Can I share an insight?
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Can I share an insight?
I've observed with Mastodon posts for sideSister that a post with an embedded music player gets more listens than a post that requires navigating to a separate website, and =way= more listens than a post that takes the reader to an aggregation page (we used those a few years back).
This doesn't mean we shouldn't use external links or aggregation pages, just that it works best for us to include an immediate point of gratification.
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Can I share an insight?
I've observed with Mastodon posts for sideSister that a post with an embedded music player gets more listens than a post that requires navigating to a separate website, and =way= more listens than a post that takes the reader to an aggregation page (we used those a few years back).
This doesn't mean we shouldn't use external links or aggregation pages, just that it works best for us to include an immediate point of gratification.
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We try to provide this immediate gratification in two ways.
[1] We include a link to the song on Mirlo or Bandcamp. This automatically embeds a player.
[2] We drop an MP3 onto the post. Usually one we've transcoded to lo-fi to minimise the bandwidth.
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We try to provide this immediate gratification in two ways.
[1] We include a link to the song on Mirlo or Bandcamp. This automatically embeds a player.
[2] We drop an MP3 onto the post. Usually one we've transcoded to lo-fi to minimise the bandwidth.
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We can then include any other links we want in that post, whether they're to elasticStage, our own website, an aggregation page, video site, etc. But it means readers can hear the song without having to leave Mastodon.
Just my $0.02 worth. Ignore it if it's not helpful.
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We can then include any other links we want in that post, whether they're to elasticStage, our own website, an aggregation page, video site, etc. But it means readers can hear the song without having to leave Mastodon.
Just my $0.02 worth. Ignore it if it's not helpful.
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@elsemusic Quite helpful. Especially thinking how (at least with front-ends I use) links to YouTube don't preview in any way what video is at the other end.
With the result that I never follow them unless the poster has described sufficiently what is there for me opt in to seeing it..
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@controlfreak @freebliss I figure that using a lo-fi transcoding and having posts expire after two weeks avoid the worst consequences of embedding an MP3 in a post.
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@controlfreak @freebliss I figure that using a lo-fi transcoding and having posts expire after two weeks avoid the worst consequences of embedding an MP3 in a post.
@elsemusic @freebliss Yes and yes! Points for keeping it small, but we can't really trust deletion requests to actually make the rounds or to be respected. So I would love a turnkey option generated where I host the audio files themselves outside of federated cache land.
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@elsemusic @freebliss Yes and yes! Points for keeping it small, but we can't really trust deletion requests to actually make the rounds or to be respected. So I would love a turnkey option generated where I host the audio files themselves outside of federated cache land.
@controlfreak @freebliss This may be useful:
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@elsemusic Quite helpful. Especially thinking how (at least with front-ends I use) links to YouTube don't preview in any way what video is at the other end.
With the result that I never follow them unless the poster has described sufficiently what is there for me opt in to seeing it..
I find I'm locked out of youtube, I always get the 'we think you're a bot so no video for you' thing
Youtube and Soundcloud are virtually useless for general public sharing now, imho, I don't sign in or have the apps for them, so can't view them.
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@elsemusic @freebliss Yes and yes! Points for keeping it small, but we can't really trust deletion requests to actually make the rounds or to be respected. So I would love a turnkey option generated where I host the audio files themselves outside of federated cache land.
@controlfreak @elsemusic @freebliss
I have been considering having a preview site on my faircamp on a subdomain which is a seperate faircamp with edited / short previews at low transcode rates
Or just have an album on the main site called 'previews' or sth for this purpose
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I find I'm locked out of youtube, I always get the 'we think you're a bot so no video for you' thing
Youtube and Soundcloud are virtually useless for general public sharing now, imho, I don't sign in or have the apps for them, so can't view them.
@yonder @naga I realise that if you click a Soundcloud link, it pops up a dialog asking that you log in. But dismissing that dialog (clicking anywhere else on the page works) lets you listen without having an account.
... and an embedded Soundcloud link (ie, a link to a song page) opens within Mastodon without requesting any log in.
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@controlfreak @yonder @freebliss Mirlo, Bandcamp and Soundcloud links automatically embed a player in any Mastodon link that points to a song (not an album or artist page). Clicking that player will play the song without leaving Mastodon. Clicking the link itself still opens the song page. For example:
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@controlfreak @yonder @freebliss Mirlo, Bandcamp and Soundcloud links automatically embed a player in any Mastodon link that points to a song (not an album or artist page). Clicking that player will play the song without leaving Mastodon. Clicking the link itself still opens the song page. For example:
@elsemusic @controlfreak @freebliss
Ah right, I get you now. I had no idea bandcamp links did that!
