There are essentially 3 choices:
Drupal driven digital warehouse & preview site with voucher based music sales
use Drupal as a complete music "warehouse" & shop + sell vouchers that can be used to buy songs. Which is the model used for the excellently done projectopus.com
Drupal driven digital warehouse & preview site and using the ecommerce suite of modules for paid downloads
use Drupal as a complete music "warehouse" & shop + sell music using the payment gateways that come with the ecommerce suite modules.
Drupal driven digital warehouse and preview site & 3rd party shop
Use Drupal as your "shop front" to preview tracks, artists etc. and bolt a third party music warehouse + shop onto your Drupal site. If I could recommend two such 3rd parties....
artists-first.net is a superb free solution that not only allows you to brand your own shop, but offers mobile SMS payments in the UK, USA, GERMANY and a few other territories (in other words, people can buy the music using their mobile phone as the payment method, as well as paypal, credit/debit card etc.).
As an aside, Artists-first is also interesting because it has an option for investors/labels to keep tabs on projects they might invest in. You have the option to "target" Ministry of Sound, for example, so their A&R team are able to see how the artist is doing, sales wise. Think of it as a "sales count" instead of a "friends count" in myspace speak. i.e. A&R and investors have a clearer picture to what sort of following the artist has before investing.
indiestore.com is another good free solution that handles your music sales for you in a brandable shop. Credit card, paypal payment oprtions...with the added bonus that your sales are chart eligible in about 20 countries. (e.g. if someone buys a song in the UK, that sale will count towards the official weekly download charts, which is published by the Official Chart Company).
There are other 3rd party solutions you can buy...such as easybe.com or payloadz but they don't really offer much more than you can already get using the Drupal ecommerce suite of modules.
Notes: I've been playing around with Drupal 4.7.2 and the ecommerce suite of modules for a while, in particular with a view of selling music + ringtones + mobile content. It's all there and works, the only 2 little things I would mention is that there is an issue with security of the files store on your server (it wouldn't be too difficult for someone to "guess" the link and download a song from the audio preview pages) and the default ecommerce cart and workflow needs to be tweaked a little to make it look more funky and like other online music shops.
Bottom line is that, with a bit of elbow and mouse grease, you can create a very good stand-alone my-tunes type shop using Drupal. And with solutions like artists-first you can have a very comprehensive music preview site/magazine with free previews...and simply insert the buy-this-song links to point to your own branded artists-first shop.
incidentally...Drupal and the file.module add-on for ecommerce is ideal for selling ringtones/Truetones/mobile content..all you need is a mobile theme, so shoppers can login, click on MY FILES and download to their phone
Hope that makes sense..
Dub
Comments
protecting dowloads
Great summary dublin.
That fills in heaps of gaps for me.
I'll have to look into what you say about "guessing the download path". I half expected you could configure apache to not serve files from that location and drupal will handle the downloads. But I've not explored it in depth.
private files
on admin/settings you can enable private files and that should protect everything as long as the files dir is not under web root
Oh. That seems so obvious
Oh. That seems so obvious I'm embarrassed to have missed it.
So if I do "/files" instead of "files" it will relative to the server root rather than the web root?
Server root
The files setting is server-root relative. Other file settings (e.g. image) are file root relative -- i.e. appended to that files setting.
ticketing
any ideas for a well-integrated ticketing module for a site that serves as a venue as well as a music store?
i have poked around and thus far only 3rd party services seem to work well. i wish i could integrate into the drupal host instead.
here's an idea..
There are a few alternatives to ticketmaster popping up, which is good for bands, but, the out of the box drupal ecommerce suite might offer a practical alternative.
Consider a band/artist site setup using Drupal that has a custom CCK content type setup for GIGS - Which is a standard page to have for all artist/band sites. Normally, bands tend to link across to the venue site for the booking office, or to ticketmaster type sales people.
I think making the gig content type a non-shippable product, with inventory management is a preactical alternative.
Whereby the gig listing not only has the dates, time on stage, venue, maybe a map as well but an ADD TO CART option so fans can buy tickets direct at the site. With inventory control switched on, you don't run into any problems with over selling a gig and it's fairly standard for a band to have a block of N tickets available to them anyway.
Fans get a receipt sent on payment.
A tour manager can login to the Drupal site, at any time, to check who has paid, so he/she can either treat it like they do a guest list and issue tickets on the door, or simply wave them in, as they show up and declare their name.
I'm not sure about the USA, but, in Europe, people are well used to dealing with ticketless airlines for a good few years. They don't panic if they don't have the tickets in their hand.
I hope that makes sense and I think it would work well with both large and small bands. Especially if there is a "fan only" area of the site where "real" fans can get discounted tickets, be in a draw for freebies or other.
For larger bands, there is a growing popularity in the band "owning" the mosh pit or space in front of the stage...or a certain block of seats. Setting up the sales system to take payments online and tracking those orders using Drupal is relatively simple.
A mobile theme would be useful as well...where the tour manager can login and check sales up to the last minute at a gig in a different county/state or country.
not sure if that helps or not, but, I think you shouldn't have to rely on 3rd parties for gig ticket sales and use Drupal instead.
