Discoverability on the Fediverse and Thought Dump
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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.
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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.
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.
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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 wanted to crosspost @timglorioso's comment below:
Promotion and discoverability do feel at odds with federation and decentralization. The Web broke something, now it’s expected to be able to see everything globally. Or maybe it was already broken by the recording industry. Every one of us only has so much attention to give, and so many possible things to give it to. I think Step 1 of addressing discoverability is setting expectations for what discoverability means and what artists are really trying to do. We are so used to being endlessly spoonfed by corporate platforms that we don’t even know what we want.
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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.
Also saw these mentioned in a recent music newsletter I follow, which are interesting takes on the visual discovery theme (but slightly cheesy and not federated). I feel like they're zooming in on what people liked about MySpace in terms of the customisation and being able to display things like your top eight as an expression of your community group or music taste.
Get a Shelf
A visual summary of all your interests: automatically track and showcase what you're into – from music, books, shows, movies, games & more.
(www.shelf.im)
Make your internet bedroom – Housewarming
AI Creative App — Gen Z Blogs, Mini Sites, and Mixed Media Art
(madeonverse.com)
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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.
oh cool, thanks for sharing that link... they do support audio search but in a rudimentary way
but your comment about "though they only do CC..." made we want to comment
...for musical (and other) artists who have only ever done "all rights reserved" kinds of things before and are apprehensive about releasing CC licensed or public domain works...
please consider this: it feels EXTREMELY liberating to do so!
you don't have to take existing works and re-release them CC or public -- you can make a decision to purposefully make something with the original intention of releasing as CC licensed content and you may be amazed at the results
knowing you are going to release it into the commons (whichever CC license you choose) takes so much out of the picture and leaves behind only the creative process
try it, at least once
a secondary benefit is -- this allows you to post the material freely into spaces you might not have considered before (due to licensing worries) and into spaces that only allow CC licensed materials (like the link above) -- and the net gain for you personally is a bit more exposure -- people in those spaces may come to know about you and backtrack to your other material, you might gain (appreciative) fans
if you choose to allow derivatives and also require source attribution (CC BY-SA or CC BY-SA-NC) you may get more exposure when others expand on your work
i have a mix of licenses in my stuff and that allows me to be in more places but honestly creating something with the intention of CC release feels good
btw, i've done several derivative works of other artists' CC licensed material and I always ask first and give them the right to listen and refuse if they hate it. not required but it feels correct to do this, to me... so far nobody has refused, they all seem to appreciate the work (unless they are just being kind) -- and it feels win-win to me
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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.
These folks just open sourced
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These folks just open sourced
This looks very interesting indeed and think @limebar might appreciate the MusicBrainz link…
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These folks just open sourced
Also should see if they'd support Mirlo links being posted in the feed...
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These folks just open sourced
thanks, interesting! i wonder if they plan to federate and/or become a web scrobbler target -- that might be an interesting combo
