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?"

Comments

Re:Secure, non-transferable... no DRM?

[foniksonik]

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.

Mindawn

[Tepar]

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.