funkwhale/docs/features.rst

Features
=========

Scope
------

Funkwhale is a web based music server. It is similar in terms of goals and feature set to various existing projects, such as `Sonerezh <https://www.sonerezh.bzh/>`_ or `Airsonic <https://airsonic.github.io/>`_.

A social platform
------------------

However, Funkwhale is better-suited for small to medium communities and was designed to be not only a music server and player, but also a place to socialize around music and discover new content. While some of these features are not currently implemented, our roadmap includes:

- Radios, to discover the music of a given user, artist, or genre
- Playlists
- Favorites
- Broadcasts, as they existed in, for example, Grooveshark
- Recommendations

Music acquisition
------------------

Funkwhale is not bundled with any music, and you'll have to import your own music into the platform.

At the moment, you can feed your existing music library to the server either by uploading it or by using :ref:`in-place-import` from a server-side directory. Assuming the files have the correct tags defined, they will be imported seamlessly.

You can also access music being made available by other Funkwhale instances using :doc:`/federation/index`.

Metadata
---------

In order to keep your library clean, browsable, and well-stocked with relevant data about artists, albums and tracks, we fetch a lot of metadata from the `MusicBrainz project <http://musicbrainz.org/>`_.

Structure
---------

The project itself is split in two parts:

1. The backend, a REST API developed using Python3 and Django
2. The frontend, that consumes the API, built as a single page application with VueJS and Semantic UI

While the main interface to the server and API is the bundled front-end, the project itself is agnostic in the way you connect to it. Therefore, desktop clients or apps could be developed and could implement the same (or even more) features as the bundled frontend.

This modularity also makes it possible to deploy only a single component from the system.

Federation
----------

Each Funkwhale instance is able to fetch music from other compatible servers,
and share its own library on the network, in a process known as "federation".
Federation is implemented using the ActivityPub protocol, in order to leverage
existing tools and be compatible with other services such as Mastodon.

As of today, federation only targets music acquisition, meaning user
interactions are not shared via ActivityPub. This will be implemented at a later
point.