mp3

best way to offer for surfer

[brdwlsh]

hi-

i'm helping some friends by creating a website for their band. they want to offer a selection of 4 mp3 files for their fans to download. the problem is file size, too big. (four songs total 300mb)

is there an alternative method for offering these files to potential surfers? should i use a different file format, or can i compress them--significantly?

is my only option to tell them to buy a hosting plan that offers more bandwith usage?

thank you.

[Farix]

300MBs for four songs in MP3 is really out of whack. Most songs are around 3-4MB per song. I sometimes download a talk radio show that is about two hours long and is no more then 18MBs, although quality is somewhat to be desired.

Make sure that your bit rate is set to 128kbps, which is typical for MP3 music files. That rate creates a relatively small file with suitable auto quality.

[Gargen]

i dont no if this helps but i use the wma format on my mp3 player you get cd quality at 64kbps so it takes up half the space

[Farix]

But then, you are limiting people to just Windows. MP3 is supported on multiple platforms.

[brdwlsh]

the files on the cd that i was given shrank considerably after importing them to my media player--even when i imported them at the highest bit rate.

bandwith shouldn't be much of an issue now.

thanks.

[publish]

There's potential license issues with mp3. Search for mp3 licensing and also search for publishing mp3

Alternative high quality audio formats suitable for downloading are AAC and OGG. Plenty of free conversion tools for those.