options for, eg, Azuracast video, but I’m not really sure how it all works as I haven’t had a TV for a few decades!
does anyone know if owncast uses multicast or something? or does each additional viewer add additional traffic
peertube ostensibly supports webTorrent so that clients share the load when multiple people are watching
talking to Sam today it occurs to me that depending on how owncast works, maybe peertube is a better option (and it is also federated)
peertube is also multi-user (?) in the sense you can have multiple accounts and so can have multiple live channels eventually if wanted... owncast is singular, yeah?
-
does anyone know if owncast uses multicast or something? or does each additional viewer add additional traffic
peertube ostensibly supports webTorrent so that clients share the load when multiple people are watching
talking to Sam today it occurs to me that depending on how owncast works, maybe peertube is a better option (and it is also federated)
peertube is also multi-user (?) in the sense you can have multiple accounts and so can have multiple live channels eventually if wanted... owncast is singular, yeah?
Yep that’s a benefit of Peertube streaming alright. With Owncast, you can route the viewers through object storage, so it’s less hard on the server, but not clear on the details of that.
Plus, Owncast has emojis!!!!
-
Yep that’s a benefit of Peertube streaming alright. With Owncast, you can route the viewers through object storage, so it’s less hard on the server, but not clear on the details of that.
Plus, Owncast has emojis!!!!
For those unfamiliar with the finer details of each, what's the easiest platform in terms of being able to subscribe to the channel and get updates (if there are any themed shows, etc.)?
-
For those unfamiliar with the finer details of each, what's the easiest platform in terms of being able to subscribe to the channel and get updates (if there are any themed shows, etc.)?
Hm, I’m not sure how “I’m Live!” notifications work in PT. I presume it’s like any other published video from the channel? I do like the multi-user aspect. Should we try it on gravitons?
There’s a few options for Owncast:
- federated “I’m Live” posts if you follow the account
- notifications from a Firefox extension
- notifications from the iOS app
- the directory: https://owncast.directory/
I guess one advantage of a community sharing an Owncast server is: we are communally building a following instead of all of us separately? Would definitely work better for artists working in a similar genre, could act as a method of discovery that way?
-
Hm, I’m not sure how “I’m Live!” notifications work in PT. I presume it’s like any other published video from the channel? I do like the multi-user aspect. Should we try it on gravitons?
There’s a few options for Owncast:
- federated “I’m Live” posts if you follow the account
- notifications from a Firefox extension
- notifications from the iOS app
- the directory: https://owncast.directory/
I guess one advantage of a community sharing an Owncast server is: we are communally building a following instead of all of us separately? Would definitely work better for artists working in a similar genre, could act as a method of discovery that way?
Just been reading a bunch of stuff about whether the two can be used together in some way and stumbled across this. Thought the Replays bit was interesting: https://gabekangas.com/blog/2023/04/upcoming-owncast-features/
In this sense, it'd act as little promo clips for the ongoing music vid server, like Adult Swim's Off the Air has done between new episodes. Would be such a cool link up to have down the road!