Dub
Great points Dub... I think
Great points Dub...
I think options 2) and 3) make sense for a new band just starting out. The only problem with 3) is it locks you into somebody else's system and you are at their mercy if they change policies.
I am really less interested in plugging into a 3rd party ecommerce system as I am in plugging into UK, US charts and getting stats entered into a free, global database. I feel like Drupal should handle the ecommerce and payment methods separately and that there should be some way to create a a system where download statistics for each song could be shared between sites. I have a couple of ideas for how this could work but need to flesh them out a bit more. In general I feel that the value of getting good, reliable statistics is worth more than a physical sale of an mp3 or album, since it helps a band provide evidence that people are listening to them and like them.
-Farsheed
Also I just wanted to mention one thing about turning on private downloads - I'm not sure if it is still the case but I think at one time turning on private downloads broke the audio.module flash player. This could be remedied by having a teaser/lo fi version that could be publicly downloaded/streamed and then a private directory that is only accessed when the file is payed for. (kinda like how iTunes has public 30 sec previews of songs).
Sell vouchers - Buy songs
Great options! Which drupal module would be used to implement this functionality?
coupon module
take a look at the coupon module which also allow the sales of Gift Certificates.
--
Gordon Heydon
coupon module
thanks for the update, from opus FAQ
then the coupon module can be setup to work as follows:
- member purchase a coupon and amount is credited to his account
- member purchase a song and amount is deducted from his account
does the member have to enter coupon code for each purchase?
projectopus.com
What happened to projectopus.com - when i visit the site I get a blank page?
Try again.
I just tried it & the content is there for me with all kinds of bands.
Walt Esquivel, MBA; MA; President, Wellness Corps; Captain, USMC (Veteran)
$50 Hosting Discount Helps Projects Needing Financing
Walt Esquivel, MBA; MA; President, Wellness Corps; Captain, USMC (Veteran)
$50 Hosting Discount Helps Projects Needing Financing
It works now!
This is a nice site. I love the individual band pages! I am guessing that they are using the ecommerce suit - does anyone know what they are using for their media player?
Flash 7
ProjectOpus.com is using Flash 7 for the Player. So sample songs are all in MP3. Though users can download MP3, Ogg, or AAC with a purchase.
We will be offering enhanced purchasing options to all out players next week, which will include the purchase of music directly with a credit card rather than using Opus Bucks. Though Opus Bucks offers great savings.
We are happy to answer any questions you might have about project opus code. You can also check out:
http://docs.projectopus.com/
Kind regards,
David Gratton
http://www.projectopus.com
http://www.donatgroup.com
I got a blank page too
Looks like a 500 error caused by APC or some other accelerator segfaulting.
Drupal performance tuning, development, customization and consulting: 2bits.com, Inc..
Personal blog: Baheyeldin.com.
DreamHost "Files forever"
Just found this on the DreamHost Blog:
http://blog.dreamhost.com/2006/10/03/itunes-music-sore/
It’s a new service (during the beta only open to DreamHost Customers) that allows you to sell your own digital files, a la iTMS.. but with a few key differences:
*No DRM is allowed.. period!
*Once you upload your file to sell, you pay a tiny one-time storage fee, and we serve it FOREVER at a nice, permanent, URL.
*Anybody who buys a file somebody offers via Files Forever get an online backup of it included.. that is, they may re-download the file as many times as they want, FOREVER!
*Any file you buy from Files Forever you can also “loan” to your friends via the service! They are then allowed to download the file as much as they want until you ask for it “back.” (This is awesome, trust me.)
*We handle all the payment processing / shopping cart stuff, and take just 5% + 50c for credit card fees. (We combine purchases to minimize these costs too.)
*You can even offer an “affiliate cut” for people who re-sell your files!
Seems like this (or something like this) has some potential?
Gus Austin
Question
I'm in the middle of doing this for a start-up record label. Our original solution was to go with audio module and the e-commerce file product.
We've gone to the trouble of creating a 30-60 second 'preview' of each track for audio moule - grouped together for albums. Each track has a link to 'Buy the Full Album' eventually will have 'Buy the full Track' that leads to the e-commerce file product. I'm hoping to eventually use 'file product' for tracks and 'Collection of products' for albums.
What is this about 'guessing a link' to the full song? I knew there was that issue with audio module http://drupal.org/node/65941
If that is the security hole then I thik the 30 second preview aspect is a good enough work around for us? But is there one for file downloads through e-commerce suite that I don't know about?
Thanks in avance!
CNDP, LLC
audio preview module
Hi Tresler,
we are currently developing an audio_preview.module that allows to attach a preview file for audio files. It is working both with audio nodes and attached audio files. This module disregards the id3 metadata from the preview file and takes the metadata from the full audio file for the preview file instead. It depends on E-Commerce, especially ec_media (and therefore also [ec_]file.module), to handle audio file access for each user.
