Notices by Ben Pate 🤘🏻 (benpate@mastodon.social)

Settling in to finish the last 100 pages of reading due before tomorrow. Luckily I've got this to keep me company:

Crystallization [ft. Lydia Wu] - EP https://bandwagon.fm/678816e01b221f9c67784336

I gotta say, my favorite part of my job right now is discovering so much new music on #Bandwagon.

While troubleshooting a technical issue (it's totally fixed, everything is fine, nothing to see here…) I had to replay "time" by @sknob about a thousand times.

https://bandwagon.fm/675d63a3bd1c354e6b03be77

Days later, this awesome ear-worm is still stuck in my head:

"Time ain't money
Money buys you time
The rich outsource the drudgery
And idle on by.”

Hey #Musicians, if you're on #Bandwagon, the time has come.

I'm prepping the #SearchEngine and giving you a preview of how it'll work. Just jump over to bandwagon.fm and hit "Discover" to check it out.

I'm really pleased with this first step, but it will still be a just dumb, empty shell until we can get all your music is tagged, and optimize the tags/categories together.

You can read my full post at https://bandwagon.fm/2025-01-22-Search-Engine for all the details.

I can't wait to hear what you think.

Huge thanks to @dansup for creating https://respectfulplatforms.org. This is the kind of declaration everyone should get behind.

Honestly, it's still a bit of a "to do" list for #Emissary and #Bandwagon. Moderation tools, in particular, are still lacking right now. But I'm going to work hard to complete these, because I believe every person - all 8 billion of us - deserves to use an Internet that values people over profits, privacy over censorship, and humanity over technology.
https://mastodon.social/@dansup/113851929699796097

I don’t have a strong opinion here, and will lean on your recommendations. What’s the reason to choose one over another?

I only added OGG recently, swapping out AAC because the proprietary codec wasn’t supported on some versions of Linux.

And, I’m only using the default encoding the FFMpeg used, so I’ll have to double check the details to be certain.

@freebliss

@dansup

This is super interesting! I was just having an offline discussion about something very similar.

Yes. This feature set needs to be a standalone service with an #OpenAPI that anyone can use.

I would love to plug into this from #Emissary as well. How do I contribute, or connect to this project?

I put the big news first, but I'll say it again so it doesn't get buried:

When you publish #Music on Bandwagon.fm (or other #Bandwagon servers that launch later this year) you can just check a box to add it to the streaming rotation on https://TheIndieBeat.fm

Open APIs FTW

As I write this, I'm listening to a digital mix-tape of music -- some I recognize, and some I don't -- all from fellow Wagoneers.

Awesome 🤘

* Streaming Stations: launching an ethical, opt-in API with TheIndieBeat.fm streaming radio

* Salute to Radio Free Fedi: the original Fediverse stream is going dark

* Free/Premium: my commitment to make Bandwagon.fm free forever.

* Search/Discovery: progress on a unique music-only search engine for the Fediverse

* Licensing: assign CC/Copyright licenses to your work

* Open Source update: more Bandwagon coming servers in 2025.

Hey #Musicians, between Christmas and New Years, I've been pretty quiet about #Bandwagon.

But I have a bunch of huge news that I'm super excited to finally share with you.

Here's the full news release. I'll put highlights in a reply

https://bandwagon.fm/2025-01-01-January-Update

So, 2025 is going to be a huge leap forward for the #Fediverse in general, and #Bandwagon specifically. I've finally made enough progress on the search engine that it's finally worthy of sharing a screenshot.

There's TONS more to do, but I'm so excited about getting this into your hands in January that I couldn't wait to share this now.

@wjmaggos @evan

yeah, local libraries would probably be better. Esp. with centralization concerns - too much power for a national postal service might be bad.

I *do* think governments have missed an opportunity to authenticate identity online. What if the post office (or library) had a way for me to establish my identity, like a digital ID card that I could use online when I need to prove who I am?

Right now, that role is taken up by credit card companies and email providers.

@silverpill @mariusor

That’s great. I’d love to work out the details with you. On bandwagon.fm, this feature will also include digital album sales.

I think it will be as simple as making an access list for the people who have subscribed to each kind of content, then using “Authorized Fetch” to prevent unauthorized people from accessing protected content.

How far along are your plans for subscription feeds?

@silverpill @mariusor

Yes, I think this is the right model going forward.

I’m aiming at something like this in early 2025, though probably via PayPal and Stripe, not with Monero

Hey all..

What's the best way to fund a service like #Bandwagon?

I strongly believe that the #Fediverse needs a sustainable funding model to be competitive with BlueSky, Xitter, and Facebook. More than just donations and mutual aid, people should be able to make careers on the Fediverse.

I'm reevaluating how I'll pay for bandwagon.fm in the long term. And I want to make something that's still "free forever"

Do you think there's a place for the #Freemium Fediverse?

@mariusor I know there are a couple “monetization” vocabularies out there right now. I think the crew behind Mitra has published an FEP, and Mammoth/sub.club uses its own slightly different links to publish payment options.

When I get there, I’m probably going to implement one or both of those. But allowing guests to buy stuff online is close-but-not-quite the same as asking users to pay for their accounts.

@mariusor I can’t say for sure. But every interaction I’ve had with them has been positive, and they’re very knowledgeable about getting things done the right way.

Hey @silverpill - how would you describe Mitra’s payment system? What use cases does it support right now?

@nemobis @bnewbold @cwebber

But adding/removing CCs shouldn’t be the determining factor in which replies I can see.

In a big conversation, all those CCs start to take up a huge part of the message. That’s even worse considering Mastodon’s character limits.

I think most regular people don’t want to worry about the subtleties of federated networks, and just want to see the conversation without strange, unexplained gaps in the context.

I know that’s what I’d rather have.

@silverpill

I’m super interested in all of these efforts to improve conversations and relies.

This looks like it’s pulled from Streams, yes? Which means it’s not related to the Forums and Threaded Discussions Working Group, is that right?

There are some cool ideas in here. Hopefully we can consolidate all of them to arrive at a single standard to implement.

@silverpill @mariusor I haven’t gotten far enough to test FunkWhale’s object type handling, so I couldn’t say for sure.

All of this is just a perfect example of the issues in our other “ActivityPub Improvements” thread.

The JSON-LD dream of “everything can be anything” sounds great, but nobody can actually use it. At the end of the day, RDF data doesn’t cut it as a UI. We’ll all be better off when we go back to some kind of structured schema and move forward.

@silverpill @mariusor This is an excellent resource. Thank you! Fun Fedi keeps getting better and better.

I think I was trying to follow FunkWhale’s model, to be as compatible with it as possible. But the two object types probably will be more trouble than they’re worth.

I’d love to use these definitions from schema.org, but I don’t think they’re supported anywhere on the Fediverse, are they? If the goal is compatibility, this might be a footgun.