Audio Clips

Music Production

[madcat]

Hi:

What could I do to prevent somebody from downloading an audio file, yet still giving them the ability to listen all they want (in many forms)?

Thanks-

M

[monkeythumpa]

Both Real and Windows media player have file formats that act like pointers. They point to the file but the file can't be downloaded. I can't remember the extension but I have downloaded some porn like that. I click on the file and it streams it all over again. I always thought it was dumb, it eats up more bandwidth than if they just downloaded it once.

[madcat]

Well we're trying to sell this clips so if they were there to download for anyone we'd be in trouble...

[eggy ricardo]

One solution is to embed it in flash as, AFAIK, its more difficult to actually get at the audio then.

However, what you have to also realise is this is a similar thing to the 'how can i stop people downloading my pictures' story. It is pretty easy to record audio off of a website yourself, using something as simple as Windows Sound Recorder, so although they may not be downloading the file as such, they can still end up with the file saved.

Hope this helps
Cheers
Richard

P.S. I've never actually tried the above method with streaming audio, only flash embedded, although i presume it would work just the same.

[stef24]

if you open the pointer file for real media in notepad, it should list the url of the music file. sometimes it can be downloaded just by pasting that link

streambox is a piece of software that will "rip" all kinds of audio streams off the net

why dont you provide a very low bitrate version and keep the link to the actual file hidden? more bandwith but more peace of mind

keep in mind that streams are never of a quality that users would pay for, so you probably want two versions anyway. quality audio is too large to stream

[balam]

> I've never actually tried the above method with streaming audio [...]

I have - almost daily.

Visited a tiny country a few years back and fell in love with the local music. I couldn't buy enough cassette tapes & CDs to satisfy my thirst. About a year ago, one of the local radio stations started streaming (via RealAudio) their broadcasts.

Guess who now owns about a couple of day's worth of music...

Technology just makes it too easy. The Creative Labs soundcard I have came with its own recording program; besides recording from line-in, mic, etc., it records from "What U Hear" - any sound, regardless of source (CD, streaming audio, etc.), that the computer makes has to go through the soundcard, and it can capture & record it for me.

Disregarding legal & ethical issues, there's only one downside: compression. Streaming audio has already been compressed to some degree; saving it locally further compresses the audio (unless you don't mind excessively large files).