Building an open alternative to Bandcamp
So, as I alluded to yesterday, I've been chatting with folks about the current state of affairs regarding Bandcamp's acquisition and, most recently, massive layoffs. While it's been a good platform for a lot of independent musicians for a number of years, I don't trust the motivations of the new ownership to continue to operate the platform in a way that benefits those same independent musicians, and I don't believe going to yet another corporate-owned-and-operated silo is in anyone's best interests.
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Building an open alternative to Bandcamp
In order to provide an alternative that respects musicians, reviewers, and fans alike, MountainTown Technology is undertaking the creation of Aural Isle, a server platform that will provide a self-hostable Bandcamp-like interface for artists, labels, curators, and fans.
Our initial goal is a barest minimum implementation of the functionality needed to get things off the ground, but we have a much longer vision of how a distributed, federated network of Aural Isle servers could work to develop the network effects that are an important part of making sure art finds its way to its audience.
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Building an open alternative to Bandcamp
We have set up the barest of code repositories to hold this project here:
https://code.communitymedia.network/MountainTownTechnology/aural_isle
As you will see, it is simply a README and a LICENSE at this stage. Actual coding begins later today as I scaffold out the basic structure of the repo and project.
We expect to have something in folks' hands that's useful and usable within the next month. Obviously our longer term goals will go beyond that timeframe, but we're eager to get this out into the world and get people jamming with us on where it could go.
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re: Building an open alternative to Bandcamp
@djsundog i’m interested in your long-term goal of “playlist support”: does this include third-party playlist services?? i’d be very interested in an open-source 8tracks that overlays on top of and links directly to musician storefronts, and i don't think this needs to be the same piece of software necessarily
re: Building an open alternative to Bandcamp
@Lady I'm definitely more interested in interop and protocols than in siloed functionality and platforms, and I think most of the team feels the same. We will probably implement our own interfaces into sharable playlists but I think we'd be foolish not to support third-party playlist services so long as we can do so without breaking the agency of the musicians whose music is included
re: Building an open alternative to Bandcamp
@djsundog i think decentralization has really strong advantages for content producers (musicians) in terms of agency and control, but it also can throw up barriers for content consumers (listeners) who don't want to have an account for every artist/label, or associated with any of them necessarily. i think it’s right to prioritize artists without compromise. but i’m also always thinking, are there ways we can let listeners have their more-centralized, social spaces of music sharing and discovery without infringing on artist agency?
related question: what about internet radio? 😜
