Forum Moderators: not2easy
- background music embedded on a webpage (e.g. wav, other?)
- 30 second sound samples (e.g. mp3, asx, other?)
- ringtones
- music that can be downloaded directly into an IPOD
I am a bit confused as MP3s are supposed to be compression format and yet the file sizes seem huge. Would it be better to have one site strictly for storage and the other with shortcuts? How do you created short cuts such as those used in .asx and .ram files?
What do I need to know technically in order to set this up? Also, do you have any recommendations about the optimal file size range to balance quality of sound and speed of download?
Thank you.
Create a file with notepad putting the full URL of your mp3 file, save it as whatever.m3p and put it on your server.
Then make your hyperlink from the page link to this file. It will then launch the mp3 as a streaming file.
Hope this helps
Should read....
Create a file with notepad putting the full URL of your mp3 file, save it as whatever.m3u and put it on your server.
Then make your hyperlink from the page link to this file. It will then launch the mp3 as a streaming file.
That should do it.
download:http://www.mydomain/mymusic.m3u
Can you use any extension for the file or does it have to be .m3u
I'd say you can do well with 128 kbps for all the uses. Ringtones could be sampled down to mono 32 kbps since most phones can't do much better quality than that anyways and they typically have limited space for ringtone files.
At 128kbps, a good estimate is 1 meg per minute of music. (I'm listening to a 3:20 song that takes up 3.2 megs right now.)
Regarding encryption, if you are posting music you've produced, I wouldn't worry about it getting passed around on p2p file sharing networks. Since I assume you don't already publish your work for profit, any amount of bandwidth that can be passed to a free distribution network is a bonus for you -- listeners without the expense.
If you are posting music produced by others (without permission), they won't give a hoot if you've decided to encrypt it or not.
One thing to remember is that you need publishing rights for releasing anyone else's music on your website, no matter the format, in order to be legal.
I use WMA format (I think 160kbs) for as near to CD quality as I can get without the huge file size. The difference between that and CD quality is -very- small, and can only be heard in critical listening situations when A/B'ing material with lots of High Frequency audio (eg cymbals).
I've not compared every type of encoding though: that's just my preference, at least for my own music library.
For general access, Mp3's are much more widely readable than WMA format (or Real Audio or Quicktime for that matter) so you're probably best experimenting with various bit-rates of Mp3 encoding.
The file size is larger if it is in stereo, obviously, because that's effectively twice the size of the same music played in mono.
Encryption of music is a bit pointless if you're going to publish it on the net. There are numerous audio ripping applications which basically record the audio as it is played back on your computer.
The best way to not get your stuff ripped off is to encode it at a grainy enough format that it's obviously an mp3, but audible enough to "hear". And the m3u tactic is best to prevent casual ripping.
Is that any help?
And it doesn't stop people who want the music without paying for it finding a tune on Napster, playing it (using the subscription service) and recording the output. Voila: instant (illegal) Mp3 with virtually no overhead.
If you don't want your music copied by people, don't publish it on the net. If you don't want people to easily profit from your music, the only way is to degrade the content of the song. Do this either by lowering the bitrate, trimming the start/end, inserting random white noise etc... Or upload crap music. A lot of people have gone for that approach!
In order for someone to copy music from Napster illegally, they have to
A) have a suitable audio ripper
B) copy music in realtime: ie slower than it takes to download, and much more inconvenient. This might not stop the odd user from recording a few (say 10 or 20) tracks from Napster, but it DOES stop them from abusing the system and illegally acquiring hundreds of albums.
Digital certificates (I expect they are like some kind of validation cookie) I IMAGINE will be complicated to set up, and are only really of value when you have a vast library of music to administer and protect, such as Itunes or Napster. They have to integrate on a proprietary level with the media players being used to play back the files, and I'm assuming that kind of thing is way too time consuming for someone with a small output, considering it doesn't, at the end of the day, stop people from ripping your music if they really want to.
with respect...
memofromturner
Thanks.
you can not encrypt an mp3 as such, but you could place it inside a .zip archive and assign a password to that.
I think winzip can make a password protected archive. you can offer that .zip file for download and distribute the password as you please.
mp3 is the best format for transferring music via download. if you want to offer music via *streaming* (it plays while being downloaded) you can use windows media or real player formats. google for "windows media encoder" or "real producer" - both free programs
this type of streaming files can still be saved to a hard drive using "right click save as". to disable this, you need .asx type file formats but im quite sure you need special servers for this, prob out of your league. and even those can be "ripped" with programs like streambox vcr
streaming formats are usually smaller than mp3 but also lesser quality.
itunes imho is not a good choice since alot of people dont yet have ipods, but they will have windows media player, real player, quick time.
if you want more info send me a PM
