How best to serve audio files?

[tatoeba]

I have a database of small mp3 files (1-3MB) that I am going to rent to my customers. It's going to be like a monthly fee to get access to the whole data I would host.
Now I am looking to find the best way to do it, knowing that I would like the process to be easy for my clients like 'register/pay + get access + use database'.
How to make the process secure and easy to handle? Have you seen similar websites?

Any advice appreciated!
Jean

[rogerd]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld, tatoeba. I moved your post to Website Technology Issues hoping you'd get more replies. Good luck with your project.

[Sanenet]

Create a members only section where people can, with their username and password, access and download the files.

For the signup, send them to a online payment processor to take their payment. Once you receive their money, send them the username / password. Once their subscription expires, you can cancel the username / password.

[tatoeba]

Thank you Rogerd for putting my post at the right place! I was not sure where it would fit best.

Sanenet I appreciate your help and when I think about this there are two hurdles that I see:
- When I have hundreds of subscribers it will be difficult to handle the job manually.
- If they download the files they can use them even after the cancellation.
Reading your post made me wonder if it would be possible to do everything through a script and serve the data through streaming only on a pop up window or something like that

[kalos]

As for registration and access if you don't want to roll your own account setup (and maintenance) you could look at services such as ibill or ccbill which, from what I can tell, handle all of that for you.

To assuage your fear of your files being downloaded and continously used you have a few options. You could re-encode them using some DRM-enabled feature of Windows Media at the expense of users on platforms that don't support Windows Media files (or users like me that have updated codecs but refuse to install the DRM bug... I mean feature). The other option, which would work with roughly 99.8% of your users, is to pass the mp3 to the user via a flash plugin. The files will be very difficult to "rip" from the stream, but not impossible.

Hope this helps.

[tatoeba]

Thanks Kalos!
I am looking also into ModernBill and cmsMerchant to see which one is the best for my needs.
By any chance do you know a website doing the Flash solution you suggested? This would prevent suspended subscribers from streaming the audio? How would it work?

[Sanenet]

Hi tatoeba,

The Flash solution would involve creating a simple flash file (probably with play, stop, ff and rewind buttons) that contained the sound source.

The only example I can think of offhand would be [avonandsomerset.police.uk...]

A good programmer / flash guy could get the sound out of the flash file, but it ain't that easy ;)

[bcolflesh]

There any numerous programs to record any audio played on a computer, TotalRecorder for example.

If you can hear it, you can record it w/out any difficulty.

[edited by: DaveAtIFG at 6:36 pm (utc) on July 20, 2004]
[edit reason] URL removed [/edit]

[Sanenet]

Well, as stated above, there's no way to secure these files, other than writing your own audio format and player :)

The trick is to make it as difficult as possible.

[bcolflesh]

...writing your own audio format and player

That won't work either, to be heard it has to go through the soundcard/audio subsystem - but I know what you mean.

[edited by: bcolflesh at 3:07 pm (utc) on July 20, 2004]

[tatoeba]

Thanks guys!
Actually the subscribers will be companies which in turn will serve the mp3s for free to their customers as an added value item.
I am planning to do all the hosting for them and I am thinking of giving my subscribers a secured link through which they could access all the data. Do you think it's possible?
So I am not too worried about someone recording the stream.

[Sanenet]

Depending how the system is setup, I suppose you could write an app that only gives access to the files if it's coming from an authorised (ie subscribed) IP.

bcolflesh - Good point! Is it just me or do you know quite a bit about ripping off audio streams? ;)

[annav]

MyWebsiteTalkssnipped is the program I like and use. Im glad someone else has the idea of adding audio to their site too.

Off topic

Best of luck with your venture...

[edited by: DaveAtIFG at 11:38 am (utc) on Aug. 1, 2004]
[edit reason] No URLs please [/edit]

[tatoeba]

Thanks Anna!
So you went with MyWebsiteTalks? How happy are you with it? Audlink seems good too.
Can I get your website URL? Put it on your profile please!

Thanks a lot,
Jean

[edited by: DaveAtIFG at 12:11 am (utc) on Aug. 2, 2004]
[edit reason] URL removed [/edit]