*33C3 preroll music*
Welcome to this talk on, err, Funkwhale and, err, the importance of decentralized
podcasting. Erm, it's just something that, erm, I'm doing as, as just a little
'outreach' thing. Umm! *chuckles* So who am I? Err, my name is Ciarán Ainsworth; I
am a, erm, member of the the Funkwhale Association, erm, who are the, erm,
arbiters of the Funkwhale Platform. We have been developing it, err, for a few
years now. Err, I joined Funkwhale a couple of years ago as, err, primarily, a
documentation writer. So, I installed, err, Funkwhale, err, after looking for
some self-hosting tools, and I approached the project and said: "err, your
documentation isn't particularly great - err, would you mind if I, if I, helped
rewrite it?" and from there on, I've kind of got more and more involved in
different bits of the project. Err, so, I've been doing a lot of work with, erm,
Front-end Development, Documentation, err Community Management, and, err, my role
on the sort of Board is that I'm a member of the Steering Committee, which means
that I am responsible for helping with development of Roadmaps, erm, and sort of
Research & Development into different features that we might want to add, err,
at some other time. So, what is Funkwhale? First and foremost? Erm, as
you can see there, very nice little, *chuckles* sort of interface design! Err,
Funkwhale is essentially a music, an audio platform, erm, to put it very very
basically. Erm, but more specifically, it is, erm, a Free and Open Source project.
Erm, it's a self-hosted server software, with a, erm, front-end web application
for playing music. And, err, the thing that kind of sets it apart is that it is
'federated'. So, it's built on the same, err, software as other federated, erm,
applications such as Mastodon, Pleroma, Pixelfed, PeerTube, Reel2Bits and all the
others. We all use the same, erm, software to interact with one another,
err, something called the ActivityPub protocol, erm, and basically it just
allows us to be a bit more interactive with, erm other Funkwhale servers and
also other, erm, software in the Fediverse. And when Funkwhale started up,
it was primarily focussed around music; Erm, the name comes from the fact that
the original developer of the software, Agate Berriot, wanted a free, self-hosted
version of Grooveshark, something that, erm, she could put music into and then
create playlists and radios from. Erm, so that's kind of where the pedigree came
from, we come from that music background. Erm, but nowadays we're focussed on...
many things. Music collections are still part of it, but we also have, err, audio
publication tooling, err, and content sharing as part of our, sort of, genetic
makeup. So, a little while ago, erm, we were looking at our Roadmap, so around
about, erm, September/October 2019, we started to look seriously at "where did
we want to take the project?" At the time we had just moved away from having Agate
as essentially the 'Benevolent Dictator for Life", and were looking at moving
towards a more 'democratic' system of governance, where we would ask the, err,
users to provide us with insights and, erm, sort of guidance on what they would
like to see in the platform. And, when we started, err, approaching them with
options, one of the things we found was that podcasting was a very, very widely
requested feature, erm - which was something I don't necessarily think we
were expecting. But it was definitely something that people were very
interested in. Err, at the time, the Fediverse in general lacked a, erm,
lacked a proper, sort of, erm, platform for things like podcasting. We had music,
we had, erm. Sorry, I'm just going to adjust my volume; somebody's saying it's
a little bit low. Erm, we had, err music, we had video, we had, erm, things like
microblogging, and we had image sharing, but we didn't have podcasting. So that
was something that people seemed to be quite interested in. So, when people came
to us, erm, and sort of suggested that, that fitted in quite nicely with another
thing that we were looking to do in general, which was, erm, content
publication. So, we sort of looked at it as an opportunity to develop, erm, an
entire new structure, not just around podcasts but also around music
publication, so that we were moving away from, erm, just hosting your CD
collection, erm, and maybe some bits and pieces that you had done yourself, to,
erm, actually publishing, erm, content and putting it through to the Fediverse
directly. So that was kind of, err, the background as to why we got into
podcasting in general. Umm, very quickly, err, we saw that there were going to be