We may release this module in some time. If you're interested in getting this sooner, we might turn this into a bounty.
regards,
Daniel F. Kudwien
unleashed mind
Daniel F. Kudwien
netzstrategen
Snocap
Has anyone checked out Snocap?
http://www.snocap.com/about/
These are their products:
SNOCAP MyStore - allows "stores" to be embedded anywhere on the Internet where html can be edited
for example - http://www.myspace.com/aleximurdoch
SNOCAP Linx - a flexible solution for those who wish to seamlessly integrate content sales into a website
http://www.snocap.com/services/retailers/linx.php
P2P Plug-in - allows P2P technology to be used in a copyright respecting manner
http://www.snocap.com/services/retailers/sdk.php
Looks like this may be a good service to integrate into a Drupal e-commerce and/or other music-centric site.
Gus
Gus Austin
Snocap problem
I think snocap is really interesting to me. It looks like a mini-iTunes that you can embed anywhere... tres cool.
Unfortunately I found a little bug with it and little bugs with music e-commerce systems mean that I cannot use them. I went to the Alexi Murdoch myspace page and tried to do a purchase. There was a quick signup feature which i liked cause i didnt have to leave the site, BUT, if you punch in a canadian postal code it becomes invalid registration. Then you enter a fake US zipcode and it accepts the registration. Then you go into your account afterwards and change your postal code and it accepts the changes.
If I have any canadian customers, or customers outside the US for that matter, how the heck can they signup quickly without having to figure out that they need to cheat the system?
Hopefully they'll work the bugs out...
It looks like potentially a nice way for both artists and stores/filters to sell some tunes. Snocap, founded by the same guy who started Napster, is who MySpace chose to sell music from their site.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/09/02/myspace-gets-into-music-biz/
It just wouldn't seem right to have a buggy plugin on such a beautiful work of art!?!
Gus Austin
great post
We currently run a digital store with customised cold fusion software that was implemented before I joined the company and to be honest it's really bad - does it's job, but only just.
All of our sites are currently being converted to Drupal by lonesome old me, and I was wondering how I was going to re-do the store, but it looks like I can stick with Drupal - I just hope the modules are update to 5.x soon, as I am developing on the bleeding edge :)
Tane Piper
Digital Spaghetti
http://digitalspaghetti.me.uk
quick update.
Hi guys,
been a while since I've been around here. As a quick update....it's well worth FLAGGING the new and excellent QUICKFILES.MODULE...I was playing around with it before christmas and the only thing holding me back using it in a production site is the lack of micropayments support for paypal merchants outside the USA.
I'm in Ireland and I can't open a micropayments account.
As an aside if there are any USA based Drupallers involved in music stuff, that is willing to open one up for me, please let me know and drop me an email
The quickfile.module is easily explained as an out-of-the-box payloadz service for your own Drupal site. I've played around with it to sell individual songs/full album downloads and even mobile ringtones. It works very well. As I say, the only reason I'm not using it is because of the lack of micropayments.
You can ise the quickfilemodule independently of the ecommerce suite of modules...No login is required..so it's a quick in-out sale for the customer.
Also worth noting that I helped out with the migration of an Irish artist band site to drupal a while back and ended up opting for CCNOW for credit card/paypal album CD sales and http://www.artists-first.net for the digital downloads. I would have used the quickfile.module if micropayments was available but I just thought I'd mention how happy they are with artists first. It doesn't plugin to Drupal yet !(an artist-first.module is on the way in march/april of this year) but it offers credit card/paypal and mobile SMS payments. They also report to the chart companies in the UK & Ireland which is a bonus.
The shop is here if you're interested: http://www.thefourofus.org/wip/online_shop and the product links were manually implemented - the artists-first.module won't be ready for a few months yet.
We opted for cheap "itunes" quality (128-192kbps AAC) files for the current album (links across to itunes Ireland) and higher quality (320 kbps MP3 with no Digital Rights Management restrictions) downloads 'driect' via Artists-first. We've been tracking it for a few months and 99% of sales are for the higher quality versions 'direct'.
The only drawbacks at the moment is the lack of a shopping cart but I've been in discussions with the guys behind artists-first.net and am twisting their arm to open a gateway so a Drupal module can 'connect' and synch with their server. So their payment and delivery platform for mobile payments/mobile delivery of content can be opened up to non-artist applications as well...
If anyone else is interested in that, please drop me an email. If I can show that there are more artist sites interested, it will help me persuade them to go for it. It's probably more suited to European bands at the moment - the key countries are (covered by mobile SMS quickpay) are UK & Germany and Ireland in feb 2007.
That's all...happy new year btw.
Dub
Drupal 7 Ubercart 3 offers a
Drupal 7 Ubercart 3 offers a file download option that is quite nice.
ubercart 3 +1
Agreed. It has a steeper learning curve than most 3rd party non Drupal stuff, but being a Drupal module, especially because of the rules and users integration, makes it extremely powerful. I'm using it on www.tambourhinoceros.net
--
https://tambourhinoceros.net
- record label and music publisher
Drupal Commerce and Commerce File
http://drupal.org/project/commerce and http://drupal.org/project/commerce_file worked well for me.