Hi! I’m thinking about an editorial project that I tentatively call Selecteh, an online selection, where I listen to new music, select the artists or songs that I like, and I feature them. It’s a known, even old model, that relies on the subjectivity of human selection.
I say “I” but (if there is interest) the project could include other authors creating their own selecteh, under a multi-genre multi-style umbrella. However, it should be sustainable with just one selecteh as well.
I’m not a music critic. I don’t have much time. I don’t have a professional or economic incentive. Why do I think this idea will succeed, and how? Well, I’m genuinely curious about finding new music that I like, and share it with others. It could be fun and rewarding.
And why readers should care? If they love music and they like the criteria of a selecteh, they will love the music selected for them, and they will know more about the artists behind that music.
The formula selectehs follow
Each selecteh has one or more selectors, with declared criteria about the types of music featured, and a fitting name. They can choose the language(s) they prefer. English is default but not required.
Every month, a new issue features a selection of releases from the previous month.
The selecteh’s hashtag on the Fediverse (that anyone can add to their posts when they publish or recommend music).
(Where else?)
Only new releases.
100% human selection through personal taste. No ads or promos, no popularity contest, no favors to friends, no self-promotion.
The music speaks. Features consist of embedded players with short texts or just a link. The artists contribute most of the words and images. There is little room for the selectors’ ego beyond selecting.
Artists may submit their new releases for consideration, readers may submit recommendations too, but selectors are expected to go out there and listen to whatever is being released.
The URL of a selecteh is [NameOfSelecteh].selecteh.org
The “e” vowel is strongly recommended in the selectehs’ names, to follow a humorous consistency. The project name only uses this vowel. Artistic suggestion.
I am starting a selecteh called “Electre” dedicated to music partially or totally created with electronic instruments. Therefore, it will be at electre.selecteh.org
I aim to start selecting music released in August to feature it in a first issue in September.
Others are invited to join and create their selectehs, with the understanding that right now we have nothing, and I have no idea what if anything will be in place in September.
The author/s of [NameOfSelecteh].selecteh.org can publish posts autonomously.
It is easy to embed players based on external links to social music platforms – we won’t host music.
It is easy to embed images and video based on external links to social music or (really) social media platforms – we won’t host media if we can avoid it.
It is easy to subscribe to a selecteh via ActivityPub/Fediverse and email. Other social subscription methods (?) are welcome.
It is easy to comment from the Fediverse – we won’t host local comments if we can avoid it. Or should we? To be decided.
It is easy to report content allegedly violating the code of conduct (federated comments included), and it is easy to act on these reports.
It is easy to submit music recommendations to a selecteh.
To select the music, which music distribution platforms are within scope?
And as platforms are selected, which ways has each platform to quickly check new music released?
In case you are interested, we are working on an experiment to make FairPlayer a platform to allow for some of what you are suggesting.
One of our driving aims for FairPlayer is to create a platform that enables listener communities. So editorial content may become a big part of that. We have some wip prototype and are looking for feedback, we will host a videocall on Monday afternoon (2026-07-26 around 6pm TBC) to demo what we’ve done so far, open up possibilities and gather feedback. Might also be a hybrid session Barcelona + online.
Sam from NHAM will be there, myself and others from the FairPlayer team and adjacent projects. Let me know if you want to join. Or if you can’t we can schedule a separate session.
Hola @txels! I had this idea in mind for a while but a couple of semirandom events in the past days made put my thoughts in writing and share them. One of these events was to finally put some time to enable my Fairplayer-through-Mirlo connection and sign up on your project forum (and yes, I’m a Catalan speaker as well). So yes, Fairplayer has already inspired and motivated this idea, among others. I’ll reach out for details about the call on Monday.
In addition to @txels’ reply, there has been more progress today.
I have edited the first post to add the places to scan for new music:
I will start investigating an efficient way to get a queue of new music from each site. RSS? We’ll see, and ideas welcome.
I have updated the first post to also define that WordPress is the default software candidate. There are interesting alternatives (and I just learned about this list of delightful fediverse experience) but they are of course younger and more experimental. I just want to have something robust that someone like me can maintain without much server-side complications. I want to spend my project time with content and people, not with software.