a lot of challenges with this particular bit of work; the biggest one really was,
erm, we as a, as a collective, didn't really know all that much around, err,
podcasting. None of us were podcasters, erm, we listened to podcasts sometimes,
but not very often; I myself only listened to a few, erm, so we very soon,
quickly realised that we were going to need to approach people who did this sort
of thing all the time. We were going to need to ask people who knew about this
stuff, had sort of, err, experience working with lots of different bits and
pieces, err, in the current climate, err, in order to build something that fit with
their expectations, and also addressed some of their frustrations that, you
know, anything that, anything that frustrated them. The other problem was,
as I mentioned before, we... are a music publication platform; or we were a music,
err, sort of hosting platform, so - this podcasting and publication stuff was not
in our DNA. It required quite a lot of, erm, sort of 'architecting' on the
backend to, really, get something that would work for publication. Erm, we
needed to kind of rethink a lot of things, because we'd been making
assumptions about, audio, in general, erm, based on music collections, err,
which of course is a very different thing to, to podcasting. Erm, the other thing
we didn't really know or understand was "what should it look like from beginning
to end, err, for a podcaster to publish something?" Erm, we kind of understood it
for musicians, erm, it was a bit simpler. You know, you'd have albums, and you
have tracks that go in those albums, but we didn't really know all that much about
podcasting. So, in order to get that information, we decided to form a
podcasting, err, 'Taskforce' as it were. And this taskforce basically consisted of
erm, members of the Funkwhale association, and, a group of people, from
the, erm, Podcasting Subreddit, from the Fediverse, erm, people who make podcasts
all the time. Erm, and we basically brought them all into a chatroom, and we
said: "OK, so if we're going to design this, what do we absolutely need to do,
what do we need to hit? What do you want to see, and what would, erm, kind of
encourage you to come over to using our software, to publish your podcasts, if
that's something you'd like to do?" Erm, and it was something, err, the other
thing we needed to work out was, erm, you know, we didn't really have an insight,
as people who didn't publish, into what the competition was doing. So, I say 'the
competition' - *chuckles* - what other people who made this stuff were doing, so
we very much needed to get that information from a first-hand experience.
erm, and sort of pull that in, to make sure that we were doing it correctly. And
what we found, was, erm, basically: podcasts are hard. They're quite complex
things, where, especially the, erm, particularly the complexity exists on the
backend; it exists within the software, but the user should be really getting a
very simple frontend to do things with. So, we found that basically, whereas with
music, erm, Funkwhale really didn't handle a lot of the more complex stuff
like tagging, erm we let MusicBrainz handle that; if we were going to be
publishing, we needed to start actually taking on board that complexity, and sort
of facilitating it in our publication layer, err, and podcasts of course
offered, erm, a slightly different way of doing things because there was less
metadata to be included, erm, and it was less sort of catalogued than something
like music. The other thing that was very very strongly put forward by the people
who we talked to, was that, there are, there exist in the podcasting world,
standards. We have certain ways of doing things, and that has to be retained, no
matter which tool we use. So, for example, erm, we need to use RSS; we
absolutely have to include an RSS feed; erm, images need to be correctly sized;
the RSS feed must be consumable by tools such as iTunes, erm, and, Apple Podcasts,
which means we have to include certain fields that only exist for iTunes and
Apple Podcasts. Erm, the other thing we kind of came to realise was that people
were gonna be using us as a podcast publication tool, but we also needed to
act as the podcatcher. Because our, you know, our sort of, erm, current makeup at
the time, was to be a music hosting tool but also an application which played
music, we needed to give that same experience for podcasts. It needed to be
that people could publish content, but also take the content they already liked,
and put it into Funkwhale. Erm, and then, the other, the last sort of big thing
that came from this was, the sudden realisation that, erm, if you're gonna