It worked in your post but I had to click it twice, it went blank & I had to wait a few seconds between clicks, then it worked. Maybe that's why I hadn't noticed these were embeds
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@elsemusic @controlfreak @freebliss
Ah right, I get you now. I had no idea bandcamp links did that!
It worked in your post but I had to click it twice, it went blank & I had to wait a few seconds between clicks, then it worked. Maybe that's why I hadn't noticed these were embeds
@elsemusic @controlfreak @freebliss
I tried a soundcloud embed from another artist. That just went blank and didn't play anything or show any controls. I checked adblockers etc and donlt think it's blocked by them. I guess this is probably a YMMV thing.
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@controlfreak @elsemusic @freebliss
I'd like to know if this is something that could be added to faircamp, or needs to be added to fedi clients as a specific feature for sites
One way could be to allow embedding any external audio file hosted on an external site in a post, if it's recognised as an mp3 etc, it could then be embedded in an player without uploading to fedi server
That would then work for pretty much any site as long as there's a direct link to audio file on the external site
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@elsemusic @controlfreak @freebliss
Ah right, I get you now. I had no idea bandcamp links did that!
It worked in your post but I had to click it twice, it went blank & I had to wait a few seconds between clicks, then it worked. Maybe that's why I hadn't noticed these were embeds
@yonder @controlfreak @freebliss It does that for me too.
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@controlfreak @elsemusic @freebliss
I'd like to know if this is something that could be added to faircamp, or needs to be added to fedi clients as a specific feature for sites
One way could be to allow embedding any external audio file hosted on an external site in a post, if it's recognised as an mp3 etc, it could then be embedded in an player without uploading to fedi server
That would then work for pretty much any site as long as there's a direct link to audio file on the external site
@yonder @controlfreak @freebliss Agreed. That would be a useful thing.
I think there are two options, and they're discussed in this post:
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@controlfreak @yonder @freebliss Mirlo, Bandcamp and Soundcloud links automatically embed a player in any Mastodon link that points to a song (not an album or artist page). Clicking that player will play the song without leaving Mastodon. Clicking the link itself still opens the song page. For example:
@elsemusic
This is probably client dependent. My mobile client have only a link, not a player.
@controlfreak @yonder @freebliss -
@yonder @controlfreak @freebliss Agreed. That would be a useful thing.
I think there are two options, and they're discussed in this post:
@elsemusic @yonder @controlfreak This is on my list for faircamp 2.x, among the "stretch goals", so it will depend on how everything else goes.
I am fairly confident that there will be a simple baseline implementation (making this configurable - opt-in or opt-out - and supporting at least the basic opengraph og:audio tag (not sure if/how many clients use that by itself already, although it would be a no-brainer to support that I guess?)), for a full-blown embed-backed implemetation I'm not yet sure if there will be enough time, but let's see!
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@yonder @controlfreak @freebliss Agreed. That would be a useful thing.
I think there are two options, and they're discussed in this post:
@elsemusic that's some great research, thanks for sharing!
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@elsemusic @yonder @controlfreak This is on my list for faircamp 2.x, among the "stretch goals", so it will depend on how everything else goes.
I am fairly confident that there will be a simple baseline implementation (making this configurable - opt-in or opt-out - and supporting at least the basic opengraph og:audio tag (not sure if/how many clients use that by itself already, although it would be a no-brainer to support that I guess?)), for a full-blown embed-backed implemetation I'm not yet sure if there will be enough time, but let's see!@elsemusic @yonder @controlfreak and a personal note, to not completely lose track of ethics: on a societal/systems design level I'm really not a fan of this whole preview card architecture (open graph and all).
Facebook and Twitter (which are the origin of this, facebook literally authored the open graph spec) have managed to turn every website into a potential free supplier for bespoke social media platform metadata (which embellishes social media platforms and ties users to them, while suffocating visits to the sites that supply the content, not a great deal). Thereby they baked the concept of "platforms/silos that you hardly ever leave, where people addictively scroll an endless stream of partially embedded content from other sites" firmly into the fabric of the web. Mastodon and others 1:1 copied this, and although one can argue that this was a necessity to get people to accept/adopt mastodon and other alternatives (maybe, I guess we'll never know now), I still consider this a fundamentally problematic system.
I'm now trying to find some middle ground by implementing these standards (even if, to be honest, I'd rather not), while at least keeping them configurable (opt-in/out respectively) ... Anyhow, I salute everyone who builds "social networks" (e.g. on the fediverse) without these patterns ... ( ◡‿◡ *)
