Libre.fm project is closed (and future projects)

[mattl]

I have taken the decision in light of recent events to close Libre.fm permanently to new users and put the site into maintenance mode.

No new registrations will be supported. I will be working on getting everyone a copy of their data, but no new features will be added to the site.

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Libre.fm will remain active for current users but is now firmly in maintenance mode. No new accounts will be added and registration is now closed forever.

Please note: Libre.fm is not for sale and I will keep Libre.fm active as long as we have active users. I will also start the process to make sure everyone has access to a daily snapshot of their data.

Thank you to all 381,247 users who registered during the last sixteen years. A huge thank you to the many active users who contributed with suggestions, ideas and bugfixes too. And not to forget all the original GNU FM developers too.

A really big thank you must go to Jane and the other Libre.fm beta testers too.

Thank you all.

Firstly, the way people listen to music has changed a lot since 2009 making it increasingly difficult for users to keep track of their listening habits. I've been unable to scrobble any of the music I've listened to on my phone which represents the majority of how I used to listen to music. Also, Libre.fm was originally created to support the free culture musician community. I don't believe we do a good job of that anymore, and the free culture community itself is fragmented and shrinking in size. Given that we have allowed the web to get gobbled up by billionares and generative AI, this is unsurprising to me.

Secondly, my health isn't good. As some of you may know, I was laid off from my web standards/accessibility role a few months ago and looking for new roles isn't going well. Losing my job, meant my wife and I lost our health insurance. My health continues to suffer and I have been spending all of my time searching for a new job so I can continue to get health insurance for my family and I can get the medication I need to help keep me alive.

Finally, software development and web development in particular has changed a lot too. Setting up a local development environment is harder and more awkward than it ought to be. This, coupled with the aging environment Libre.fm is written in makes it harder still for me to work on Libre.fm in my spare time. I had hoped a recent job interview might have provided the saving grace needed here but I found out today that I didn't get that job either.

What does the future hold?

Well, I need a job first but hopefully I will find something in the next few months while I'm still getting unemployment benefits. I'm starting to look at what, if any, freelance opportunities or contracting jobs are available to me. I remain dedicated to the open web and especially to web standards and accessibility. I want to build tools for creative people to show off and share the things they're making, while keeping those things safe from the hands of generative AI.

I'm also taking a long overdue break from social media, so please just email me. My email address is easier than ever to find right now.

Best,
matt

https://mat.tl

PS. I am thinking about building something new and will take the Libre.fm active user database as the users table for that. So existing users will be able to use the new thing, but will need to set up a new password.

https://github.com/foocorp/next/ is the place for whatever happens next.

[unseenlarks]

your health and life come first. thank you for libre.fm.

[janerationx]

Aw, Matt. I do understand. Please let me know if I can continue to help in any way. Take care of yourself. I'll email soon.

[inan-hira]

Yourself and your loved ones are more important, take care. Thank you for libre.fm.

[MitenkovIvan]

As someone who only discovered this project 3 months ago, I'm grateful for your service and wish you all the best. Please take care of yourself.

[artlung]

I appreciate this candor so much. Keeping every good thought for positive progress for you--and for all of us--in these trying times.

[virtadpt]

No worries, Matt. Do what you need to do.

[ea-st]

Thank you for providing this wonderful service for communities for all this time.
Wishing you the best.

[mattl]

Thank you to everyone who has commented so far.

I'm looking to keep going with writing code, so https://github.com/foocorp/next/ is the place for whatever happens next.

I'm also very interested in what problems I can solve in future. I'm thinking about tools for and a community that rejects AI.

[awnawtief]

rejects AI community? i see. good luck in your future endeavor. thanks for the awesome site, it's gonna be forever plastered in my social media accounts.

[skullvalanche]

Thank you for your service and best of luck on your job search. ❤️

[Archestratus]

Cheers for everything you've put into this.