have two or more servers talking to each other, a lot more, umm, you're gonna need
to really strengthen the, err, moderation tools that you have in place. Especially
when we're talking about user-generated content, the scope for abuse on that is
quite significant. So we needed to give users tools to be able to report things,
we needed to give people tools to be able to block certain stuff, we needed to give
administrators the ability to use things like 'enable lists', so that they could
prevent federation with certain, erm, other platforms, erm, and we needed to
give them the ability to sort of ban users, take down channels, that sort of
thing. Erm, so, this was a whole lot of architectural design, for, erm, podcasts,
which had, you know, it was, it really the podcasts that drove us to it. Umm,
and what we came out with was basically, erm, a hybrid of a traditional sort of
podcast overview and a Fediverse channel. So in our world, we have podcasting
channels, err, and music channels. And, from what you can see in that sort of
screenshot, it gives some, sort of, basic information; you get your artwork, you
get your episodes, we can split things up into series which was a big request that
people had, was the ability to create, err, different series within the same
channel, erm, we have the ability to subscribe, erm, which I'll go onto in a
second, and obviously if you're the channel owner, upload new content, make
sure everything is working, err, as expected. Erm, the important bit here
that we have is the, erm, information about, what's in that channel, so in, in
this channel, this is mine; ignore it; it's terrible, erm, *chuckles* but,
there's one episode, and it's been listened to 13 times. And this was
important information that we, we sort of worked out was needed in order for people
to get a grip on like "how are people interacting with my content?" Umm, but
taking that on board, we went ahead with the subscription capabilities, and as you
can see in the screenshot we have kind of three options in every case; the first is
if you already have a, err, Funkwhale account, you can subscribe using your
Funkwhale account, to that channel, and it will be, it will be one of those, erm,
things that appears in your feed when a new, err, episode is uploaded, you'll get
notified that there's a new episode in the frontend. Erm, the other thing you
can do is subscribe via RSS. So going back to what we were saying earlier, erm,
we took a lot of, we put a lot of effort into making sure that our RSS feed, erm,
was compatible as, as much as possible, and that anybody could go onto a, sort of
an open Funkwhale channel, and subscribe, without having to sign up to Funkwhale.
'Cos, one of the things we very quickly realised was, we, we don't want people to
feel like they have to sign up, we, we want people to be able to enjoy the
content no matter what, and that really should be up to them where they listen to
us, whether they listen to us on Funkwhale or some other podcatcher. And,
the last one is, erm, subscription via the Fediverse, so, that enables users to
follow a channel in much the same way they would follow a Mastodon account, or
a Pleroma account, or something similar. So, we're trying to hit all sort of boxes
there of how you can keep up with somebody's content. The other thing that,
err, I've been doing some work on recently is more front-end stuff, but
erm, it's just making sure that we sort of point people towards, erm, adding new
content where possible, either by themselves, erm, creating new channels,
or, subscribing to things, err, via RSS or via the Fediverse - so, really pushing
people towards that more, erm, it's really pushing people towards that more
sort of, erm, you know, creation element. We want people to create. So, that's with
the basics in place, erm, this was the development work we did over the past
sort of year or so; it's, it's been a wild ride - umm! *chuckles* There's been
a lot of content that's gone in, a lot of changes made, erm, there's still some
changes to come; the most, the current release doesn't have some of the newer
tools that are around podcasting, such as dedicated podcast searching, umm, and
sort of wider accessibility of, erm, subscription tools. Erm, but, were not
finished. There are still things, there are still items on the roadmap that we
would like to complete, and still items that are not currently on the roadmap
which may need to be added in future, err, to really help us to get involved
with podcasting more, because what we found is this is a, err, this a market
that we very much have enjoyed working in, and erm, it's one that actually has
