Selling MP3 Downloads

June 4, 2008 6:25 PM

What's the best way to sell mp3 downloads? I run a website for an indie musician who'd like to setup a shop for his tunes.

This question has been asked a couple times, but that was almost 2 years ago and I hope that things have improved since then.

I'm currently using 1-2-3 Music Store, but it is buggy, barely functional, has a horrible user interface, and isn't very customizable.

I've seen some shops for digital sales, but I'd like to be able to organize things specifically for music, with tracks grouped by album, for example.

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

I don't sell, but I used TradeBit as a customer to purchase my subscription to Never Not Funny. I found the buying experience quick-n-easy.
posted by Fuzzy Skinner at 6:32 PM on June 4, 2008

I've bought from http://amiestreet.com/ (in fact, some guys I saw mentioned here on MeFi) and was very happy with the interface. Can't speak to the interface/experience as a seller, though.
posted by devbrain at 7:01 PM on June 4, 2008

ZenCart/phpCart both have digital download options associated with them. They generate a one-off link that works for X days and X downloads.
posted by TomMelee at 7:35 PM on June 4, 2008

for a long time i was considering using snocap - i've seen loads of bands on myspace using it - it's easy to embed it in your site (or on myspace, apparently), they take a flat 30 cents per download, with no rights to your songs if you get signed or decide not to use them etc... if you're only interested in selling your mp3's on your site and your myspace page, it seems like a good way to go. the dude that started napster is one of the founding members of this company, for whatever that's worth...

however lately i've been leaning towards using tunecore for the simple reason you get your tunes sold on itunes - for me this is huge. the downside is you have to pay a flat fee to get your songs listed, annually. however, it's not a huge cost ($20-30 an album iirc?) and they dont charge anything beyond that (though itunes etc. will keep their cut of sales through their store obviously)

just so you know, i'm only sharing the fruits of a few google searches and some quick research and consideration of pluses and minuses here - i'm waiting till we finish our demo before i try either of these services myself...

hmmm, reviewing your question, snocap looks like what you want to just embed your store in your site - i don't see anything about that in the tunecore faq's (maybe i missed it). i have a feeling my band will wind up using both of them, just so we can get on itunes AND sell our tunes on our site...

man, as a musician, it's great to have the options available these days, from good quality home recording studios to instant worldwide distribution and free marketing (the internet!) woo hoo!
posted by messiahwannabe at 8:53 PM on June 4, 2008

Cool, thanks for the help. I think he'd like to use a system with as little cost overhead as possible. While I'm not happy with 1-2-3's software, you get 100% of the sales cost, minus the PayPal fees.

SnoCap looks pretty solid, except for paying 30 cents per download.
posted by krunk at 7:54 AM on June 5, 2008

You could give Brad Sucks' Digital Download Store a go (or at least see if it could be something you could use). It uses MySQL and PHP, Amazon S3 for storage and Paypal for payments. It's free and open source so if you want I guess you could modify it quite a bit.
posted by bjrn at 1:50 PM on June 5, 2008