Libregig
I've started Chobble to bring some income in by building websites and providing tech consultancy, but the other project I've been working on and will be putting a lot of time into in 2025 is "Libregig".
Libregig is a Ruby on Rails webapp for managing the day-to-day of being in a band - events, members, set lists, documents, equipment, rehearsals, etc. It will (eventually) do things like:
- Let "manager" users invite other users to edit / view their bands / events
- Sync member-specific calendars via iCal / Google Calendar
- Provide a WhatsApp / Signal bot to keep a group chat updated
- Do email notifications about updates to events
- Allow 'Promoter' users to plan tours
Unlike the existing band management tools, Libregig is / will eventually be:
- Open source and AGPLv3 licensed
- Federated, so tours can be planned across instances
I plan on hosting a paid-for instance, and I will provide instructions for others to host their own instances too. I will price it as low as possible and might set up a non-profit business to manage this.
My goal is for technically-minded music nerds like myself to be able to generate a modest income by administrating paid-for Libregig servers for their users.
Of course, since it's AGPLv3-licensed and fully open, you could also host your own instance too without paying anyone.
My goal is to create a really useful bit of software which is immune to takeover by corporate interests, by being open and federated. Basically, think "Mastodon for bands" - although I'm not sure whether it'll actually use the ActivityPub protocol yet.
Eventually, and this is a long shot but I think is doable, promoters could sell tickets through Libregig, and it could help undermine scummy companies like TicketMaster.
There's not a lot to show yet, but you can check out the Git repo at git.chobble.com/chobble/libregig
It's built with Ruby on Rails and I'm aiming to keep its codebase as simple as possible to encourage contributions.
Sometime soon I'll aim to get a website together detailing all of the above.
This all feels quite ambitious, but I keep reminding myself that much of the open source software I use every day started with pretty humble beginnings. And I have enough savings to work on this for a long while without it bringing in any income, so there's no great rush.
If you've got any ideas about other cool features that Libregig should include, please let me know, and if you'd like to contribute to the codebase, that'd be sweeeeeet - there's a lot to do!