proven quite popular with people, you know people see Funkwhale as a podcasting
platform now, *chuckles* umm, even if you know it was originally supposed to be
music, this is how it's kind of evolved. So, what do we have, erm, to kind of
consider next, to take Funkwhale to the next sort of level of, erm, you know,
being a proper, sort of, erm, alternative to what's currently out there. Umm, the
first thing that strikes me as necessary is, umm, Funkwhale currently allows you
to import RSS feeds from external podcasts; it currently allows you to
follow, erm, podcasts on the Fediverse, on, erm, Funkwhale; and it currently
allows you to publish your own. But what we don't have at the moment is any way of
finding external podcasts. You still have to leave Funkwhale to go and find, err,
the RSS feed that you're looking for. Erm, you still have to, you know, go and
see where, erm, things are, go and find them on something like iTunes, or Fyyd,
or Spotify, and grab the RSS feed and bring it back to Funkwhale. Which of
course from a User Experience point of view... ...is not great; umm, it's, it's
basically meaning that Funkwhale is not yet the one-stop-shop for, err podcasts
that we might want it to be. Erm, so, one of the things that I would quite like to
see, you know, coming in future, is podcast discovery, for an external
storefront; I have built myself a, erm, a kind of proof-of-concept of how we might
do this using the iTunes API, but there are different, err, things out there,
such as Fyyd and others, that we might want to consider looking at. Erm, the
other thing is an improved, sort of, publication workflow. At the moment, err,
the publication workflow, err, it works, things go in, you get *chuckles* you get
a podcast out of it; it generates an RSS feed for you. But, we have had, err,
people raise issues with it, erm, specifically around, erm, 'how do I edit
metadata during that upload process?' Erm, the problem I think is because the
way we designed the frontend, it was more of a, it was more in line with how we'd
worked with music previously, which is to say, upload many files which have been
previously tagged, and just kind of let them be. Erm, whereas of course if you're
doing an upload of, of podcasts you want to basically upload an episode, title it,
tag it, put some artwork with it, give it a license, do all of that stuff, erm, and
then move on to the next one. Or, if you know you're gonna be uploading multiple
episodes of a series you might want to have a tool, say, that you can, you put
them all in a series and say number them all automatically; erm, at the moment we
don't have that. You, if you upload multiple things, a pencil icon appears
next to each one, and you can click through and edit them all, but it's not
very obvious how you do that. So that's been raised as something, erm, that needs
to be addressed, and we've had some designs submitted for how we might go
about doing that, which looks to be a lot better. Erm, the other one is something
I'm gonna come onto in the sort of, the second part of this, and that is, the
introduction of links to donation services erm, at the moment, hosting
your podcast on Funkwhale is, is err, is great - erm, but it's the same as hosting
it anywhere else. Erm, what we need to, err, what we sort of want to be, sort of
pushing people towards or sort of encouraging, is this idea of supporting,
err, people who create. Erm, and the best way to do that in our, in our eyes, is to
kind of, err, promote the idea of donation services and promote the idea of
helping, to support the podcast that you like. Erm, we don't want to be a payment
handler, obviously, we wouldn't, *chuckles* but we do want to sort of help
make it a lot more visible when there is a service that you can actually put money
towards. And the last one, it's been on the roadmap since channels were
introduced, it's very, very complex, umm! *chuckles* As, as somebody who does not
work on the backend, I don't really have the tech, technological knowledge to go
into it, but there is this idea of 'channel claiming', where, if somebody,
err, uploads some music to a channel, and it's not their music, the person who's
music it is should be able to claim that channel and take control of it. Umm, as
you can imagine, that's a very very complex thing to do, particularly over
federation, erm, because you have all of the different implications of the wider
Fediverse to take into account there. Erm, so, it's our biggest boom; it's also
our biggest, erm, challenge, day-to-day is working with that federation. But,
that moves on to, moves me on to my next point, which is all about sort of
