The Indie Beat - GNOME Shell Extension

The Indie Beat is a GNOME Shell extension that allows you to stream independent music from artists in the Fediverse, thanks to The Indie Beat Radio FM, Bandwagon, and the artists who share their music there.

A simpler alternative for non-GNOME desktop users is also available.

Features

• Stream music from The Indie Beat
• Switch between different radio channels
• Control playback with play/pause buttons
• Adjust volume and mute audio
• View track metadata including title, artist, and album
• Open links to Bandwagon.fm and The Indie Beat in your browser

🎬 Watch a demo video

🎓 Read about how I made this

Requirements

• A recent version of GNOME Shell
• GStreamer and plugins

Installation

The extension is available to install here.

Manual installation

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/andypiper/theindiebeat-gnome-ext.git

2. Navigate to the extension directory:

   cd theindiebeat-gnome-ext

3. Copy the extension to your GNOME Shell extensions directory:

   cp -r [email protected] ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/

4. Restart GNOME Shell:

   • Press Alt + F2, type r, and press Enter.
   • (on Wayland, logout and log back in)

5. Enable the extension using the Extensions app.

Usage

• Click on the catellite icon in the top panel to open the extension menu.
• Switch between available channels from the Channels submenu.
• Open the Bandwagon.fm or The Indie Beat websites from the menu.
• When a track is playing:
  • Use the play/stop button to control playback.
  • Adjust the volume using the slider.
  • Hover over the artist and album text for a floating copy button; click to copy to clipboard.
  • Click on the View Artist Profile button to open the artist's profile on Bandwagon.fm.

License

This project is licensed under the GPL v3 License. See LICENSE for details.

Author

👤 Andy Piper - @[email protected]

Acknowledgements

• Kirsten Lambertsen for being awesome.
• The Indie Beat for providing the music streams.
• Bandwagon.fm for being an excellent part of the Fediverse.
• Neil Brown's blog post on using The Indie Beat streams in Linux music players.
• originally inspired by the SomaFM extension for GNOME Shell (but shares no code, just the idea and a bit of the look).
• the GNOME Extensions reviewers for their excellent feedback! (aka, signal management is harder than I thought)

Colophon

This extension is chock full of 📡🐱🛰️🎧 CATELLITE POWER 📡🐱🛰️🎧