Improving RSS feeds in social music platforms

General
, , ,
1

While documenting RSS for music makers I tested the RSS features of Funkwhale, Mirlo and Bandwagon, with very different results. I’m making this post wiki in case others want to add information and keep it updated.

Artist feed

This is the basic use case. The goal is to offeran RSS feed with the artist’s new releases, offering descriptions with rich formatting text, cover art, and an embedded player or the downloadable audio file when the artist wants that.

As of April 2025, Funkwhale offers basically everything an artist needs to distribute their music via RSS, with a feature set on par with Soundcloud.

This is a random :sweat_smile: example of an artist feed created by Funkwhale, with audio automatically downloaded by AntennaPod and playable directly from AntennaPod.

1000021528
10000215281080×2400 401 KB

More screenshots

RSS feed entry of a song, and then the description available as “Shownotes”, also with Funkwhale / AntennaPod

1000021529
10000215291080×2400 168 KB

1000021530
10000215301080×2400 300 KB

The following features have been tested with AntennaPod, a popular open source podcast player.

Feature Funkwhale Mirlo Bandwagon
Artist RSS feed :white_check_mark: :white_check_mark: :white_check_mark:
Artist feed title :white_check_mark: :white_check_mark: :white_check_mark:
Artist image :white_check_mark: :x: + :x:
Artist description :white_check_mark: :white_check_mark: :x:
Album/Song title :white_check_mark: :white_check_mark: :white_check_mark:
Album/Song description :white_check_mark: :x: + :white_check_mark:
Album/Song art cover :white_check_mark: :x: + :x:
Album/Song player :question: :x: + :x:
Song audio download :white_check_mark: :x: + :x:

Note: Funkwhale offers RSS at an artist channel level, and channels can have single songs listed. Mirlo and Bandwagon offer Artist feeds, and entries are albums by default, even when albums often contain just one song. This complicates the distribution of audio files via RSS because there isn’t a specification for downloading multiple audios for an album.

Multi-artist feeds

Platforms can create RSS feeds based on criteria like all recent releases, new releases by music genre, playlists, and so on. Then users can subscribe to these feeds to discover new music from multiple artists.

Feeds Funkwhale Mirlo Bandwagon
Playlists :x: :x: :x:
Tracks by tag :x: :x: :white_check_mark:
All new tracks :x: :x: + :white_check_mark:
All new albums :x: :white_check_mark: :white_check_mark:
All new artists :x: :x: + :white_check_mark:

Note that the same feature limitations from the section above will apply to these feeds. For instance, if a platform doesn’t include downloadable audio files by an artist, they won’t be available in these feeds either.

3 Likes
2

I have put a lot of time on this draft and RSS for music makers already, and I welcome help at least from Faircamp users to add the related information.

1 Like
3

Additionally, we’re unlikely to make songs available via RSS if people need to buy them.

Here’s some tickets to track some of this work on Mirlo

1 Like
4

related :

1 Like
5
1 Like