decentralized podcasting. Erm, this may seem like a strange concept to people who
do podcasting, because, err, podcasts are decentralized by design, really. Erm, I
didn't know a lot about podcasts, going into this. As I say, it was a very much a
learning experience, erm, but the more reading I did into podcasts as part of
the research that we did for this, the more fascinated I became by how they work
and how they're set up. And, the thing that struck me was, erm, podcasts have
this, err, uni - they occupy this unique space of being very very, err,
disruptive, low-tech, erm, you know, certainly audio podcasts, err but video
as well, disruptive, low-tech, standards-compliant ways of communicating
a lot of information. So, podcasts can be hosted anywhere; err, as long as they
generate a valid feed anybody can capture them into a podcatcher and play the files
linked, using a relevant, erm, piece of software. Erm, that means that the, the
potential listener-base is enormous, erm, much more so than, you know, anything
based on, erm, you know, a single platform, a centralized platform. And,
this was one of the reasons that, when we were designing, err, the podcast
publications tools, we were so emphatic about being a part of that existing
infrastructure, making sure that we didn't try to, sort of lock people into
our way of thinking, but instead follow what podcasting was already doing,
because it already seemed pretty great: we had, you know, things like RSS
feeds, erm, we had sort of, good, erm, encodings being used like MP3, which
could be so widely used it's, it's, it's kind of ubiquitous at this point! Erm,
and, and, that's kind of a really important part of it. And the reason that
this came to my attention was, during some of the conversations we were having
with podcasters, err, and specifically when we were looking at, erm, Funkwhale
as a podcatcher, so something that consumes RSS feeds and plays them back,
erm, somebody had said something about a specific podcast, I think it was called,
the, The Last Podcast on the Left. And they said, basically, "it's a shame, I
won't be able to play this through Funkwhale because they are going
Spotify-exclusive, and so they're not producing an RSS feed anymore." And,
*sighs*, this, worries me slightly; erm, it, it's, it's a concerning kind of, err,
tr- trend away from what podcasts stand for, fr- from, from my understanding of
what podcasts stand for. Erm, because when you go exclusive to something
like Spotify, you have the introduction of DRM, and sort of, erm, you're sort of
creating a walled around content, and certainly for content that used to be
free, and- and open, so, you know, it used to follow the same rules as
everything else, for it to suddenly go into a, a platform-specific, erm,
publication, is a big break. And there are a couple of reasons for this, but the
primary one is, let's say that, with podcasting the only limitation for a user
is that they have a machine that has software that is capable of, of listening
to that podcast; it's capable of reading the feed, and playing back the, the
audio. That's your limitation. If you put it onto, err, something like Spotify, you
actually divide this into four - four different experiences. The first two are,
users who live in a country, that have access to Spotify, erm, and those people
will have two experiences; one, they will either listen to an ad-supported, erm,
err- version of the show, and the second one is that they pay for a, erm, a
subscription to the actual, erm, *typing* the actual podcast. Err, sorry, to the
actual, erm, erm, platform. Then you have people who go into other, live in other
countries, erm, which don't have Spotify served up to them. And those people have
more experiences; one is that they have to pay for a VPN, and, err, basically
access Spotify externally, using the ads, and then again, access externally using
a subscription. And then there's that lost fifth one, which is, they don't have
the money for any of this, so, they can't listen. So we've fractured the user-base
by centralizing the, erm, by centralizing the content into a certain place, and the
problem with something like Spotify is that, that point, when you've done that,
and you've taken that, sort of, erm, you've taken that decentralized nature
away, what you have left is not a podcast, it's essentially corporate
radio, and, like I say, for something that started off as a podcast, as
something that started off freely available, having it move in that way is,
somewhat concerning. But, at the same time, we have to look at 'why does that
happen?' And, and generally the answer is *chuckles*: podcasting is expensive. Erm,
