Faircamp

A static site generator for audio producers

For more screenshots and a feature overview see the website.

Already set on using faircamp? Then jump right into the manual.

Faircamp adheres to these principles: Personal, plain, small, simple, light, fast, reduced, elegant, stable, low/no-maintenance, free, independent, privacy-respecting, standards-conforming, no-nonsense

Curious? Read on!

Overview

Point Faircamp to a folder hierarchy on your disk which contains your audio files. Within minutes, Faircamp builds a complete, static website that presents your music to your audience. You can view the site on your computer or upload it to any webhost - no database, no php or such required.

By default, visitors can browse and stream your music. You can enable more features: Downloads, Embeds, Soft Paycurtain, Unlock codes for Downloads, RSS Feed, etc.. You can also provide text descriptions for your releases, adjust the theme of your site and so on, this is all done in manifests, simple text files you place next to your audio files.

If your webspace supports SSH access, faircamp can be configured to upload your website for you automatically, otherwise you can use FTP or whichever means you prefer to do that manually.

The Catalog

Your catalog is a set of directories with a structure of your choosing, the only convention you need to follow is that directories that directly contain audio files will be presented as releases (think albums, singles and playlists) with their own page. Faircamp will automatically gather metadata from your audio files and make good use of it - if your audio files are properly tagged and there are cover images within each release directory you will likely get an end result that is pretty much spot-on the first time you run faircamp.

Configuration

Besides the audio and image files in your catalog faircamp allows you to put simple text files - so called manifests - inside your directories. In these manifests you can set and override options (e.g. which download formats a release should have) that are applied to all files within the same directory and below (*). So by putting a manifest in the top level directory of your catalog you can at once set an option for all of your releases, and by placing manifests further down in the directory structure, you can make specific adjustments all the way down to the release (single, album, playlist) level - and within the manifest itself also down to the track (single song or recording within a release) level.

(*) Note that a few select options do not propagate to other folders as it would make no sense, e.g. a release's permalink must be unique and therefore makes no sense to propagate.

Faircamp 1.0

Development in 2024 is financed by the European Commission's Next Generation Internet programme through the NGI0 Entrust fund established by NLnet.

Also see the project grant website for more details.

Stability and completeness

Install one of the available packages or build faircamp yourself from the latest tag for the most stable experience. Faircamp can also be built and run from the main branch directly, this opts you in to the occasional design experiment and temporary development glitches though. Throughout summer and fall 2024 expect lots of movement in the course of the Faircamp 1.0 NGI0 grant to happen. Some more advanced features are only half-way implemented (see below). Technically nothing about the catalog format is set in stone, but practically speaking actual changes have been few and far between and are only made for significant reasons. Note that although faircamp is still pre-1.0, it already runs over a hundred artist and label websites, i.e. it is not so much beta in the sense of lacking stability, but rather because one or two key features are still in development.

These features are knowingly incomplete right now:

• Embeds (available but incomplete implementation)
• Buy page (functionally there but rather bare in usability still)
• No-javascript mode (faircamp sites work without javascript too, some things still need to be wrapped up though)

Documentation

See faircamp's comprehensive Manual.

Build/Install

See the Installation page in the Manual. If the online version of the manual should be inaccessible, the same information is also available in the repository itself, in 01 Installation.md.

Licensing

Faircamp is licensed under the AGPL-3.0-or-later.

Documentation is licensed under the CC0-1.0.

Builds generated with faircamp re-distribute the Barlow font, licensed under the OFL-1.1.

The faircamp manual re-distributes the Fira Mono and Titillium Web fonts, licensed under the OFL-1.1.