Had a great question on the Multiple Streams Membership discussion list the other day, and wanted to share here with you guys!
Q: In the last 5 months I have created several CDs and started to market them on the Web (with no success). I would like to offer the content as a downloadable product for sale on the web as well.
I am having trouble figuring out how to upload the MP3 file so that it can be offered.
A: There are 2 ways to offer audio online
1. Streamed audio
2. Downloadable audio
To “stream” audio online means that the audio starts playing as soon as the link is clicked vs. the persons computer having to download the audio file before playing (which can take a while as audio files can be large)… this requires a special hosting package that allows audio streaming, such as www.playstream.com
The alternative is to just offer audio as a download, which doesn’t require anything special on your server. Instead what you do is ask people to “right click the link to download the audio” to their computer, where they can play it direct. This is definitely the easier (and cheaper!) option of the 2, as you just link the audio to your webpage as you would any other link.