everything that takes up peoples' time, is expensive. And podcasting, from the
little I have done of it, is very expensive. You've got to take the time to
script, and record, and edit, and work with, erm, you know, all of that audio
and video, you've got to find a place to publish it, you've got to do all of the,
erm, you know, promotion around it, and if you are looking to make money off of
it, you have to search around for, err, you know, sponsorships, and ad deals, and
things like that. So when a company like Spotify comes along and says: "We'll take
all of that complexity off of your hands, and we'll give you a good portion of
money, erm, to pay your staff, and to, to make sure you can make a living", it's
very, very tempting. Erm, and you can kind of understand why it happens. And,
one of the things that we kind of found was that, erm, the Free Software
community, in general, is not always in, best equipped to deal with that kind of
thing; we don't, erm, we can't make a counter-offer to that. Erm, our weapon
here and what we can do about this, is, as I've said before, kind of try as much
as possible to make it easy for people to make the decision to continue listening
outside of those platforms, make it easy for them to continue to support, their,
erm, their favourite podcast directly, erm which means, lowering the sort of
barrier to entry for, erm, payments, lowering the barrier of entry for
sharing, for supporting, for, for getting things out there. Erm, but it's an
inherently, sort of, difficult thing to, to come up against, and something that,
you know, we *sighs* haven't found the answer *chuckles awkwardly* for yet, erm,
it's something we're still in discussions abut, erm, how we, how we might help
podcasters support themselves, how we might help *stumbles on words* people
support podcasters, err and musicians as well, this, this stretches to all areas,
erm, but the answer is, is, is a difficult one. It's not one that sort of,
erm, you know, comes very easily. Erm, now I've purposefully, sort of, left this
- I think I've got it exactly half an hour, that's good! *chuckles* - I
purposely didn't want this to go on for too long, erm, it's, it- that's kind
of the journey that we've had, erm, the first thing is: podcasting is fun! Err,
from a, sort of, user-perspective, podcasts are wonderful to listen to; erm,
having a good place to put podcasts is great for, erm, you know, people who make
them; from a software perspective, err, they're a bit of a nightmare, especially
when they aren't what your, erm, *chuckles* software was originally sort
of, erm, set up to do, err there's a lot of work goes into it, it's, erm, I think
it's underestimated in general. Erm, but, you know, it's worth putting the effort
in to, to get something like that. Erm, free software world, the open source
software world, erm, we, we still face some significant challenges, erm, with
assisting people with things like, anything to, anything to do with finances
is something where we struggle, and, erm, it's because we don't have that
monolithic approach; it's because we don't have that, erm, central financing
erm, so it tends to be that, you know, we need to focus more on improving, err, the
experience of working within a, sort of, direct donation world and a direct, sort
of, erm, way of, of working. Erm, and, yeah, th- this, this, this whole sort of
trend of existing podcasts being picked up by, erm, companies, and, you know,
things that used to be so free and easily accessible becoming walled-off inside (I
only know of Spotify doing it but I can imagine the same thing happening with
Apple Music and Deezer and a lot of others), erm, is kind of a concerning
move which is diluting what was really quite a fantastic, sort of, idea, and
it's a shame that it happens to some of the ones that people find, you know,
people connect with the most strongly; I think, erm, two of the most popular
podcasts that have been picked up are things like, erm, Joe Rogan, and The Last
Podcast on the Left, which is, it's a shame, erm, because high-profile things
being taken over has meaning, and, erm, you know, it will normalise it in, if, in
my eyes at least. But, with the use of free- free software tools, with the use
of, you know, these open standards, real podcasting will never go away; it will
always, you know, 'bubble up' underneath, we will always see people, erm,
continuing to, you know, to put things out. So - yeah! It's, it's not all
hopeless, this wasn't what that talk *chuckles* this talk was about; it was
more that just about this is something I think is very important, and something
