Music Sharing with Navidrome and Funkwhale
Free Sounds
© Lead Image © alinadem, 123RF.com
If you like sharing music but don't want to give up your independence, try Navidrome, an open source, web-based music collection server and streamer, or Funkwhale, a platform for uploading, sharing, and publishing audio content across the federated web.
Music streaming is everywhere: YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Deezer, and other services compete for the listener's attention. Many of these music streaming services provide an excellent user experience, but they also determine which genres and artists receive promotion from platform owners.
And that's just the beginning of the complications. Many podcasts are exclusive to one platform because the creator signed a contract that forbids sharing content on different platforms. Users are sometimes forced to install several applications because of this vendor lock-in, which makes content collections harder to achieve. If the content was purchased or downloaded for free and doesn't include Digital Rights Management (DRM), then it can all be managed by a single application; however, sometimes that is impossible – a platform doesn't allow content to be downloaded at all, or it only supports DRM content.
AI-generated content is another issue for the streaming set. Linux users love to experiment, and many users enjoy experimenting with AI-generated music tools. However, some online platforms ban or limit AI-generated content. The box entitled "Competing with Spotify" summarizes some of the concerns Linux users have about the commercial streaming industry.
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