The Astro Collective

@astrofm.bsky.social

12 Followers 3 Following

Making sharing music on the internet easier for everyone, one platform at a time. Check out our Discord bot! https://discord.com/oauth2/authorize?client_id=1246471351485861967

New embed style for a Discord bot "Astro", featuring metadata for the song "Therefore I Am" by Billie Eilish with 4 buttons for redirecting to Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and Deezer.
Long time no see! I've been meaning to write a new dev blog for a while, but figured that the best time to do so is now. The API is done. Like actually. Ready for deployment. Obviously does not mean it's ready to just be swapped in, there is still BETA testing to do and some small TLC inside of the code, but the API is feature complete with the current Astro version, is stable, and even has some small bug fixes that never made it to previous Astro versions. The API will be open-sourced by the end of the month, with a public version available hopefully by the end of the year, but I think it'll happen later than sooner. This stuff is hard, and I wanna make sure that our efforts are robust, scalable and secure. Not just for us, but for everyone who sees value in them. There are also a few oddities (mostly feature disparities) inside the API right now that probably won't be welcome to other developers, so I'd like for those to be worked out first before it opens up. We're still a little behind on development, but the plan right now is to get the API hosted by the end of the week, and immediately start working on a new Astro Discord app update. This one won't bring many new features, but will enjoy a redesign which will make its embeds even more information dense, smaller and easier to use, especially for mobile users. Astro BETA should re-open for anyone interested (and this server by default) by the end of the month, with a full update by the end of September. Again, thanks for using Astro despite the lack of updates over the past few months. Astro has only grown since the last update, and I am deeply grateful for that.
DEV UPDATE - JUNE 8TH, 2025 It's been another moment, let's talk. I know I said I would try to not write the next dev update in a months time, but here we are. Astro is picking up steam once more and I have some plans to share. I've done the liberty of separating each aspect into its own section so you can just scroll down to whatever you want to know about. Astro Discord Server This server does the job for mere support, but it could be so much more. We're walking away from this support server in favor of a full blown Astro Community server! It'll have all the bells and whistles for talking with other people, interacting with any and all Astro development staff, and easy bug reports, with the option of whether you want to create a ticket and address it directly or just leave it in a forums channel post to be dealt with at any time. The server is close to done and it will open up at the end of the month Astro API a2.3 It's done quite done yet! But I should probably update you on how it's going. YouTube support has still not materialized, but it'll be done soon. TIDAL is doing some things, and I want to try out of it's FINALLY viable to support as a service again. Fingers crossed! I'm unsure of whether the API will be available to everyone on launch, but it definitely will be available late this year or early next year to any developer that wants more advanced music integration in their project. Expanding Astro Astro has started out, and has remained a project oriented around Discord and its app/bot ecosystem. This is great and all, but Astro's tech could be used for so much more. I am working on expanding Astro's reach to new places, including a web app and a SwiftUI iOS app. Again, unsure when these will materialize, but development on these will start as soon as a2.3 API is done and pushed to production. Not a very exciting dev update, but it's a start for a more exiting Astro-news-fueled summer. See you all very soon!
DEV UPDATE - MAY 10TH, 2025 It's been a moment, let's talk. Haven't done much work for Astro in the past month, to be honest. I've been exploring other interests, trying to fully take my mind off coding for a moment. We're back now, but I don't think I'll be able to deliver the update on-time. Not for a lack of trying, but it's finals season and I really don't wanna fumble it. The update will still come out in June, just not June 1st. I've also been considering rewriting the Discord bot client to take advantage of some new nice components Discord added to their bots. I REALLY wanna ditch the hyperlinks in favor of buttons. I think they'll look great, they'll be more compact and will be easier to press on mobile screens. I'd really like to attempt to bring and keep Astro onto the bleeding edge of technology, using whatever's the best at the current moment. As for the progress made on the API: I've started to close the gap on API support (currently working on the Deezer API) for music services, with the plan to move onto knowledge services. Hopefully we get there sooner than later, as YouTube music is increasingly more looking like it's gonna be a pain in the ass to get going. Fingers crossed that it won't tho. Hopefully this Summer we'll finally start working on b2.0. It's about time, and I cannot wait to share ideas of what it'll be capable of. It's a bold risk to talk about future versions without even finishing the current thing I'm doing, so I'll just wrap it up and get back to work. Gonna try to not write the next dev update in a months time. Thanks for using Astro, have a wonderful day! 💛
DEV UPDATE - APRIL 9TH, 2025 First dev update of many! Welcome! Things are moving slow, but progress is happening. For everyone out of the loop, I am turning Astro's music guts into a RESTful web API, so it can be easily used for a number of different projects, with the end goal of making it open for everyone to use. Right now, the goal is to feature-match Astro's current built-in API, which while it does its job very well, could be more glamorous. So far, I've: - Expanded and refined internal media objects (the things that store all of the data of a given song, album, etc) - Built in JSON templates for each media object - "Ported" (reconstructed) Astro's Spotify API in there - Started using separate objects for things like artists and cover art, so I can fit more data in each object. There won't be much of a usability difference in the Discord app, but say, if we were to make a mobile app or website that utilized the API, that extra data could very well come in handy - Started work on making actual documentation for the API. Like I said, things are moving slowly, but I do see things speeding up soon. My projection/wish is to have the API done and deployment-ready by June, at which point it will just replace the current built-in API inside the Discord app, with it being fully web and independent by the end of the year. This is my first time building a REST API, let alone one of the scale at which I'm aiming for, so I'm learning everything as I go. I'm planning to utilize FastAPI for it, but I'll start working on that after I already have every service fully functional. The API update will be called "Anniversary a2.3", as I want to release it on June 1st, which will mark a full year of me working on Astro. I could talk on and on and on about my ambitions for the API, but I'm being unceremoniously silenced by Discord's non-nitro character limit, so I'll talk about it all some other time. Thanks for using Astro, have a wonderful day! 💛
used /knowledge with Astro: luther by Kendrick Lamar and SZA "is the 3rd track on Kendrick Lamar’s 6th studio album, it marks the 5th collaboration between him and long-time friend, SZA." links to Spotify and Genius pages of the song song cover art depicting Kendrick sitting on a black Grand National car