@icaria36@the.socialmusic.network One thing I've noticed so far: it looks like posts created before you enabled federation can't be fetched? I've tested with both NodeBB and Lemmy.

This thread seems to work okay.

It does actually come through, but for some reason I have to manually move it from a personal remote subscription. I'll keep plugging away at this side.

Although the amazing RadioFreeFedi is no longer with us, it laid the foundation for a number of interesting projects within the Fedi Music space that are worth talking about and recognizing. If anyone has additional recommendations, please let me know, and I'll add them to the list!

Here's a quick overview of the efforts I currently know about:

Music / Audio Platforms

• FairCamp - Simon Repp's static site generator for musicians. Open source, just throw some music in there and get set up!
• Bandwagon - A fantastic emerging BandCamp alternative for the Fediverse. Still kind of early days, but the ability to sell music is on the roadmap.
• Castopod - More of a podcast management system, but it's ActivityPub-enabled.
• Funkwhale - still active and kicking after a long hiatus, resurgence, and development cycle. Apparently, we're on the cusp of Funkwhale 2.0 coming out.
• Mirlo - A small indie music store with some Fediverse musicians on it. It's tiny, but pretty polished, and does appear to allow musicians to sell their music on there. The project has mentioned ActivityPub experimentation in the past.

Internet Radio / Programs

• The Indie Beat FM - Was slightly controversial upon launch, due to not really providing donor links as part of artist attribution. Still, it's one of the main streaming partners integrated with Bandwagon.
• Audio Interface - An online underground music show hub based in the Fediverse. There's quite a few different programs!
• Not What I Call Bonkwave Radio - A radio stream powered by The Indie Beat Radio for the Bonkwave community.

Events

• Fedivision - A widely beloved alternative to Eurovision, where community members team up and compete.

Community Resources

• IndieArt Support - Basically, the music directory component from RadioFreeFedi, with a significantly large list of musicians, their social handles, genres, and where to find their works.
• NHAM - "Network of Hope and Association in Music", basically kind of a music blog that shares playlists and music reviews.

Netlabels

• Bonk Knob records - The origin of the idiosyncratic genre "Bonkwave", of which its many music compilations try to define what Bonkwave is not.

hey @icaria36@the.socialmusic.network, we just upgraded our NodeBB, it looks like everything should be working now!

@icaria36@the.socialmusic.network

Is this bug report related to this issue?

I think it might be, that's what I'm hoping to test. NodeBB upstream has a fix for this; once they make a new release, we'll give it a shot.

I suspect the fix will be: once we pull in this change, we'll be able to rescind the pending follow and resend it.

Also, you say that federation with https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/ (also a Discourse) works. Which We Distribute category is federating with which SocialHub category?

Just checked this, we're following their ActivityPub category specifically. For some reason, their Actor shows up as https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/ap/actor/e9a2dbe246a6064329b37247d620bab1

@fitik@fedia.io FediMusic is on We Distribute's forum. NodeBB has a sync feature that allows a category to reflect remote, federated content into it, even if it comes from different federated Group Actors.

@julian@community.nodebb.org Yeah, I'm just trying to debug what's happening. The ActivityPub Rocks forum is also using Discourse with the same plugin, and it seems to work seamlessly without any problems. So, I'm just trying to decipher what's different here.

Edit: and yes, I'm using category sync.

@icaria36@the.socialmusic.network I've gone ahead and filed a bug report, maybe @julian@community.nodebb.org can shed some insight on how to progress on our side. https://github.com/NodeBB/NodeBB/issues/13392

It's strange because federation with activitypub.rocks was pretty seamless, so I suspect it may have been something I did...

@icaria36@the.socialmusic.network Yeah, not totally sure what's happening there. I need to get ready to go to class (Final Exams FTW), but I will take some time to debug this when I get back.

@icaria36@the.socialmusic.network We can see your reply on our end, and it looks like the actor is showing up on our side now...

