Subsonic API and Bandcamp and ...?

General
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Saw announcement that Bandcamp is implementing the Subsonic API

Is this something fair music platforms should look into supporting? Mirlo, Jam.coop, etc.

I don’t fully understand what Subsonic enables or doesn’t but I did see Navidrome supports the API as well so I assume this allows purchases to be streamed alongside your self hosted media… or something?

Anyone using it and know more?

Can this be leveraged for the benefit of musicians (support and discovery and promotion of fair platforms)?

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2

The announcement

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Yeah, honestly, we didn’t know this API standard existed. It seems specifically for owned collections, which is definitely something we support.

We have been talking to the person who builds Radiccio and it sounds like they support SubSonic too.

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While it only does collection, we’re definitely conscious that having a system in place that would allow to simultaneously listen to bandcamp and mirlo (and others !) collections alongside eachother would, in a way, be great for discovery by proxy because it would mean someone could feel “ok” buying things anywhere on any platform reassured they will still be able to access it anywhere from one single place, so it makes smaller platforms more enticing. In this spirit, it’s something we’re definitely going to give more thoughts to in the future.

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It’s some kind of rss for collections of music. The client is music player software. I used it with my private collection of music on nextcloud which i can then play on my phone with PowerAmpache app. i feel with this move bc made a small step towards opening up, or at least using an existing open protocol allowing third party players to be part of it.

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Just to fold it into the conversation @limebar , remember your post about FunkWhale implementing some aspects of SubSonic?

Can you say more about this @petitminion , and whether it seems to have been worth the effort?

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Also, according to a post by @lollerskater in the verse, BrandCramp is using the OpenSonic variant of the API, which …

improves on the API while staying backward-compatible.

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from my pov subsonic is a very nice way to allow users to choose their UI. You can use Funkwhale without relying on the app we provide. It is also a very nice example of a protocol allowing interoperability .

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