@benpate@mastodon.socialWow! I'm making #Bandwagon -- an open source, community-focused alternative to #Bandcamp that anyone can self-host.
As of this morning, there are 99 #Musicians and #Bands who have set up #Fediverse profiles on https://bandwagon.fm -- and half of those already indexable on search engines.
So I'm humbled by the number of people who are giving it a go. There's obviously lots of people out there looking for something new.
I promise to do my best to give y'all the tools you deserve.
Awesome! And thanks! You should definitely give it a go.
I’d love to hear your insights on what works (what doesn’t) and what artists like you need out of the Fediverse.
@benpate this looks interesting. One question though - the homepage mentions the project is 100% open source, but I can't find any links to the source code.
There's links to Emissary but, it's not immediately clear to me if I wanted to run my own Bandwagon instance, if that's just an issue of deploying Emissary? Or is Emissary a framework used by Bandwagon?
@jprjr Yeah, sorry for the confusion. Bandwagon is something like an app, or even a “skin” that runs on the Emissary server. Here’s a link to Bandwagon itself - it’s really tiny.
https://github.com/EmissarySocial/bandwagon
I’ll try to get that link on the site and be more clear about how to get it running.
@jprjr Oh, and I should add one more thing..
Bandwagon is running really well right now, and I’m very pleased with the stability and performance.
But it is still new, and changing a lot right now. So I’m encouraging people to use the bandwagon.fm server for now, until things calm down.
When we aren’t making as many changes, anyone who wants their own instance will get my help and support to migrate.
@benpate Looking forward to trying this out. Been looking for a place to publish my music for ages. Got even more reason to start producing/recording again now. Yay. Thanks.
️
I hope so too. #Accessibility is important -- especially for an app based on music
I've talked to a couple of screen reader users, who have bravely volunteered to test out early versions of this code
They've told me that it works well (mostly) and I'm still running through their feedback to make things better
So I won't say Bandwagon is 100% WCAG compliant, but please try it out and let me know if you have any trouble. I jump on accessibility issues as quick as possible
We are still testing and refining Bandwagon, and will be hosting all accounts on bandwagon.fm for be free through the end of this year. Our current plan is to begin charging a small hosting fee beginning in 2025 to pay for server space and bandwidth.So you're planning on charging artists starting next year. Do you have any mechanisms in place for paying out artists? The main draw of Bandcamp for artists is not just exposure, but payout (regardless of how meager it is). The way you have it set up right now, you're guaranteed to make money off of artists while they have to individually figure out monetization totally removed from number of plays.
Where and what is your privacy policy? If it's not accessible from the front page, I don't want to browse your site, let alone recommend it to others.
Sorry this isn't on the website, because it's a common question.
Online sales is absolutely important. It's on my radar, and I'm hoping I can start working on it before the end of the year.
When it's done, it will likely use musicians' own payment accounts (like PayPal or Venmo) so that 100% of the money goes to them.
Re: privacy policy -- this is one of many legal aspects that I don't have worked out yet.
The principle is that anything uploaded to my server is wholly owned by the artist, under their total control, and would not be used for any kind of spam.
I should definitely write that out more completely and add it to the website.
Is there a privacy policy that you'd recommend that I model for this?
Re: privacy policy -- this is one of many legal aspects that I don't have worked out yet.How do you have a profit model figured out already when you don't even know what your own privacy policy is going to be like?
Is there a privacy policy that you'd recommend that I model for this?You're already ingesting free content from people and you're asking the fediverse to do your research. This is your job and I don't work for free.
@benpate@mastodon.social this presumes a lot of value in being part of the fediverse that I really don't see a lot of musicians getting behind. And then if you're not monetizing from payment fees and instead charging artists upfront costs, I think you're DoA.
The fediverse is only going to be appealing when appealing stuff happens on it, this just seems to treat the fediverse like the blockchain.
Fortunately, I’m a reclusive billionaire, splitting my Bandwagon development time between my Mediterranean yacht and a secret “nucular” bunker in Wyoming, so monetization is not a top priority 
But to be serious, online album sales are an important feature to add in the near future. Though I think that money will go 100% to artists.
Bandwagon itself is open source, so anyone can self-host. My server, bandwagon.fm will eventually be paid, which will cover my hosting costs
@benpate@mastodon.social @mrmeadows@mk.absturztau.be
You keep harping on covering your "hosting costs"
There are people who host services that literally stream FHD (or higher!) videos downlink and operate wholly off of donations.
Do you realize how this makes you look in comparison? If you care so much about the artists then why is this entire thing predicated on you collecting digital toll from them?
Hey @pynk
You're obviously looking for a fight, but I won't give you that.
I've been open about Bandwagon, what it does, and where it still needs work. Nobody is forced to beta test my software. And anyone can use my work for free.
So I'll work on a privacy policy, along with the countless other ways that Bandwagon should still be better.
The Fediverse is better when we work together. So let's work together to build great things, and not just tear them down because they aren't yet perfect.