Will continue to test

We're testing federation with The Social Music Network, in hopes of building a collaborative community between them and ourselves. If you can see this message on the other side, say hi!

Wow, wild! It's been incredible seeing how quickly NodeBB has been getting updates. You're hard to keep up with!

@nutomic@lemmy.ml Thanks for this! We've been considering trying out Ibis, maybe this would be a good chance to review it and report back to you on what the platform's current affordances are, and what we feel like might be missing. Obviously, you don't necessarily want to replicate MediaWiki, but it might be good to see what ideas are worth bringing over.

This is an older video by Noel De Martin, a developer in the Solid space who has been building web applications on Solid technologies for years now. I think he does a great job with presenting the key concepts of Solid in a way that's mostly visual, and doesn't feel too obstrusive. This was the video that really helped the idea of Solid "click" for me, after years of struggling to understand it.

Really great talk! I think he did a really good job of introducing the concept of Solid with ActivityPub together, and why this combination would be desirable for people.

Super excited to see the future of this project, I would love to see frontends from popular Fediverse servers ported over to ActivityPods app architecture.

@altcode@community.nodebb.org Hmm, weird. Can see your reply and the screenshot, not totally sure why my response came up as empty on your end?

Yep, looks great!

@squirrel@discuss.tchncs.de We can read you loud and clear!

Our project has existed in some form or another since about 2015. That's a long time. There have been shifts, evolutions, and reboots to our initiative, and we've managed to do some pretty cool stuff over the years.

One of the more challenging areas of maintaining this effort at We Distribute is that we're a really small team doing lots of different jobs at once. As the head of the project, I find myself doing:

• Writing / Editing Content
• Managing a Content Calendar
• Content Distribution and Promotion
• Conducting / Recording / Publishing Podcast Episodes (Video and Audio)
• Social Media for over a dozen accounts
• Outreach
• Infrastructure Management
• Calls and Meetings
• User Donation Management / Accounting
• Research
• Community Management
• Volunteer coordination

That's just what I can think of off the top of my head, right now. There's probably more stuff. I enjoy doing these things, and feel passionate about the space and the project, but it's a lot. The potential for burnout is high.

We've tried to do volunteer outreach a number of times, to varying degrees of success. Working with volunteers who are doing it on their free time is a bit like herding cats,

Our Goals for 2025

In 2024, we registered We Distribute Media as a non-profit corporation in Arizona. We want to take this to the next level, by becoming a US-based 501c3 charity organization. Our hope is to launch a crowdfunding campaign, pursue some grants, and begin paying writers and other contributors. We want to make We Distribute a great community news organization, and we want to increase our output as well as start regularly pushing out new media for both our podcast and other initiatives.

What Are We Looking For

I'll try to keep this short and sweet.

• We need help with writing articles. There's so much stuff happening all the time, and it's hard to stay on top of. I'm a full-time student right now, and it's hard to get more than a few articles out per week.
• We need help with researching potential stories and situations. The Fediverse is only getting bigger, and we try to straddle Fediverse coverage with Nostr and Bluesky. We could be doing a lot better at this.
• We need help with social media management. It's hard to come up with scheduled posts on a whim, and we could really benefit from people who are passionate about showcasing the cultural and technical developments in the space.

If there's any interest in helping us get to that next level in 2025, please reach out to us at: hello@wedistribute.org!

The crazy thing about ActivityPub is that there's way more projects out there than you might realize. A seasoned Fedizen might be able to easily think of about a dozen or so platforms in the space, but I wanted to take the time to focus on the more esoteric ones we've come across.

Feel free to share ones you've found!

• Ibis - ActivityPub-based Wiki
• Transit Fedilerts - a bot system that sends transit notifications.
• Corteza - DIY federated Salesforce thing with an AI app building framework.
• Dokieli - decentralized publishing with ActivityPub and RDF, may have Solid capabilities?
• FitTrackee - self-hosted fitness tracker, ActivityPub support in development.
• NeoDB - a review platform for just about everything, some incredible ideas about data integration.

More to come!