How Indie Video Killed The Spotify Star
By @limebar
In January 2024, I became aware of the Fediverse music subculture phenomenon called Jamuary. It challenges music makers to create one complete track per day during the entire month of January. It is a bonkers idea. But I gave it a shot, ended up making 18 tracks, and something interesting happened along the way…
I have several different processes that I use to make music. One of them involves using video sources. I previously created a few tracks this way and created a Peertube account to showcase them. I like working with video and audio together, so for Jamuary I decided to make a video for each track as well, because why not make a difficult challenge even harder? Nuts.
Peertube is great, Owncast is great, but it is still difficult to discover things I like, and it was apparent that people were not finding my videos either, despite shameless self-promotion on Mastodon. I decided to create a couple of playlists (FediVisuals and FediVisuals Live) but these are equally hard to find. Maintaining them is hopeless because discovery is hard in the first place! Nevertheless, in the process, I learned that there are many awesome musical artists on fedi who are also making amazing music videos!
My love for music videos was reawakened.
You see, I was around when MTV went on the air and I remember how influential music videos were for me as a teen. I don’t think it is crazy to say that without MTV, new wave wouldn’t have happened and most of the weird stuff I saw on 120 Minutes would never have played anywhere — Wax Trax owes as much to that show as they do to John Hughes 80s films. So I have nostalgia for music videos — because this was a time for great music discovery in my life.
Music discovery!
At its peak, Radio Free Fedi did a series of Owncast live performance trains that really showcased the A/V talent on fedi. When RFF shut down, I was happy that The Indie Beat, fueled by Bandwagon, sprang to life and carried the torch. They even have an Owncast server, but like most Owncast instances, it was dark much of the time.
All of the above made me want to light that server up with a 24×7 stream of music videos.
I reached out to @mizkirsten to ask if she would be interested in hosting a 24×7 music video channel. She was all for it but had no time to make it happen. While she’d researched and landed on Azuracast for TIBR, she didn’t have the spoons to search for the best video streaming solution. So I decided to dig into it myself.
I’d never done anything like this before, but I got a lot of help on fedi: Phil Nelson ( @philnelson) of RetroStrange TV explained how it worked and offered advice, as did Andrew Roach ( @ajroach42) of New Ellijay TV. I considered OBS Studio but that didn’t seem right for this because I wanted a hands-free, headless streamer running in the cloud, and I knew I couldn’t spend much time babysitting it. And while ffmpeg can stream video to Owncast, it would require major effort to make it robust for 24×7 hands-off streaming.
The answer came from Luka Prin/ce Lucija ( @luka) of BeYourOwnPlatform some months prior. They’d suggested LiquidSoap for another project, but I didn’t want to invest the energy at the time to learn this strange technology, an OCAML-based scripting language of the functional programming variety — somewhat outside my comfort zone. I quickly learned that this tool was made to solve 24×7 broadcasting problems and that the community around it was very helpful. If you get your head around functional programming, it can be quite powerful.
Once I’d proven this could work on my home PC, everything quickly started to come together. I knew that Sam ( @ethicalrevolution) and sknob ( @sknob) were interested in showcasing NHAM videos. I learned from the Lorenzo’s Music podcast ( @lorenzosmusic) that Roberta Fidora ( @RobertaFidora), who makes great music videos, wanted an Animation showcase. I knew that Meljoann ( @meljoann) was trying to promote artist discovery broadly, made great music videos, and had acquired technical skills from working with the Gravitons collective. I knew Keith ( @keefmarshall) made great music, had strong tech skills, and supported dozens of artists via the bonkwave community. Similarly, I knew AxWax ( @axwax) was an awesome music maker with strong technical skills. So Roberta pulled us all together in a Matrix room, along with Kirsten, where I was able to showcase the script and get technical help and review. I bought a test VPS and used Ax’s Owncast server for testing while building the script and the structure.
