Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls,
Allow us to introduce Afromusicfriends.com — a sleek, future-oriented platform built just for you. We blend the vibrant sounds of Afrobeats, Afrofusion, Afropop, Amapiano, and more with cutting-edge technology and modern design to create a smooth and captivating musical journey. We are more than a social media and streaming site — we are a movement....read more
Since there are very few music-based platforms built on JomSocial, we decided: if you want something to exist, create it.
What makes our platform special is that it is built entirely on the technology that JomSocial and Joomla offer. We developed the Amf-Audiosystem from the ground up — no third-party extensions or plugins.
Honourable Mentions:
Plyr.js — for the look and feel. We could run our Audiosystem without it, but we chose the best available option and we are grateful to @Sam_Potts for making this JS library available and customisable.
We are also grateful to sortify-js, which gives our artists the ability to sort their songs after uploading.
The reason we built our own Audiosystem: we waited a year for Nordmorph to update his MyPlayer from J3 to J5 — it never happened. We also waited on Music Collections by JoomlaThat!, which is still on J3. We reached out and received no reply. That left us with two options — abandon the project or build it ourselves. We chose to build.
What the AMF-Audiosystem Contains:
1× JomSocial Com_Community Plugin
2× Joomla Ajax Plugins
3× Joomla Custom Modules
1. Com_Community Plugin
This was the most challenging part. Getting JomSocial to recognise the first Ajax Plugin — responsible for the upload form and the rendering of the Player Tab within the Com_Community environment — required considerable effort. The plugin targets only artist profiles via the JomSocial multiple profile system, ensuring that only artists can upload music. Logged-in artists can only see and manage their own upload form and cannot tamper with or delete the songs of other artists.
2. Joomla Ajax Plugins
👇🏿 This is how an artist sees the Joomla Ajax upload form on their profile when logged in.
Below the upload form, the artist sees their own player along with options to delete or sort their songs.
Other artists and users visiting any artist's profile can only see the player and the playlist on the Player tab.
Clicking any song in the playlist triggers the second Joomla Ajax Plugin — the Audioserve — which loads all available songs into the sticky player.
The sticky player then begins playing and continues across the entire platform as the user navigates. Reloading the browser causes a brief pause before playback resumes from where it left off, guaranteeing a continuous listening experience.
The Audioserve is one of the most critical components of the entire system. It uses the Joomla session to verify login status — no audio is served to users who are not logged in or who are outside the platform. Additional security measures include the use of absolute and relative paths, along with three further layers of protection. In summary: the first Ajax Plugin handles uploading and writing tracks to the database, while the Audioserve verifies all necessary requirements before serving audio.
3. Joomla Custom Modules
The first custom module handles ratings. Every logged-in user can rate a song either directly on an artist's profile playlist or on the Amf Weekly Top 50 chart. The module uses an event listener to capture and store ratings, limiting each user to one rating per track per week using their IP address.
These ratings feed into the second custom module — the chart module — which calculates and populates the chart based on weekly ratings.
The Nr. 1 track occupies its own row, Nr. 2 and Nr. 3 share the next row, and positions 4 through 50 are displayed three tracks per row. The chart is one of the most engaging parts of the Audiosystem — it keeps the community active and discussing new music every week.
The third custom module is the sticky player mentioned above, responsible for the near-uninterrupted music playback across the platform. The only exception is the Home/Landing page, where no audio is served by design.
Version History & Roadmap
With the official launch of Afromusicfriends on 01.01.2026, versions 1.0.0 – 1.1.9 of the Audiosystem are complete.
Version 2.0.0 – 2.1.9 will include:
A playlist function allowing users to create and personalise playlists from any song available in the Afromusicfriends community
Final chart system enhancements with labels based on the following logic:
New Entry → track exists in the current week but not the previous week
Weeks on Chart → count of consecutive weeks the track appears in history
Position Movement → current week position compared to previous week
Re-entry → track absent from last week but present this week with prior chart history
Fallback → if no ratings are recorded in a given week, the previous week's standings are carried forward automatically
Introduction of the Admin Panel with the Admin Audioserve, which has already been integrated into the Joomla Admin menu
The Admin Panel will make managing the Amf-Audiosystem significantly easier for administrators.
Version 3.0.0 – 3.1.9 will complete the Amf-Audiosystem with:
Soft and hard delete options for artists
The soft delete feature will retain songs used in user playlists for up to two years before permanent deletion. Artists will opt in at upload to allow their songs to be used in playlists. If a song is in active use, it cannot be deleted without notifying affected users. Users will be informed when a track is no longer available, giving them time to replace it or request the artist keep it — making the platform more interactive, reliable and intuitive. Soft deletes can be reversed within the two-year window; after that, they automatically convert to permanent hard deletes
Complete play analytics for artists
Promotion widgets and social media apps
A payment gateway enabling artists to sell tracks or merchandise directly to their fans
System Requirements
PHP 8.2 or above (we are currently running PHP 8.4)
Joomla J5 / J6
JomSocial 4.5.9 / 5
We remain on J5 and JomSocial 4.5.9 out of respect for the stability and the many possibilities the platform offers. However, we are not entirely comfortable with the recent pricing changes from Joomlart — being pushed toward bundle purchases when many of the bundled products are not relevant to our needs is something we do not appreciate. We will upgrade to J6 and JomSocial 5 on our own timeline. We genuinely hope JomSocial continues to thrive — our system is built to remain compatible with future Joomla and JomSocial versions.
Every aspect of the Amf-Audiosystem has been documented from day one and is hosted on a private GitHub repository. We initially intended to make the system available to Joomlart as a gesture of appreciation, but given the current direction of their business decisions, we are holding that thought. We will observe and decide in due course.
A Note on Development
When I say "we," I refer to myself and my team — who handle everything except development. The development is done solely by me, with the support of AI tools: Claude Sonnet (best decision of the year), Gemini, DeepSeek, and Copilot, which joined the board five months ago.
We would love to hear from anyone already running a music platform on JomSocial, or those planning to. Our immediate focus is building awareness and publishing content across our four core genres: Afrobeat | Afrofusion | Afropop | Amapiano.
Yours alphamatt
Afromusicfriends