[mattl]

I'm working on a little users portal that'll serve as both the basis for the login mechanism for the new things and as an easy way to request your data from Libre.fm in a variety of formats with CSV and JSONL (as used by ListenBrainz) but if there are other formats you'd like to see let me know.

[Retro-jpg]

I wish you the best of health mattl
i hope you can successfully get a job so you and your family can be healthy... its always so sad to hear stories like this.

[mayhem]

I'm sorry for your health problems. :(

Over at ListenBrainz we have similar goals and values to libre.fm, including being able to import from data from libre.fm . If you're interested, you can send any users to us, we're actively developing the service.

[mattl]

@mayhem drop me an email would you? I’d love to discuss exporting data and forwarding profiles.

[mattl]

After 16 years, it's time to do something else. Libre.fm is no longer accepting new users for scrobbling music listening habits.

Libre.fm will continue to support our existing scrobbling users as long as there are active users. Data exports and more coming soon.

What's next?

Project Next by Libre.fm. Libre.fm's second act.

No AI. Ever. Coming soon.

[silvan5463]

I don't know how many active scrobblers are still there, but I am one of them and will be here for the forseeable future. I'm using the Pano Scrobbler on Android, which scrobbles on Last.fm and Libre.fm at the same time. I love Libre.fm, and would be sad to see it die.

I'm quite interested in your future projects and will look every now and then if there's something new. BTW, I'm a retired systems software and web developer, maybe I can help. And I hate AI. :D

[mattl]

There's still around 50,000 active scrobbles a day.

Please drop me an email so I can get you early access to the stuff that happens next. https://mat.tl/ has all my details.

[silvan5463]

There's still around 50,000 active scrobbles a day.

Cool, that's quite a bit! I'd estimate that's 1000+ users, if each user sends 6 scrobbles an hour for 8 hours.

Please drop me an email so I can get you early access to the stuff that happens next. https://mat.tl/ has all my details.

Done!

[mattl]

https://1800www.com/ might be worth a look :)

[Retro-jpg]

wowzers.
this is quite bold, i hope it lives up to what it says, cause screw whats going on right now with governments and "protecting kids" when its mainly censorship of things they dont agree with

im glad to know you're doing okay though, mattl

[6R1MR34P3R]

Willing to help in any way possible, please let me know :)

[mattl]

So.. an update.

TLDR: I’m sick, need help and a job and Libre.fm accounts will be available again when 1800www.com launches (whenever that is) but… only for paid accounts.

What’s 1800www.com?

1800www.com is a mix of old school ISP, web hosting and a web app.

The ISP part will offer some things you don’t see much of nowadays such as a text-only USENET feed. No binaries but Kibo is very welcome.

The web app has stuff like blogging, notes, etc.
Hosting is purely for static sites, with some facility to publish from the web app to the static site but you can also bring your own CMS and use 11ty, Hugo, Jekyll, EletorWWW, etc.

• Public things on the service will block AI scrapers.

• Private things will be behind a login.

Accounts for this will be available on a first come first served basis for existing Libre.fm accounts and then people who signed up for the waitlist at http://nofuckingai.com (and yes I’m proud to own that one) — where I expect to make some limited gratis accounts but will primarily focus on paid accounts.

If you’re making a client and need an account for testing, email me.

Why?

I am not doing great, to be blunt. I was laid off in March and as such haven’t had health insurance for several months now and my unemployment is about to run out. I’m looking for something I can do remotely but it’s not a great time to be unemployed right now.

My hope is that people will want to use the service and pay for it, or at the very least pay for it and forget about it as seems to the case with subscriptions these days.

With some income from this I could at least try and pay my bills and continue to survive.

In light of my health situation I’ve also dramatically reduced my online presence. I’ve deleted my social.coop Mastodon account and my bsky account mat.tl. Any other social accounts are old or fake.

I’m only really doing email and my single page personal site https://mat.tl for right now.

Please consider sending me an email if you’ve read this far.