Secure(-ish) online mp3 player?

May 20, 2009 10:20 AM

Need an MP3 player for a website that won't expose the actual MP3 files for people to download.

Can you recommend a simple, good looking, customizable player that can play an MP3 feed without letting users download the files themselves?
I am working on a music related website where musicians will upload MP3s and decide whether or not they want people to be able to download them. I like the JW Player used on Music a lot, but it makes you expose the URLs of the MP3s being played (right?).
And yes, I know about the analog hole, etc., this isn't meant to be 100% foolproof, just give musicians some semblance of control over their work.
Site's built in Django+jQuery. Free is super nice.

posted by signal to computers & internet (6 comments total)

How secure are you talking about? Most Flash-based players don't show the URL in the swf. However an interested user can find the MP3 from looking at the HTML source or using Firebug, etc. Is that enough of a barrier for you? (This is what it takes to get around JW Player.)

Otherwise there are ways to embed the sound inside Flash or Java. I don't know of a slick, CMS-happy way to do that. And the audio can still be reached by the curious with a SWF or Java decompiler (which isn't a lot of people). this is an example of a Java implementation. But the more secure you want, the less control you're going to have over the interface.
posted by Ookseer at 11:50 AM on May 20

SecureTSPlayer "a Flash Music Player software for web sites designed especially for people that need to protect the audio files from unauthorized download."
posted by kirkaracha at 11:54 AM on May 20

Not possible -- if I can play it, I can record it straight from the sound card (nothing analog about it).

Many players have crappy UIs that make me not want to use them. Find a flash player with a good UI, and forget the copy protection -- honest people will stay honest.

BTW- Based on your description, it sounds like it might be better to have the musicians upload just a portion of the songs. Perhaps there's a backend solution that would make this easy to provide without relying on the musicians themselves to edit their songs.
posted by coolguymichael at 1:18 PM on May 20

Streaming over RTMP presents an obstacle to unauthorized downloading. It apparently is a bit of a PITA to administrate the server, though.
posted by Pronoiac at 1:41 PM on May 20

kirkaracha: SecureTSPlayer looks kind of like what I want, except that you can't customize the skins, and we want to let users customize the players themselves.
posted by signal at 1:56 PM on May 20

There's a service called Grooveshark that lets you upload any MP3s you want to share (you can also access anything that anyone else has uploaded), and has customizable widgets. Only one style of widget (well, and a second widget to share a single song with), but infinite colors (be sure to hit the advanced button to access all parts). I have one on my page, nicely blends in.
posted by timepiece at 4:07 PM on May 21