Hi, I learned about https://sonica.app months ago when someone mentioned it somewhere on the Fediverse. Back then it was just a plain page with a form to enter your email to get a notification about future updates, and a link to a rather silent Discord server.
A few days ago I received an email, and I have requested permission to share it here (I’m removing the phone number; please ask me privately if you want it) just in case anyone not aware about project is interested. I haven’t got time to look at it yet.
Hi xxxxxxx,
I’m Noel Jackson, and I want to personally thank you for being one of Sonica’s first users.
Sonica was created by myself, as a single developer, to give back to the music community. It’s a place to organize your music, share it with friends and fans, get feedback easily, and sell it directly to those that want to support it. Think of it as home for your music.
As an early adopter, I’d like to ask for your help with the following:
As it looks right now, this is not interesting for me. It looks like platform thinking, not community. It’s not open source, and there’s no indication that it will become open source. They’re heavily reliant on corporate platforms (Discord/Threads/Instagram/WhatsApp). It’s not enough to announce that it’s made by musicians for musicians (while using corporate speech like “monetize” and “empowering”). They need to show that they’re not just another platform.
I agree with these sentiments, but I think it’s important to avoid mistaking current state for trajectory.
Setting up a new online service is hard. I tried to set up a co-op for hosting fediverse services. Despite setting up specifically to do hosting to a high ethical standard, we were still using SS for our blog, rather than dogfooding. Although obviously hosting it ourselves was the medium-to-long term plan.
Maybe the Sonica folks would be keen to work with some of the ideas we’re bouncing around here? But just aren’t aware of the potential yet. So let’s invite them in!
Hence my “as it looks right now”. I’m not against what they’re doing, it’s just not something I would invest my time in right now. If there’s a shift towards a more open, less corporate presentation, I’ll reconsider. And of course they’d be welcome in here.