Upload Music files into server but restrict download?

Question

I am developing a website for a rock band. I wanted to upload the music into the website and let the users listen to the songs. But, I want to add a functionality or some sort of code so that the users are not able to download the mp3 files that i will let the users listen. Suppose someone uses "Internet download manager", he she will be prompted to save the file on as soon as it get the music file. Is there any way to stop that.

Thanks.

Answer 1

There is always a way to bypass any restriction (either download the file or use an audio recorder).

The protection that iTunes and other music platforms use is to let you listen to a preview of the music (~30 seconds) so you cannot get the entire song.

Answer 2

Well, there is really no way to let someone listen to music without them downloading it. Even if you stream the music, they could still record it.

http://www.codewalkers.com/c/a/Miscellaneous/Using-PHP-to-Stream-MP3-Files-and-Prevent-Illegal-Downloading/

This could be of help to you, though, because it will make it much more difficult to download the music.

Answer 3

As mentioned by others, there is no foolproof way to keep the users from downloading the mp3s. Having said that, you could try streaming the content which will make it much more harder for most people.

You can use a streaming server like Red5 for this.

Answer 4

I've been working on the same, and what I did was to create two (or more) versions of each file. One file will be the listening file which in my case was a low quality MP3 file encoded with 112 kbps. The quality would be good enough for people to listen to it online, but not good enough if people wanted a decent quality when they are on the go with a portable player or the like.

Then i'd also have high quality MP3 versions (320 kbps) and WAV files which people could download only if they were logged in.

I can't say that I've found a solution which guarantees that people can't get hold of the music if that's what they are after. You could certainly use Red5 or some other streaming solution, but that requires you to spend more time and resources on configuring and maintaining that solution. Furthermore, I believe Red5/Wowza or any of the other streaming servers requires that the client use Flash to play music (because the communication is done over RTMP). That rules out iPad/iPhone/iPod users as Flash can't be used on those devices.

My conclusion was thus that with the (limited) resources I had the way to go was to offer playback over HTTP (aka "progressive http") using low quality files.