Cannot use Google Drive/Dropbox

[zanellia]

Hey this project is really cool - can't wait to see everybody moving away from Spotify and hop on diffuse :p

I am trying to upload some music and I have tried Google Drive (it blocked diffuse) and Dropbox. With the second one I get the following:

"Error (400)
It seems the app you were using submitted a bad request. If you would like to report this error to the app's developer, include the information below.

More details for developers
"state": must be at most 2000 characters, got 2096"

[icidasset]

Thanks @zanellia ! I too hope more people move away from Spotify. Not necessarily to Diffuse though, it's not exactly super reliable 😅

Yeah, Google Drive is deprecated, I had to re-verify my app (oauth client) and I couldn't get it verified again (more background info in #405) (deprecation issue: #430). It isn't working that well anyway and I'm not a fan of Google, so I decided to cut it. You can still create your own oauth client and use that for now, but yeah...

Dropbox should still work, but I haven't tested it in quite a while though, I guess their API changed again. I'll take a look 👀

Amazon S3 should definitely still work if you're looking for something that actually works. I'm personally using Cloudflare R2 with Diffuse.

[zanellia]

I was able to add a Dropbox source, but no tracks are detected. I have a .wav file in 'https://www.dropbox.com/home'. Am I missing something?

[icidasset]

Hmm seems to work here. What's your setup?

• Are you using https://diffuse.sh, the "native" app, or https://nightly.diffuse.sh?
• Which OS?
• Is the music on the root folder of your Dropbox, or a sub directory?
• Did you specify a directory when adding the source?
• Do you have a lot of files in your Dropbox besides your music?
• Does the .wav file have any metadata?
• When you did succeed in adding the Dropbox source, did you do anything differently? (as opposed to when you got the error message)

[zanellia]

Alright, I figured out looking at the XHR tab in the browser that everything is fine: somehow the extension of the .wav file was trimmed away in some of the copy-pasting processes. It now finds the track correctly. Sorry for the alarmism, I was just eager to try out diffuse :)

Maybe you could add instructions on where the files should be located and how to troubleshoot when the tracks are not found?

Next question, how do I share tracks and playlists?

[icidasset]

No worries! 😄 Happy it's working now. Yeah good idea!

Regarding sharing, there's no sharing yet 😞 I had something working with https://github.com/oddsdk at some point, but that project has been discontinued (ran out of funding). Bit hard to do sharing if you don't want to rely on centralised infrastructure. But hopefully we're get there at some point.

That said, you can always give someone the data/JSON files from this app. You can find that at 'Settings → Data → Backup → Download snapshot'. Or, when you chose a storage service to sync with, you'll find individual JSON files on your chosen service.

PS. Just to set realistic expectations, I only work on this project in my spare time.

[zanellia]

Regarding sharing, there's no sharing yet 😞 I had something working with https://github.com/oddsdk at some point, but that project has been discontinued (ran out of funding). Bit hard to do sharing if you don't want to rely on centralised infrastructure. But hopefully we're get there at some point.

I have zero background in these kind of things, so apologies for the naive questions, but, just for my understanding: would it not be possible to host the files on Dropbox/IPFS/something else in a read-only and public way such that sharing would take place by exchanging a file with the location of the remote folder + some additional meta data?

PS. Just to set realistic expectations, I only work on this project in my spare time.

Absolutely, thanks anyway for sharing this project - it's quite cool.

For context, I am looking for a solution for artists which make close to 0 revenue from streams on traditional platforms. For them, in some cases, it would be better to

1. get off the platforms (when they can) for obvious reasons
2. rely on a way of sharing their music that is
   a) lean and easy to use for both the artist and the listener
   b) does not involve storage/services that are handled by a third party
   c) free, at least for now

[icidasset]

would it not be possible to host the files on Dropbox/IPFS/something else in a read-only and public way such that sharing would take place by exchanging a file with the location of the remote folder + some additional meta data?