Good morning @icaria36, I answer you with the help of the softcatala translator
I really like your idea and it is a good way to discover music, through people who have more time (and sometimes good taste) than you and who do a curatorship.
On the role of Fairplayer within your idea, I see two things:
Fairplayer is not equivalent to the others (mirlo, ampwall, bandwagon, etc.) since it does not have music there, it takes everything from them so the platform of zines that you propose can use Fairplayer to find/index music but I think not as “supplier”.
Fairplayer, beyond being a player who takes music from different sources to make life easier for the listener, is also designed so that small communities or curatorships get their instance and the home page or the one to discover are cured by them.
I believe, therefore, that the new tool can be as one more option, equivalent to Fairplayer, for the social music ecosystem or to integrate certain ideas into Fairplayer. We talk about it on Monday!
I love the idea. I personally have no time to be this kind of active-producing curator/selector/reviewer/playlist-maker. maybe i would create a mix or podcast from time to time.
i do think about incentive and motivation for someone to use such platform. it would need to offer some smart features that “ordinary” blogs or newsletters or forums don’t. and.. why is it called a zine? webzine, magazine, anarchazine? just chewing on words here and thinking about what certain terms mean and who would they be attractive to.
btw, we need more of these human-curated discovery outputs. always. like mirlo and bandcamp and others, i agree with the idea that the best so-called “discovery” mechanism in today’s flood of music production is human curation - radio, music blogs, webzines, listening communities, etc…
so i fully support this effort in any shape or form, just take care that it is sustainable for you and does not have unrealistic expectations from the rest of the network.
We’ve been mindful over at Mirlo to not use Zine as long as we don’t feel what we’re offering is actually close to Zine culture, which some of us have links to and appreciation for, so there are very specific things in my mind that make something “a Zine” (high level of DIY customization, printability, etc.)
Ok, no “zines”. I wasn’t totally convinced about the name myself.
So what are these subdomains called? Quick self-brainstorming with first impressions:
Monitors - hmmmmmmmmmm maybe? Musicians know what a monitor speaker is, and those who don’t know still understand the word in the sense of monitoring something. “Subscribe to the Electre Selecteh monitor”. “Electre Selecteh monitor August 2026”. “Create your own monitor in Selecteh”…
This idea could be reinforced with an icon of a monitor speaker, and Selecteh’s logo could have several monitor speakers, showing that it is a collection of monitors. Hmmmmmm
Loudspeakers - hmmmm. Actually I came up with idea before “monitor” but I think between the two, monitor is better.
Waves - mmm why not, rather abstract but literally related to music and there -wave suffix is commonly used in the musical context. “Check the Electre Selecteh wave”, “Electre Selecteh wave August 2026”, “Join Selecteh and create your own wave”… I need to think more about this. How does it sound to you?
Mixes - not bad but… rather misleading, perhaps? The music featured won’t be mixed in a single file. “Electre Selecteh mix August 2026” sounds good, but again, it may set the wrong expectations.
Stations - nah, even more misleading because the music selected won’t be broadcasted.
Newsletters - nah. Sounds like email-only – and old.
Selections - nah, too literal and bland.
Channels - mmmaybe, if there is nothing better. Sounds boring though.
Spaces - sure, but that is even more literal, bland and boring.
I’m narrowing this as I start getting into details. Even if by the numbers most of the users/readers/listeners will be “people who like music”, I think the target audiences we should have in mind are DJs, podcasters, journalists and other people who professionally or seriously amateuristic seek good new fresh music and artists. Will they ever check Selecteh? I don’t know. But if the Selecteh selectors have this audience in mind, it will help us keeping ourselves to a good quality of selections. It’s like accessibility, if you build with accessibility in mind, for a small audience that requires you to work with higher standards, the end result will also work better for the majority.
When it comes to users as in selectors who request the creation of their space, I imagine two types of people to start with:
The same kind of people who like X and start a blog, a podcast, a video channel, etc, about X, to turn their passion into something that maybe fulfills some of their ego and also works toward a potential CV or some vague professional future.