@benpate@mastodon.social
I like how you're neatly sidestepping everything with "my work is free (for now, until I start charging rent)" and "it's still a WIP (I couldn't be bothered with legal jargon like privacy policies)"
So let's work together to build great things,No, we're neither your coworkers nor your investors. There's no "together" here when your profit scheme makes it blatantly obvious that you're just here to extract content from the fediverse so you can line your pockets.
I should add that you’re right: “the Fediverse” is not the killer feature. I think personal control, and independence from big companies like EA is the real issue.
The Fediverse needs more/better content. I see Bandwagon (and other apps like it) as an easy way for indie creatives to own their online identities while growing the content library of the Fediverse.
Hopefully, it’s a win/win.
chatBBT AI assistant ▌▖▘▘▌▌▌▘▌ @benpate@mastodon.social see a lot of NFT icon people on there 
@dispencer Probably, though I haven’t been filtering people based on their avatars.
I *did* just delete several hundred spambot signups, so that’s going to be an ongoing arms race. Welcome to the Fediverse, I guess..
I hope to create something anyone can self-host, and to make a flagship instance as an easy on-ramp for non-technical musicians.
That’ll certainly attract music and content that aren’t my taste, but if they’re not stealing music or being abusive, everyone is welcome.
@benpate@mastodon.social @dispencer@mk.absturztau.be
I did just delete several hundred spambot signupsYeah, "several hundred"
What's the term for pretending you have more demand for your services than what actually exists?
@benpate I have been looking for a simple but comprehensive self-hosted alternative to Bandcamp, and I have to say this is very nice so far.
I also love the Emissary default template, everything so far works great with screen reading software and it's lightweight to run on a Raspberry Pi. Thank you
Really? It runs on a Rasberry Pi??Thats awesome. You made my day!
If you’re self-hosting, lots of things are changing rapidly with Bandwagon, so we should connect somewhere (email, Mastodon, GitHub) so I can make sure I don’t break your site.
@benpate Thank you very much for the offer. At the moment there are a few missing things, such as embeddable tracks or possibly some sort of payment processor support, so I'm holding off on hosting it in production for now, but I'm definitely keeping an eye on how things will end up. Even without Fedi support, there is nothing out there which is as simple to set up and use as Bandwagon, so that's a plus as well.
I also really like the way Emissary works, it's quite inspiring and refreshing to see high quality software being contributed back to the open source community.
Thank you. I had noticed them a few weeks before. Best of luck to them and admirable goals, but I’m going to hold off for now.
Yellow/Caution flags:
Future bandwidth charge with unspecified ideas of how to charge (co-op?, per band view?)
IP consideration-how will they handle people who put up music that infringe copyright. Success means administrative costs complicated by many jurisdictions.
Accounting, payments, and taxes: I don’t get the sense they’ve thought this through.
@pomCountyIrregs The big question I have — noted in another reply (here: https://social.vivaldi.net/@ajsadauskas/113334304261660491 ) is if it allows artists to sell MP3s of their music, or if this feature will be added in the future?
If it's a no (and I can't find any examples of MP3s for sale from the artist profiles I looked at), that's a pretty big missing feature compared to Bandcamp and SoundCloud in my book...
@ajsadauskas You’re absolutely right, and, reading between the lines of my comments, one notices I assumed they were providing a sales outlet.
Though future costs and IP enforcement are still issues, the latter if a site can stream tracks.
@pomCountyIrregs On the sales outlet, the answer is not yet, but it is planned: https://mastodon.social/@benpate/113334630742952964
@ajsadauskas Apple Music recently has added a feature for registered artists. They are showing radio play. I looked at that list this morning and I can see what stations played a track of mine. I’m intrigued how they get that data and its scope. But, pleased to see who I should thank.
About SoundCloud, I have a no-cost account. I will not pay for discoverability and, there, I’m not discovered. I post demos there, so I can listen over smartphone, and I remove a track when it goes into release.
@benpate Given the way “follows” work in the Fediverse, have you considered some kind of account folks can follow where new Bandwagon members are introduced?
Yes. I *am* working on better music discovery, and talking to other resources for musicians on the Fediverse to see how we do better together.
In addition, there needs to be something you can "follow" for sure. Right now, I'm looking at it from a search perspective. As in: what if you could subscribe to tags on a search index? In a sense, each search query could become its own ActivityPub "actor"
Do you think this is a viable option?
@benpate As I understand it (and I don’t know if this is a fediverse thing or a Mastodon thing), I can follow a hashtag, but posts with that hashtag have to originate on my home server, or get to my home thru “account following” for me to see it. My server won’t just comb the entire fediverse for posts with that hashtag.
If I am correct, then I can’t learn about new artists on another server (if it is fairly new and not widely followed) by following hashtags, I would need to follow an account. That’s why I suggested some sort of “announcement “ account I could follow.
@BrianJohnson Yes, I think that's how it works now. Definitely a Mastodon thing, and probably similar across the Fediverse.
I think we've gotten sidetracked, so enthralled by the way things *are* that we've stopped imagining how they *could be*
On my laptop right now are the larval stages of a search index that you can "Follow" just like any other actor.
Different search queries would serve you a different version of that actor, letting you follow in real time anything in search index.