that, you know, as a project we're really striving to support. Erm, so, I think
that takes me to- quite nicely 35 minutes was exactly what I was aiming for... If
anybody has any questions, erm, I think that the, erm, I think that the, err, I
think that the number has been put into the chat; erm, it's +49-5361, err,
890-286-8001, err, and if you're using event phone it's just 8001. Erm, I'll
just have a look and see if anyone asked any questions in here... Err, let's have
a look... Yeah: "How do I find, how can I find a Funkwhale instance for a podcast
I'm planning that suits me, my needs and my content the best?" Erm, yeah so the
link there is, is a good idea, the err, 'Get Started' guide, erm, we actually
have a, erm, a sort of a 'podpicker', we call it, erm, which is, just something
that sort of takes you through the summary of different pods, erm, which is
what we ref- how we refer to servers, erm; people can write a summary of what
sort of content they on there; erm, the two biggest servers, erm, are open.audio,
and err... ...I think Tanuki Tunes, which is my server, is quite, sort of, big and
open; erm, there are lots of servers out there, so, you know, if you find one
where you think "it would fit in - here" *laughs* then great! Erm, you know,
usually just find one that has open registrations and, and sign up. Or, if
you're feeling brave, erm, install it for yourself; err it's, it's a fairly easy
install. There are some hosts that will host it for you, erm; they're listed on
the funkwhale.audio website, so if you just wanted somebody to set it up for
you, so that you could host a podcast, erm, then yes, you could sort of, err put
it in there. Err: "Do you know the podcastindex.org project?" Err, I don't,
personally, err I will look it up, after this; that looks interesting. Err, "If
there's a solution to is to be found that could work for podcasters, could it also
be applicable to indie musicians? Or are the two fields, err, way too different in
order to accommodate both?" Err, I'll just finish this one; I think I've got a
err, telephone person coming in... So, err if this p- I mean *sighs* yes and no;
err if we're talking about supporting, erm, financially, then, yes, in theory we
already have some of those; I mean there are already donation platforms which kind
of work for a multitude of things, erm, so really I think we should be trying to,
to sort of lean into things like Liberapay, Ko-fi, maybe Patreon, erm,
rather than, sort of, trying to solve that problem within the publication
software. Because those features already exist, and because that's already quite,
err, well-established, erm, having better interoperability between those tools,
erm, is probably the best way forward. You know, you just want to take the
complexity away from the person listening. It'd be nice if they had
something like, for example, you're listening to a song, you really like it,
so, maybe you pre-load a certain amount of, you know, credits to your account,
and if every time you, sort of, play a song you really like you could throw some
credits their way. I don't know; the complexity of the actual *chuckles*
implementation is beyond me a little bit; as I say, I'm just a front-end guy, but
erm, I don't think there's that big a difference between them, err, from, from
that sort of perspective. Erm... yeah. Err, the servers were, err so open.audio
is the main, sort of flagship server, erm, and my server is called:
tanukitunes.com; I'll put that link in. Erm, but there are lots of, there are
lots of servers; as I say, if you go to the actual, funkwhale.audio website, erm,
they're there. Erm, so "Why should I, as a podcaster, decide against a centralized
platform with lots of users, for a decentralized one with only a few users?
How can we dramatically increase the visibility of my project, erm my product
on Funkwhale?" Erm, it's a good question; I mean, the, the thing is with the
centralized platform, erm, is, you may be on a platform with a lot of users, but
that doesn't mean that you're actually going to be seen by a lot of users. Erm,
there is a lot of stuff on Spotify which never gets played. Erm, that, that's just
*stutters* the fact of it; there are, there are so many... there's so much
content on there, that, you are just, you know, *chuckles* you're just a grain of
sand; erm, obviously if you've got, err, err a sort of established fan-base, and
you've got a lot of people already listening to you, then that doesn't
affect you, but, in that case, it also wouldn't affect you if you were
decentralized. Those same people would still be listening, and in fact you would
be able to reach more people; erm, podcasts, kind of, allow for