People immersed in a scene / community / region who sees Selecteh as a chance to promote the best of the best to wider audiences.
But hey, if it’s only me during the first year and I’m having fun doing my Electre Selecteh, that’s all I need. For the first year.
As for a name to use instead of zine, what about ‘sine’? It’s similar enough to get the idea across without appropriating zine culture, and it’s a type of wave that continues steadily through time. As hopefully the sines created on your platform will
FWIW I would definitely consider curating a sine on a platform like this. Genre-agnostic, but focused on releases from Aotearoa, and particularly CC-licensed recordings.
Finally, I like the idea of using WP+AP. It’s a mature, well-supported software option, that’s been thoroughly battle-tested by groups like WeDistribute for syndicating publications over AP. Another option is Ghost. It’s multi-tenant out of the box, with great UX for both authors and readers (I’m using it for Disintermedia.net.nz). But be aware that AP support requires a separate module in its own container
Thank you very much @strypey for your encouragement. Yes, an Aotearoa CC… monitor? is a perfect example of what a selector interested in a region could do. Please keep mulling your idea and I hope to have a prototype platform to offer soon.
I have heard a lot about Ghost and it is an interesting option, but I have never been the admin of an instance. My first question is what happens when you have 100 instances and it is time to upgrade.
As a lazy amateur admin, WordPress looks like a solid option when it comes to create new instances and upgrade your whole setup.
AFAIK, as with WordPress, you only need 1 instance to host as many authors as you like. That’s what I mean by multi-tenant, sorry that wasn’t clear.
So AFAICT an upgrade involves updating one instance, and maybe the AP module (which can be shared among instances). Just as with WP it would involve upgrading one instance, and maybe the AP plugin.
In both cases, you’d need to configure DNS to create a subdomain for each author, and redirect it to their feed.
FWIW I find the term ‘monitor’ a bit clunky TBH, and it gives me ‘hall pass please’ vibes. But if that’s what you’re going with …
As far as I can read online, a single Ghost installation cannot provide multiple blogs under multiple subdomains, each with their own default language and theme. For that (it seems) the only option is to install one ghost instance per subdomain, an come up with a process to upgrade them whenever it is needed. It doesn’t look like a type of installation like WordPress multisite, that you need someone specialized to set up but then you can maintain as a tech-savvy-but-no-pro-sysadmin person.
Or maybe I have missed something and I’m just finding old obsolete information?
I’m not a native English speaker and it is difficult for me to grasp this kind of nuances. If “monitor” doesn’t sound good, then we can use something else.
The problem I see with “sines” is twofold: it still references fanzines etc, and at least in Spanish “senos” has many meanings (including the type of wave) but in common language and out of context many speakers will get in their mind the image of [most probably female] “breasts” [to test this assumption, I just searched for “senos” in Spanish Wikipedia and this is exactly what I got].
But well, there are many points more important to discuss now that the name of the publications. We can call them “selections” (literal) or “collections” (a common word in the context of music) and move on until someone has a clearly better idea.
I’m hosting my website on ghost. You can use the AP stuff on ghost.org and still selfhost the rest.
I’m single tenant, so I don’t know about that stuff. But I’m running it in docker compose, so upgrading is just ‘docker compose pull && docker compose up -d’.
Ok, I came with pre-conceived idea that WordPress multi-site was the way to go, but the more that I think (and learn) about Ghost, the more it’s making sense to try this instead.
Self-hosting the web part seems quite straightforward for single instances, whether it is under a domain or a subdomain. Updating seems even more straightforward, especially if it’s something that doesn’t have to be done frequently, and if a server snapshot is taking before proceeding just in case. Right now it is hard to tell whether will have a couple of selectors, leave alone a dozen. If we reach a number that starts making manual upgrades bothersome… well, that will be a good problem to have.
I’m not sure how easy it is to self-host the mailing part – I need to learn more.
And no idea about self-hosting the ActivityPub part – it seems to be beta and part of the Docker install?