Not everything in the Fediverse supports following hashtags. For example, Mastodon does, Hubzilla (from where I'm posting right now) does not, (streams) (where I have two more channels) does again.Still, searching literally the whole Fediverse is technologically impossible, watching the whole Fediverse for things to happen even more so. Your instance would have to know absolutely every Fediverse instance out there. All of them. No exception.
This means it would have to know in real-time when someone spins up a new instance of whatever for the first time, be it Mastodon, be it CherryPick, be it (streams) or Forte, be it the first private pre-alpha of something they've just developed from scratch. It would have to know because it'd have to immediately start indexing everything that happens on that new instance.
And there is absolutely no way of being notified about that. Even if every Fediverse server application implemented such a notification feature, where would it send that notification? To all running Fediverse instances out there? And how is a brand-new instance supposed to know all Fediverse instances out there before it spins up for the first time so that it can notify all of them when it spins up?
I think I'll have to write an article on this, as often as the question pops up why there is no search that covers the absolute entirety of the Fediverse.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Search
@benpate Does Bandwagon support artists selling MP3s of their music on the platform?
One of the main reasons I visit Bandcamp is to support local artists I like by buying their music. Does Bandwagon allow this?
If not, will it be rolled out in a future update?
Not now, but in the near future.
Right now, there’s links to other online stores (like Bandcamp) where you can sell stuff online.
But online sales is one of the two major feature requests (along with better music discovery) that I know I’ll need to add soon.
When we do, it will likely use artists’ own payment accounts (like PayPal, Venmo, etc) so that all of the money goes directly to them and so the hosting company doesn’t take a cut.
@benpate What makes this different from #Funkwhale?
@light Great question. There are lots of superficial similarities, but big fundamental differences
#Funkwhale is aimed at listeners, and Bandwagon at creators
#Bandwagon is a unique profile page that showcases each musician’s branding, with artist info, colors, and graphics. They can post show dates and band news, too
In the near future, music discovery and digital sales will also set them apart
So maybe think of it as a better #Bandcamp or #MySpace on the #Fediverse
& - Announcing Endure 
@benpate I hope you can find a way to collaborate with these people: https://subvert.fm/blog/a-collectively-owned-bandcamp-successor/
Both of your projects look awesome, and would work even better together!
Yeah, thanks for this! I just learned about them yesterday. Don’t know much about this project, yet, so I’m still catching up.
From their web page, it seems more like a plan (possibly a really good one) than a technology stack. So there’s lots of potential room to work together.
I'm on Bandwagon but I lost track during my fall festival season. I do have some more albums I want to post.
Thanks
@hairylarry Of course! I just sent you a "password reset" email that should get you in.
If you have any more trouble, let me know :)
No, I'm fine. I didn't forget my password. I just forgot about Bandwagon while I was playing festivals. So I'm glad I saw your post.
Bebop Beatniks did record a new live album and then, later, I dug a forgotten NJHB show out of the pre-pandemic vault and I almost have it ready too.
I'm still on bandcamp but it's not federated. I used to run a funkwhale instance but my server blew up at a time when I didn't have time to figure it out.
Bandwagon looks pretty good to me, right now.
I went to your Bandwagon page and I'm enjoying How To Stop Time. Kind of a Gospel feel merging into hiphop. Have you thought of getting someone to rhyme on top of this?
How To Stop Time https://bandwagon.fm/66e386e34c86ea48ed036b2d
@hairylarry You'll want to send this to @stefan
@benpate @hairylarry Already did! https://gamerplus.org/@hairylarry/113340821266291031
Nice to see my work getting discovered on Bandwagon!
@hairylarry So glad to hear all of that!
I think Bandcamp is going to be the big player for a while. Heck, maybe we can even pressure them into federating over AcivityPub, too :)
I strongly believe if you just make a better product, people will find you (eventually) so that's what we're gonna do. Give all of them a run for their money, and make the whole "industry" better in the process :)
Yeah, bandcamp is doing something different than what you're doing. They're still ok now but you know ... enshittification happens.
It seems that many contemporary jazz artists have embraced bandcamp for their distribution and I get it. No fees and you can sell downloads on the site. I also like the listen to what you want and pay a little bit for the flacs model.
I also use archive.org but I'm having a sad because people are DDOSing a library.
Yes! You can self-host Bandwagon.
With that said, things are still changing very quickly, so I'm encouraging Bands to start with my server, then migrate away once the rate of change slows.
If you're a dev/admin/enthusiast, you can definitely tinker with it. Your insights are super-helpful with that aforementioned "rate of change"
I've tried to answer this in more detail here: https://bandwagon.fm/self-hosting. PLEEEAAASE let me know if I can help you with specifics :)
@benpate it's in the TOS. Terms of Service
Post Your Own Work - Do not post content that you do not own the copyright to. Posting others’ work will result in an instant ban
It's not copyrighted so it's probably cool
@clifmo Gotcha, yes. The TOS is very "non-legalese" at the moment, but I want to make sure we're respecting musicians rights and copyrights out of the gate. :)