Ok kids, here we go:
#Bandwagon, the open #Fediverse alternative to #Bandcamp is ready for its first steps into the light.
I have a waitlist online at
https://bandwagon.fm if you'd like to try it out.
I'm planning to build the first (dozen? I don't know) profiles in the waitlist personally, with an email questionnaire and FaceTime follow-ups if necessary.
Once I'm confident in the UX, we'll open up self-serve signups for everyone.
Bandwagon.fm will eventually be a paid hosting service. I'll keep it as cheap as possible, like $1/month cheap.
We'll figure out the exact cost based on what it takes to serve the first cohort.
If you're a techie, the whole thing is open source, so you're free to mess around with it, or host your own Bandwagon server. I'd love to help you get one going if you want. Get started at: https://github.com/EmissarySocial/app-bandwagon
I’ve documented as much as I can on emissary.dev so that’s the place to start
I’ve had a few small, but important contributions already, and am still working on more. It’s a complicated beast, though, so no@matter how much I write, it never seems enough
My idea for now is to work one-on-one with the first few interested contributors to get them up to speed
I’m invested in getting the whole Emissary ecosystem off the ground, so it’s worth it to spend the time
It’s hard to say. There’s a lot to learn before someone could be effective with the Emissary core. I would *love* help here, but I’m probably working on that alone for a while longer.
At the same time, “apps” (or “skins”) are insanely easy. Check out the Bandwagon source code. It’s literally 19 HTML, JS, and JSON files. My hope is that a Jr. Dev could customize Bandwagon in their spare time.
So that’s the best place for someone to get started.
@benpate tbh what you said there sounds like a compelling pitch to put in source code docs somewhere, e.g. a cookiecutter repo for bootstrapping new skins/emissary apps, or a developers page on API documentation
And I say that because I am compelled! I'll probably spend some time looking at the source this weekend. Just gotta' get some more job apps in first...
Yes. Sorry I didn’t include links. I’ll get everything cross referenced soon.
The primary site for Emissary is https://emissary.dev
Bandwagon doesn’t have its own dev site, but all of its source code is on https://github.com/EmissarySocial/bandwagon - it’s very small.
I’m glad you’re compelled! Take a look around and let me know where your interest is. I’d love to help you contribute to Bandwagon, build your own apps, or even contribute to the Emissary core. The field is wide open, right now.
@earth_walker Yes, and it works now using Docker compose.
Once the core stabilizes a bit more we should certainly publish an image but for now, check out https://emissary.dev/docker
@codecat Me too, Melissa 😀
The best I can say is that it’ll go where artists want it to go. I care deeply about listening to people’s voices. So be loud.
@JMBragg Yeah, thanks for letting me know. I think I've got that worked out, now.
I'm trying a lot of new things with this Emissary theme - like the rotating images from Unsplash - that I couldn't fully test before I pushed the landing pages.
Responsive design is a bitch :)
In any case, please let me know what you think of the site, and what would make this app more useful to musicians out there. Cheers!
@benpate yeah that displays much better now.
I was just being curious really I don’t have much use for the site as I don’t listen to music at all so don’t have much functionality feedback.
Also sorry for how concise & not polite my original reply was.
@JMBragg Really, no apologies necessary 😀 I appreciate your help!
Saying “Hey, your new thing is broken” is about the kindest thing you could do... and you’re way more polite than 90% of but reporters 😳
Great suggestion, and yes we should have #RSS feeds.
#Bandwagon is built on #Emissary, which does generate (and follow) RSS feeds. So it’s just a matter of turning them on.
I’m making lots of changes as the first few test sites come online, so I’ll make sure to add these, too.
@benpate the page took seconds to load the 2.57MB image. Please be aware that not everyone have devices with lots of memory and unlimited/fast bandwidth.
Still boosting this, hope you'll succeed 👍
Oof! Thanks for that!
The home page images are coming from Unsplash- I’m sure there’s a way I can choose an optimized version and not the full-size image.
I’m usually hyper-conscious of download sizes; the rest of the app is extraordinarily light, so I’m sad that I missed this one.
This is fixed now. Apparently, using "full" images from Unsplash is not ideal. Those big banner graphics are now coming in around 50~100KB.
Great success!
#Bandwagon has no relation to #FunkWhale, except that they're both doing music.
It's is more similar to #Bandcamp, in that it's a complete home page for musicians than *just* for hosting/playing music. And I see them diverging more in the future, based on feedback I get from other musicians.
I *am* working to ensure that Bandwagon will work with Funkwhale, so that you'll be able to play songs across both servers.
Federate All The Things!
@momo @ahoyboyhoy I’m aiming Bandwagon at musicians just like you. It feels more like iTunes and SoundCloud than Funkwhale or Mastodon, so I’ll encourage you to give it a try.
Funkwhale is probably more mature right now, so don’t delete your self-hosted instance just yet.
But you’ll be able to self-host Bandwagon too, so once you’re comfortable with it, I hope it can become your primary site some day.
@momo @ahoyboyhoy For now, I’m hosting on testers on https://bandwagon.fm for free. Eventually, it’ll have a small hosting fee to keep the lights on.
But before that happens, I’ll help others to launch their own hosting services, or self-host their own instances.
There will also be migration tools so you can move your profile anywhere you need.
Yes, buying albums is the main point of Bandcamp, and it's their primary revenue stream.
I've heard from many artists that they want something more like a home page that they own. Bandcamp feels like renting.
And, "on the Fediverse" may be a killer feature by itself.
I believe that "listening directly to artists' needs" will result in a vastly different product than "maximizing quarterly revenue" - that's what I'm going for.
@tjolsen That would be amazing. Yes please! Accessibility is important to me. I haven’t had time yet to do a deep dive into accessibility on Bandwagon, but I believe it’s “better than most, but not nearly good enough.”
Can I reach back out to you when I have a couple of musicians’ profiles posted?
@tjolsen Sure, that would be fantastic. Onboarding is probably the most important part of every kind of software.
I’ve already learned a lot from setting up the first waitlist bands, and will try to roll that into the code for the next few.
@benpate This looks pretty cool, and I don't mean to sound apprehensive about its usability as a Bandcamp alternative — but would this platform also support video tracks in the long run? I'm in an audiovisual project and it would be great to have a music-first platform as well as/instead of something like peertube.
Appreciate any feedback!
@fanden Anything is possible, and I’m going to try letting the community drive the design and feature choices of what gets built.
Personally, I want Emissary/Bandwagon to support video as well. I’m already using FFmpeg under the hood, so we *should* be able to support lots of video options.
So, I can’t promise videos right away, because first I need to button up basic audio federation (e.g. federating w/ FunkWhale) but I’d love to add video streaming the future.
Here’s the secret: I have no clue what I’m doing 😅
In all seriousness, it’s usually better to turn over design to the community (with some caveats, ofc)
Real people have better ideas than software developers every day of the week. And they design better software because they aren’t chasing quarterly profits, too.
I’m here to listen and code like hell, you all just tell me what you need.
@benpate Well, as Bill and Ted said it, "maybe we should always not know what we're doing?" 🎸
I'll follow the project and see what emerges!
@fink @lenzgr I don’t have a dedicated account for Bandwagon, sorry. So my personal account is probably the one to follow.
But since this is going to be my life for the next few months, throw account will probably be pretty on-topic for you.
Apologies if I get too developer-techie-nerd-speak, though.. getting something like this online is going to require one part musician and six parts software dev.
P.O.E.
Ben Pate 🤘🏻
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