There is also the Stripe connection – no idea how easy it is to selfhost and whether it comes integrated and configurable not to go through the Ghost infrastructure. Why this? Just thinking about the possibility. It would allow to enable tips and donations. Nothing that I’m personally interested for Selecteh or my own Electre publication, but it might be an incentive for others? Fits in the line of fairness for creators and voluntarily donating for music or in this case selections that people value.
EDIT: Interesting reading about how (at least December 2025) the ActivityPub implementation in Ghost is compared to WordPress’, by someone who knows well both:
Got a virtual server and installed Ghost: https://selecteh.org (a plain install right now)
ActivityPub seems to work, and I succeeded following @selecteh@selecteh.org.
I haven’t posted anything yet.
Email… I’m not sure it works. I cannot find a simple “test email”, and right now the UI is telling me “too many attempts” to subscribe. I’m going to sleep, and I’ll try tomorrow.
After getting this instance running properly, and before configuring or writing anything, I will try to install the second instance in electre.selecteh.org. If I get two instances running in the same server, then chances are that I’ll be able to get more if needed. Then I will aim for a first version of Selecteh.org.
Full disclosure, I’m a total beginner when it comes to running servers. The Ghost instance at disintermedia.net.nz is the only one I’ve run in production, and TBH @lightweight did most of the setup for me. So take everything I say about this with a grain of salt.
Ghost just outsources this to MailGun. Apparently there are only a handful of recognized mass mailers that can send bulk email without it getting stuck in spamcatchers. I don’t want to give MailGun money, so I haven’t set this up. I’m hoping to find a mass mailer based in Aotearoa (why on earth didn’t the postal service get into this business?!? But I digress …)
When we set up my Ghost instance about a year ago, AP support was a separate module. I haven’t yet set it up on my instance. If they’re confident enough about it now to make it part of the standard install, that sounds like progress.
But I think the idea of it being a separate module is that someone running a Ghost farm - as you’re looking at doing - can just use one AP module for all your AP traffic. AFAICT that’s what Ghost.org do for their own hosted service.
It’s a simple integration, installed by default, with no dependency on ghost.org. Of the 3 core integrations (AP, email, payments), this was by far the easiest to get working. It’s the only one I got working so far.
I see the problem with ‘sines’ What about ‘picks’? In English it can mean the same as ‘selections’ but it’s a bit shorter and snappier. But you’re right, this is the least important consideration right now.
Ok, I got tired of trying to fix this transactional mail thing (sending newsletters works), and now I see that ActivityPub isn’t quite working either. This is why I’m ready to pay someone who (unlike me) knows what they are doing. If you or someone you know is interested…
Projects > Fairplayer (which indirectly acts as a Faircamp funnel) as of now has only one instance: https://fairplayer.band/ and I’m trying to figure out the way to find new releases. I haven’t found a static list sorted by most recent and, in fact, the albums/tracks have only the year, not a more specific date. This is a problem for Selecteh because we want to focus on the music released in the current/previous month. @txels maybe you know a trick?
JamCoop, after only one day watching, it’s not clear to me whether “Recent albums” is a plain list by most recent or a selection. @jam, same question, if there is a way for listeners to scan for new releases please let me know.
Beyond this, I will look at any suggestions from artists or listeners sent to Electre (when the site and the Fediverse account are running).
(Are these open source? Is open source code a requirement for social music platforms? EDIT: I was thinking that an easy way to resolve this is that any platform supported by Fairplayer OR active in TSMN can be within the scope of Selecteh. In the end “social” is about principles but also practice.)
Anyone else missing? For example, is there a Projects > Funkwhale aggregator of sorts? @petitminion would know. Or another Faircamp aggregator?
The embedded players aren’t possible right now – see this test with Mirlo, Bandwagon, Fairplayer, Faircamp, Bandcamp, and… Spotify & Soundcloud (the only ones embedding a player, thanks to Ghost’s code?). I don’t know whether this can be resolved on your side or whether it depends on Ghost code.
Anyway, we will survive with texts, images, and links.
So yes, Fairplayer has already inspired and motivated this idea, among others. I’ll reach out for details about the call on Monday.
By the way, is there another list to look at? 