Setting up my own DRM-free music store

December 28, 2006 1:18 AM

What's the best way to sell my music online on my own site?

I want to try offering MP3s (of ambient / relaxation music) for sale, but through my own online store and website. What open source "shopping cart" systems (LAMP based if possible) are available that will allow users to select the songs they want, make a PayPal payment, then be given access to download the tracks? All I've found so far are either online music libraries (no payment system) or standard shopping carts (no automated MP3 downloading system).

Bonus points if it allows users to purchase a song without having to "sign up" and register at the site - I just want to offer an instant purchase and download.

Bonus points if the system allows inclusion of free sample tracks, free excerpts, or multiple bitrates.

Bonus points if this kind of functionality is available as a module for a nice CMS, like Mambo.

DRM on the tracks I want to sell is unnecessary.

posted by Jimbob to computers & internet (7 comments total)

OSCommerce is a popular and free eCommerce solution that runs on LAMP. People modify it with plugins, etc.

Here's a contribution that seems to be a music store.
posted by twiggy at 3:26 AM on December 28, 2006

Hm OSCommerce looks like a good start - the contribution you link to doesn't seem to be working though - for some reason I can't even extract it's ZIP file without an error. OSCommerce does (in an awkward kind of way) support paying for downloads. Something a little more dedicated to the cause might be an improvement.
posted by Jimbob at 4:54 AM on December 28, 2006

I haven't looked too closely at it, but Dreamhost's Files Forever may be what you're looking for.
posted by deansfurniture5 at 6:58 AM on December 28, 2006

You could go look at how it's done over at JonathanCoulton.com and I suspect he'd be willing to answer questions (assuming he hasn't already somewhere) about how he does it.
posted by phearlez at 7:32 AM on December 28, 2006

JoCo uses Payloadz, which is a pretty nice system. Easy to set up, and supports both PayPal and Google Checkout.
posted by scottandrew at 10:44 AM on December 28, 2006

Payloadz is very much not what I asked for in my original question, but having had a look at it, it may actually be usable for my purposes, and probably easier than setting up my own "cart", especially since they have a % based option.

At the moment I think I'll go with this, unless more suggestions for installable shopping cart systems come along.
posted by Jimbob at 3:29 PM on December 28, 2006

http://easybe.com/ sells a PHP/MySQL music store for $68. I've used it before, so it's totally workable. I think it allows for a purchaser to download a song 3 times after buying it through PayPal.

Like I said, I haven't shopped around enough to call it the best, but's it's at least decent.
posted by mysterious1der at 9:01 PM on December 29, 2006