Slashdot Mirror

audioSurge.com

BuyMP3.com

Unlike the sites listed in the post above, audioSurge and BuyMP3 are not backed by slick CEOs and millions of dollars. These sites are run by people who are actually into music. By music I don't just mean the billboard top 20. I mean real music by independent and underground artists that will never sell a million copies of their latest CD.

Also, BuyMP3 has recently started letting ANY artist sell their music in the MP3 format on BuyMP3. In my mind this is a great idea.

So, if you're an artist and potentially want to get screwed, then the sites in the above post are OK. If you're looking for an environment where there's no bullshit, then check out audioSurge and BuyMP3.

Forget Cold Fusion. One of our sites, audiosurge.com used to be written in CF, and we had nothing but problems. We were using the Solaris version, which was always crashing. I guess there's an HP-UX version now, but I don't know if it's any good. Is the Linux port done yet? Maybe it will be better. But even if it is better, CFML is kind of annoying when you compare it to other languages such as Java, C, or Perl. Imagine having to write loops and conditional statements with HTML-like tags. It's no fun.

So after a while we got sick of CF, and since BuyMP3.com was working extremely well with PHP, we decided to port the site to PHP. Now audioSurge is a lot faster and the site is hardly ever down.

I've heard good things about mod_perl, but I haven't gotten around to trying it. If you have time, check it out.

If you can't wait for PHP4, then check out PHPLIB, which is one of the session management libraries for PHP3. Besides the session management class, PHPLIB also offers other classes for things like authentication, permissions, building forms and validating input, and a ton of other stuff I can't think of now.

Yes, it does take a while to figure out how PHPLIB works, but once you've figured it out you'll be hooked. I highly recommend it.

As far as Cold Fusion goes, I wouldn't recommend the Solaris version. We developed one of our sites in CFML and we had nothing but problems with the CF server. Hopefully the Linux version will be more stable.

-Philip
http://www.buymp3.com/

PHP would definitely be an alternative. Or they could always use Cold Fusion on a different Unix, such as Solaris or HP-UX (closer to Linux than NT is). But then again, CF on Solaris has some problems. Haven't tried CF on HP-UX.

-Philip
BuyMP3.com

Try this mirror.

- Philip

I have a lot of faith in the future online sales of MP3's and other downloadable music formats. But we don't need to debate. I think the issue will be settled by my company's internet music network which includes buyMP3.com . But you shouldn't take my word for it... Buy an MP3 from us for $.99 and let us know exactly what you thought of the service.
audiosurge.com Capturing the Energy of Music