Downloading mp3s is cool but sometimes, you wanna be able to give someone a preview of the song without allowing them to download the file. Flash Music Players are ok but a little complicated & realaudio is ok but hardly anyone has the player anymore & the audio quality is quite limited.

But at last, I have found an alternative! Streaming mp3s! Heres what you do:

1. Create an mp3 of your song & upload it to your website.

2. Open a text file (notepad or wordpad)

3. Type the full address of your mp3 (including http://) into the first line of the text file.

4. Save the text file as 'songname.m3u' & upload it to your website

5. Link to the .m3u file and hey presto, the visitor's mp3 player will load the mp3 in small packets while its playing. The visitor can hear the file in a matter of seconds (no waiting for download) but they cant download the mp3 itself

Enjoy

PS. Those who do wanna use realaudio too can stream their files like this:

1. Create a realaudio file of your song & upload it to your website. (download the realaudio converter software here

2. Open a text file (notepad or wordpad)

3. Type the full address of your realaudio file (including http://) into the first line of the text file.

4. Save the text file as 'songname.ram' & upload it to your website

5. Link to the .ram file and hey presto, the visitor's realaudio player will load the realaudio in small packets while its playing.
[This message was edited Fri Oct 10 13:53:41 PDT 2003 by cloud9mission]

heres an example http://www.cloud9mission....notwar.m3u

cloud9mission said:

Hey THAT is awesome. What music format is it? My windows media player started it up pronto. What about mac losers? I mean, users.

Hey that's cool!

It doesn't even show up in the temp files, does it?

It opened winamp for me.

cool thing. now NPGMC will start delivering their music that way and there will not B any temp files to copy from. COOL!


PEACE N B WiLD!!!

U'll still need 2 enocde the MP3 file in a bandwidth that accomodates particular users...

anything over 48Kbps is cool for ISDN, DSL, but may not work so well for dial-up.

'dre

DreZone said:

At this point, I wonder how many dialup users are trying use ANY rich media on websites... I'm all for accomodating anyone because you never know what record exec is in a hotel room on a laptop checking out new music, but... ain't saying "IGNORE THEM"... just wondering what percentage you're losing by not accomodating them.

Thanks !!! Cool tip!

otan said:

its an mp3, just streamed (downloaded in little packets as its playing) rather than downloaded

VinaBlue said:

no temp files as nothing is actually downloaded, its downloaded in small packets as it plays but once it has played a packet, it deletes it & moves on the next packet

Im just using it as an alternative to realaudio. I only used realaudio so people could audition tracks without downloading because no one would buy my CD if I gave away all the tracks but no one will buy it anyway if they cant get a preview. Realaudio served that purpose for a while but few people have the player anymore & the audio is terrible quality.

Using streaming mp3s, all the visitor needs is an mp3 player and most mp3 players support streaming. Its been possible to stream mp3s for ages but I could never figure it out. Didint know it was a simple as it is

DreZone said:

Yeah forgot to mention that. The mp3 that I have used for the example is a 128kbs file, CD quality mp3s are about 300kbs so it is just a smaller, lower quality mp3 file so connection to the stream works faster. I was gonna use a 48kbs file as suggested by Dre so it worked on most connections speeds but the low quality audio file was nasty on the ears & 128 was the lowest setting that didnt sound wierd.

a 128k file will stream on dial up just takes a while to connect & connection occassionally times out.

Ive added details on realaudio streaming above as most people can create realaudio but not many know how to stream. Its very similar to streaming your mp3

plenty more where this came from

I may post some more website design tips soon

cloud9mission said:

However - those of you worried about folks being able to get to the real mp3 files - all I had to do was select "save target as" when hovering over the link to the mpu file, then open that file with a text editor. All your links to the mp3 files are in there, so it's just a matter of copying and pasting THOSE links into a browser window.

Not trying to be a pain here - just letting you know. Thanks for ALL the info on this Lewis - it will definitely come in handy.

otan said:

Exactly, but ya know, I didn't want to say anything...

Anyway the streaming is better than downloading for technotards like me still on modems at home!

otan said:

thats true but only technical users can do that. but there aint no mp3s that people shouldnt have on my server other than the password protected Digital Music Network

Its just cool to not have to wait for a download & not to have to use realaudio

cloud9mission said:

What you say about technical users is right. On top of this if you have a look at the way NPGMC does it, if you don't provide a link to the file you can somewhat get around the problem of people right clicking on it to save it. In other words if you provide a link to some script that opens a page that loads the MP3 file then there is no option to save the file to your PC.

It's not a guaranteed way to stop everyone from directly accessing the file, but it will probably stop a few more than otherwise.

toccata said:

Yes thats what Im doing anyway with my flash site. No right click on flash