Definitely. That's how the "insert demo" thing works in Diffuse, it's just a read-only public Amazon S3 bucket. That's a good call, we can have sharing on various levels here.

That said, this isn't possible with every type of source. For example, Dropbox depends on authentication through OAuth from your account. Whereas Amazon S3 works totally different, that makes it difficult to add a streamlined UI for this.

But yeah, you could totally share Amazon S3 (or S3-like services like Cloudflare R2), IPFS and Azure credentials/info with people and they could play that audio too. Maybe we can add something to make that easier like you suggested. I'll think about it 👍

The sharing of playlists is a different story, and this is the one I previously mentioned that I worked on. Let me know if you me want me to expand on that. That said, you can download a playlist as a zip file, upload it somewhere and share it as a source (but again, very manual approach).

I am looking for a solution for artists which make close to 0 revenue from streams on traditional platforms.

That's awesome 🙌

I guess some services like https://mirlo.space/ or https://subvert.fm/ would be ideal for that. But entirely free and not involving 3rd party services is difficult yeah.

If you'd like to use Diffuse for that, I'd suggest hosting the music on https://storacha.network/ (IPFS, free tier) or https://www.cloudflare.com/developer-platform/products/r2/ (read-only S3, very cheap, you only pay for bandwidth storage)

Though not sure the former still works with Diffuse, I probably need to update my code for IPFS 👀 Definitely on the todo list.

[zanellia]

I guess being completely free from third parties makes the solution particularly appealing for artists in the sense that there is no risk that the system they rely on turns against them at some point.

If you'd like to use Diffuse for that, I'd suggest hosting the music on https://storacha.network/ (IPFS, free tier) or https://www.cloudflare.com/developer-platform/products/r2/ (read-only S3, very cheap, you only pay for bandwidth)

Storacha too seems to charge 0.15USD/GiB? Is there any preferred solution (probably IPFS-based?) that would be entirely free?

[icidasset]

no risk that the system they rely on turns against them

Yeah, I've been thinking about this too. I've been wanting to create a Youtube equivalent where the content layer is separate from the social layer. So I've created this experiment: https://byov.tokono.ma/ The idea is basically, you upload your videos to your own storage provider (Storacha in this case) and then publish the videos you select on the social layer (AT Protocol, Bluesky).

entirely free?

Well, it is free for the first 5GB, at some point you have to pay no matter what service/tool I guess? Also! I was wrong about Cloudflare, you don't need to pay for bandwidth, only for storage and data mutations, so that's a very good/cheap option for your use case. First 10GB is free: https://developers.cloudflare.com/r2/pricing/#free-tier

I don't know if you'll find anything cheaper than Cloudflare R2 while still having great performance 🤔 Let me know if you do!

[icidasset]

Tutorial for using Cloudflare R2 in Diffuse: #370

[zanellia]

Yeah, I've been thinking about this too. I've been wanting to create a Youtube equivalent where the content layer is separate from the social layer. So I've created this experiment: https://byov.tokono.ma/ The idea is basically, you upload your videos to your own storage provider (Storacha in this case) and then publish the videos you select on the social layer (AT Protocol, Bluesky).

Oh wow really cool!

Well, it is free for the first 5GB, at some point you have to pay no matter what service/tool I guess? Also! I was wrong about Cloudflare, you don't need to pay for bandwidth, only for storage and data mutations, so that's a very good/cheap option for your use case. First 10GB is free: https://developers.cloudflare.com/r2/pricing/#free-tier

I don't know if you'll find anything cheaper than Cloudflare R2 while still having great performance 🤔 Let me know if you do!

I have set up Cloudflare and successfully uploaded a track to Diffuse. What would be the ideal workflow for sharing? I guess the whole process can be automated, but for now the user I share it with would need to enter Access key, Secret Key, S3 API Url, etc?

[zanellia]

Ah I can use the snapshot feature, right?