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Selling Independent MP3s Direct to Customer?
jetsetsc asks: "I am not a programmer but I am a musician. My band's recordings belong to the band, and we'd like to skip the middlemen — labels, iTunes, Amazon, CDBaby, etc — and setup a way to sell MP3's cheaply, and directly to fans. I have searched quite a bit and found nothing that fits the bill. Snocap is sort of similar, but they are more about a central store with a MySpace tie in. We don't need a fancy search, or a complicated 'if you liked this try...' feature. I figure potential fans can find our webpage on their own, referred by Pandora, a music blog, internet radio, or even (gasp!) a print article. When they get there it'd be great if they could listen to samples, check off the songs they want, pay 39 cents (or however much) through PayPal, and get a secure non-transferable download just like iTunes. DRM not required. I can't believe in this day and age that a service or software package like this doesn't exist. Any ideas?"
I think submitter meant to say that they want the download over SSL (secure transaction) and from a non-public repository and non-transferrable as in you can't post a link that just anyone can use to download it... ie: a unique download uri.
To answer the submitter's question... there are software packages like this... and open source / free. Go to Sourceforge or it's work-a-likes out there and look for software download shopping carts.... actually I think that OS Commerce has a plugin for setting up 'intangible' products so that you can keep people from direct linking to the download.
Also you may want to contact Kagi, a very popular shareware commerce provider and ask about rates... they already have a good 'intangible' product commerce offering.
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"What's wrong with Sounclick [soundclick.com]?"
I signed up for them once and got a lot of spam. They even make you sign up for the spam lists to download their FREE mp3's.
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Sounds like http://www.mindawn.com/ is what you're looking for. They sell lossless (flac) and lossy (ogg) sound files. No DRM. Their catalog is growing steadily, and they work with a lot of independents.
Dreamhost (note: my hosting provider, and a referral link) recently announced Files Forever (non-referral link) that I think would let you do what you are after. It's beta now (I don't know if they will let non-Dreamhost customers in) but I think it's an easy solution to what you're looking for. When they announced it on their Blog they specifically mentioned being able to use it as an iTunes alternative.
Hope that helps.
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dreamhost is offering a service for their customers: https://files.dreamhost.com/ - No DRM is allowed.. period! - Once you upload your file to sell, you pay a tiny one-time storage fee, and we serve it FOREVER at a nice, permanent, URL. - Anybody who buys a file somebody offers via Files Forever get an online backup of it included.. that is, they may re-download the file as many times as they want, FOREVER! - Any file you buy from Files Forever you can also "loan" to your friends via the service! They are then allowed to download the file as much as they want until you ask for it "back." (This is awesome, trust me.) - We handle all the payment processing / shopping cart stuff, and take just 5% + 50c for credit card fees. (We combine purchases to minimize these costs too.) - You can even offer an "affiliate cut" for people who re-sell your files!
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First, a preface. There are sites out there that will do what you want, and as part of their fees, will handle the site development, order processing, and fulfillment. If you really want to do it yourself, remember that there are typically per-transaction as well as percentage fees for card processing, which is why micropayments have yet to really take off.
Now, that being said, OSCommerce will do what you want. It will provide a pretty interface, allow you to create time and/or number of download limited links, and has plugins to handle billing with pretty much anyone you'd ever want (and some you wouldn't touch) to handle your billing.
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Have you considered the Podsafe Music Network? They now let artists sell their music for a dollar a track, with no DRM. The PMN has an added benefit of promotion via podcasts playing your music.