Uploading Content To Funkwhale
To upload content to any Funkwhale instance, you need:
To upload your files to a library or to a channel.
Storage space
Once you have an account on a Funkwhale instance, as a user, you are granted the default upload quota (1GB by default). This default quota can be increased, reduced or completely removed by your instance admins depending on their policy.
Additionally, instance admins can grant you storage space manually. Get in touch with them if you’d like some additional storage space.
You can view your current quota and usage at any time by visiting /content/libraries/ on your instance,
or clicking the “Add content” link in the sidebar, then visiting the “Upload audio content” section.
Using a Channel
A channel is a collection of content that is published directly to funkwhale. Channels are always public and can be followed from different fediverse software such as Mastodon, Reel2Bits or other Funkwhale pods.
There are two types of channel:
A podcast channel
An artist discography channel
See Managing Channels for more information on channels.
Using a library
In Funkwhale’s world, a library is a collection of audio files with an associated visibility level. A library can be:
Public: anyone can follow the library to automatically access its content (including users on other instances)
Local: other users from your instance can follow the library to automatically access its content
Private: nobody apart from you can access the library content
Regardless of visibility settings, you can share the library link to specific users and accept their follow request in order to grant then access to its content. Typically, this is useful when you have a private library you want to share with friends or family.
Before you upload your content, you need to know the content audience and license:
If the content is under an open license (like Creative Commons licenses), it’s usually fine to upload it in a public library
If you are uploading content purchased from other platforms or stores, you should upload it in a private library
Note
As a rule of thumb, only use public and local libraries for content for which you own the copyright or for content you know you can share with a wider audience.
See libraries for more information on libraries.
Tagging files
Funkwhale relies on embedded file metadata (also known as tags) to infer the artist, album and track associated with a given upload. Most stores and platforms include those tags by default, but it’s possible the tags are missing or incomplete, in which case Funkwhale will not be able to process the upload and display an error.
The minimum required tags are:
Title
Artist
Album
However, Funkwhale can understand and use additional tags to enhance user experience and display more information. The full list of supported tags is available below:
Name |
Example value |
Description |
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The track title |
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The artist name |
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The album title. If none is provided, an [Unknown Album] entry will be created |
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The album artist name (can be different than the track artist) |
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A comma separated list of tags to associate with the track
Other supported separators: |
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The position of the track in the album/release |
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The disc number (in case of multi-disc albums) |
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The release date of the track or album |
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The license associated with this work. The first found URL will be checked against our list of supported licenses |
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The license associated with this work. The first found URL will be checked against our list of supported licenses. Used if no license found in the License tag |
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The first embeded picture found will be used as the album covers |
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The MusicBrainz ID for this recording |
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The MusicBrainz ID for this album |
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The MusicBrainz ID for this artist |
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The MusicBrainz ID for this album artist |
The easiest way to inspect and edit file tags is with MusicBrainz Picard, a free software, that works on Windows, MacOS and Linux. Picard is able to automatically tag many files, and include non-necessary but nice to have information, such as album covers. For a guide on tagging content with Picard, see Tagging Music With MusicBrainz Picard.
Common errors during import
Invalid metadata
This error occurs when the uploaded file miss some mandatory tags, or when some tags have incorrect values (e.g an empty title or artist name).
To fix this issue, please retag the file properly as described in Tagging files and reupload it.
Unknown error
This error can happen for multiple reasons and likely indicates an issue with the Funkwhale server (e.g. misconfiguration) or with Funkwhale itself.
If the issue persists when you relaunch the import, get in touch with our instance admin or open a support thread on our forum.