Along the way, I decided to document this on Codeberg so others could replicate it, because I’d found several complete examples of LiquidSoap code for radio stations, but not for TV stations. My secondary goal is to see more Owncast servers lighting up with 24×7 programming.
So, if you are an artist who would like to get your music videos on the air — or an animator who wants their work in rotation — see below!
We are building a 24×7 music video and animation channel for The Indie Beat and we need you!
This will be a consent-driven channel promoting indie musical artists from across the Fediverse, as well as animators who want to share their animation art (and who knows what else in the future?).
We will have a large chunk of airtime devoted to random play across styles and genres, as well as a few dedicated program slots for music in the electronic, jazz, ambient, pop, and rock families.
We will also have slots for NHAM, curated by Sam ( @ethicalrevolution), and an Animation Array slot, curated by Roberta Fidora ( @RobertaFidora).
There is no cost or pay to artists. Each video will display artist info including a QR code on-screen back to the artist’s chosen link. Videos will air by artist consent only and can be taken back down by request. Opt-in, opt-out, at will.
If you’d like to get your music and video art on the air at The Indie Beat’s federated Owncast server, keep reading!
How to submit videos for airplay on The Indie Beat TV:
We need and accept:
– Original music videos (no covers)
– Animations for the Animation Array program
– Short form eye-candy videos (~10s — these play periodically between music videos)
– Short station ID videos/jingles (~10s — these play periodically between music videos, see below for suggested script)
If you already have videos showcased on NHAM and have given consent to air on TIB TV it is not necessary to upload the videos again.
We do not accept any illegal, copyright-infringing, or explicitly NSFW material.
Please no “AI” or learning model-generated materials. If you use smart tools in your process, that is fine, as long as the final work is predominately human-made. Not really interested in generated materials.
We prefer not to air simple “visualizer” type music videos, unless they are artfully edited or otherwise human-crafted in some way.
We prefer music videos in the 15-second to 15-minute range as general guideline. However, very long videos will not be included in the hour-long programs as they would dominate program airtime — they would instead go into normal random play under the “anything goes” hours of programming.
Exceptions to these loose rules may be made based on perplexing intangibilities like taste and intuition. The curators are human.
Submitted materials must be MP4 videos with 1080p max resolution, but streaming goes out at 720p and 3000 kbps currently.
NOTE: Only submit original rendered video files. Do NOT submit MP4 files re-downloaded from Peertube or other platforms. Generally, these files will not work.
Submitted MP4 videos must include these metadata tags, which will be shown on-screen including a QR code to the artist’s website:
– artist
– title
– album
– website
– cover art
You can use a tool like Picard (or MP3Tag) to add these. If you need help, we can do it. Cover art is not displayed currently but will be in the future.
Submissions should be made using this form, also available on Roberta Fidora’s site, and right here:
More things you might be wondering about
Artists retain all rights to submitted materials: no rights, fee, or commission is claimed except non-exclusive right to air the material on the channel until the artist opts out.
Submissions may or may not get airtime, no guarantees. We may take videos in and out of rotation based on how much material we gather and due to limited storage and airtime.
Artists are not charged or paid. Artists receive exposure via onscreen metadata and QR code link. The entire effort is non-commercial and consent-driven. We may ask for community support to pay for servers, storage, bandwidth, etc., but we are volunteering our time and will never keep donations as “pay”. All donated money goes back into The Indie Beat channels.
Suggestion for station identification wording (but be as creative as you like): “You are watching The Indie Beat Television with videos by independent artists from across the fediverse. Find us online at the indie beat dot fm.”
– We plan to have slots for live performances if you want to do a show! Once we launch, you’ll contact @mizkirsten to request a time slot.
– We plan to have a few regularly recurring live programs. Watch for schedule updates at https://live.theindiebeat.fm/ and follow @streamer on the Fediverse (turn on notifications).
– We plan to support short promotional videos for new releases.
– We plan to support short promotional videos for other indie arts projects from around the fediverse that we hope to co-promote. More to come.
We look forward to receiving your submissions!
