‘Stream’ your Music from Your Website:
Here’s where my lack of technical knowledge shows itself, but please bear with me as I try to explain the process of streaming: when you link to a streaming file on the web, your browser’s default player will start to download the music file, and when it receives enough of that file, the song will start playing. And If a visitor doesn’t like your music and shuts it off after a few seconds, your bandwidth cost will reflect only the portion of the file streamed. (If a person stops the average three minute song after the first minute, your bandwidth cost would be a third of the whole file size.) I’ll use my website as as example: in the month of March 2004, 31 hits to a certain MP3 via download would have cost me over 150 MB bandwidth. By streaming the file, it only cost me 33.3 MB, with an average of 1.4 MB per listen. Streaming is much less expensive for you and a lot more convenient for your visitors.
The True Secret to ‘Streaming’
it doesn’t take intense technical knowledge or expensive programs for you to offer MP3 streams. All you need is an MP3 encoder (I would assume that you already have a ‘ripper’ that’ll turn music into MP3’s, if not, there are plenty of free rippers out there) and a text editor (Microsoft Notepad). Your visitor will only need their default MP3 player in their default browser.
Streaming music is so easy to do; even this monkey was able to it right.
But before you get to streaming, I get over 100 hits per month to this page, more so than any of other pages on the website from which this essay originates from. So, starting soon, I’ll be posting links to the bands who have used this streaming technology, as long as they link to this page in return. This is what I ask for “payment” for this service. Spread the technology!
Quick Start to Streaming:
Here’s the real secret: The streaming file (M3U) links to the MP3; you link to the M3U instead of the MP3! Making the streaming file is as simple as typing the path of the MP3 into a text editor and saving it as song.M3U. That’s the punch-line, the closely guarded secret to the mysteries of MP3 streaming!
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