word-of-mouth in a way that something centralized doesn't. It can be passed
around a lot more, err, sort of, virally. Erm, as for, you know, Funkwhale, I mean,
Funkwhale's greatest strength is the Fediverse, erm, with this. Err, so, the
fact that the audio can be shared between peoples' servers, and sort of streamed
directly from server to server, the fact that it can be followed on a multitude of
different, err, platforms, is where the visibility would come from; it's that
sort of viral sharing. But the fact that it also works outside of Funkwhale, it
also works, err, just using a traditional sort of podcatcher, also plays into its
favour, and that's where Spotify kind of falls apart. Erm, yes, Spotify has a lot
of users, but erm, you do kind of cut off an entire core audience, which is the
concern. Erm... yeah. It, it's, it's not the, there's no simple answer *chuckles*
to this is, is kind of the way it goes, but erm, I feel like, erm, the point made
earlier in the, in the chat, which was that, if you centralize it and you lock
it behind a walled garden it's no longer really a podcast; it kind, that kind of
stands; it's not a podcast, technically, any more. It's something different, and
that's not necessarily a bad thing, but it is true; it's no longer what it is was
originally supposed to be. Erm, so, you know, it, it, it is best, I think, to try
and make use of, err, of, you know, tools that fit into the existing podcast
infrastructure. OK: that looks like all of the questions; I don't think anybody's
calling in, which is fine... So, with that being the case, if there's no more
questions, erm, thank you very much for listening to me ramble about, erm,
*laughs* podcast, err, for forty minutes! Erm, obviously, if, if you'd like to
check the project out, it's just at, at funkwhale.audio. Erm, but also, go out
and support your favourite podcasters, whatever platform they're on. Erm, you
know, god knows they'd appreciate it *laughs* Especially in these times. Err,
thank you very much, erm, I think, that's where I'm gonna' call it quits!
Herald: I think we have a phone call. Ciarán Ainsworth: OK.
Herald: Someone on the phone? Question: Ah, yeah?
Ciarán: Hello? Q: Hi.
Ciarán: Hello!
*phone line hisses* I just wondered whether you're familiar with a website
called forgotify.com. You brought up earlier that there's, like, tons of audio
that has never been heard of, and that's basically sites, so it's like a song, or
a piece of material on Spotify that has never been heard of before.
Ciarán: Hmm. What was the name of the site again, sorry?
Q: Err, forgotify.com Ciarán: Oh, no, I've not heard of that!
That's quite interesting. So is it, it- it just plays stuff that doesn't get
played much on Spotify? Q: Yeah, you just click, click on a
button and it literally shows you, like, a random song, or another piece of audio
that has been, like, distributing on Spotify but never heard before. I even
found some tracks from 2008/2009, I'm not sure.
Ciarán: That's... great! *laughs* I really like, I really like that idea.
Yeah, I, that, that is a, a genuine concern; I, I, when I was, erm, I used to
use Google+ a lot, because I'm that kind of person, and I was part of, erm, sort
of 'publishing muscians', err, club, and I had people on there who published on
Spotify and they never got listened to. You know, it does take quite a lot for
you to, to actually get picked up Spotify's algorithms and to be, sort of,
err, prioritised. So, I- it's not the best solution for podcasters; I think
there's a reason that only already-popular podcasts are getting
picked up for Spotify circulation. But, you know, that, that sort of project
sounds really interesting, because it'd be fascinating to see what gets forgotten
down the sort of 'cracks of the seat', *chuckles* so to speak!
Q: Yeah. It's also exhausting to play the game of the admin work and stuff; I think
that's, like, one of the main reasons why I'm not making music myself. Things sound
*phone line cuts out*, personally. So that's why *phone line cuts out*.
Ciarán: Yeah. Yeah, it is, it is. Q: Anyways, thanks a lot; I'm not, I'm
not affiliated with the site. I just like, found it very random and decided to
share that. Thanks. Ciarán: No, thank you very much,
that's really interesting. Q: See you around!
Ciarán: Thank you; bye!
OK, if, err, we don't have any more calls... Going once, going twice!
Ciarán: *chuckles* OK! Herald: No more calls.
Ciarán: OK, thank you again for, for coming to, to watch, and I hope you
have, err, a great rest of your conference, err, looks like it's
going to be a lot of fun.
*postroll music*
Captions by Sebastian 'seabass' Crane