Website advice (comments appreciated!)

[Steve Henningsgard]

I'm trying to figure out why I'm not getting much business recording bands lately. I had a spurt of 5-10 bands at once looking for recording, now they all seem to have disappeared! Is my website to blame?

What does my site convey to you about who I am/what I do? Am I coming off as stupid? Arrogant? Both? Please help me :/

http://www.myspace.com/stevehenningsgard

 

[danny.guitar]

I didn't listen to any of the songs cause it's late...

But if you want a website for your recording studio I'd suggest getting a .com name and not using MySpace.

 

[Steve Henningsgard]

I've got www.stevehenningsgard.com registered: I suppose in the professional world, a myspace page really won't cut it eh?

What programs/code do people use to put songs up for streaming only?


P.S. Holy shit, negative cred for posting an honest question? Wow, cool...

 

[mjr]

I've got www.stevehenningsgard.com registered: I suppose in the professional world, a myspace page really won't cut it eh?

What programs/code do people use to put songs up for streaming only?


P.S. Holy shit, negative cred for posting an honest question? Wow, cool...

Hey, check out using an .m3u file for streaming purposes. If you Google .m3u file, you should get results on how to use them. They're pretty straightforward. To use the m3u, though, your songs must be in MP3 format.

You should definitely use the URL you registered as your primary web presence. Use the Myspace one as your secondary, if at all. You could put everything you've got on your myspace (with the exception of maybe the blog) on that site. And if you've got database/backend coding skills, you could do a blog, too. There's even free blogging software, I believe.

 

[danny.guitar]

I've got www.stevehenningsgard.com registered: I suppose in the professional world, a myspace page really won't cut it eh?

What programs/code do people use to put songs up for streaming only?


P.S. Holy shit, negative cred for posting an honest question? Wow, cool...

I wouldn't ditch the MySpace page but I'd definitely setup a .com.

I found a free flash player (Not XSPF player) that is customizeable if you know how to design graphics (buttons, text, etc). I used Photoshop.

http://www.e-phonic.com/mp3player/

But some people might not have flash installed (or the right version) so as mjr said, you might wanna offer an m3u or playlist file. When they click that it will open their media player and stream all the tracks there.

 

[Steve Henningsgard]

Thanks man, that looks like exactly what I was looking for!

I'm wary of using an m3u file, as I don't want anybody to be able to download the songs if I don't want them to, and it's easy to see where they are located if played through an m3u file.


I'm pretty good with photoshop & html, but I don't know how to make a file unable to be downloaded, but able to be played. Any idea? Google came up kind of empty...

 

[mjr]

Thanks man, that looks like exactly what I was looking for!

I'm wary of using an m3u file, as I don't want anybody to be able to download the songs if I don't want them to, and it's easy to see where they are located if played through an m3u file.


I'm pretty good with photoshop & html, but I don't know how to make a file unable to be downloaded, but able to be played. Any idea? Google came up kind of empty...

Honestly, if they can play it, they can get their hands on it and download it. Bottom line.

 

[Steve Henningsgard]

Honestly, if they can play it, they can get their hands on it and download it. Bottom line.

If they really want to yeah, but I'd rather not *encourage* downloading, you know what I mean?

 

[mjr]

If they really want to yeah, but I'd rather not *encourage* downloading, you know what I mean?

Yeah, I hear ya. There are a few other options, but they'll probably cost you money (unless you can do them yourself), and possibly additional bandwidth, and then your end user might not listen because they might not want to download extra stuff.

But keep in mind, even with something like a Flash player that plays your music, if it gets on the end user's computer, they can still get access to it.

I'm not sure how they do it, but check out the blogs at http://blog.musicbusinessradio.com/ and take a look at theirs. You might be able to do something like that.

 

[danny.guitar]

Anything on the internet can be downloaded.

If you don't want to encourage downloading, don't put a download link in there.

To download your songs, someone would have to find the link to the flash player in your HTML. Then look at the playlist parameter. Then download the playlist file and the URLs to all your songs will be visible.

I don't think most people who go to a band's website are going to know how to do that or would bother trying.

 

[stonecherry]

Just put excerts of songs on, and don't include the song, fade in and out, and don't play a complete section

 

[eeb]

Anything on the internet can be downloaded.

If you don't want to encourage downloading, don't put a download link in there.

To download your songs, someone would have to find the link to the flash player in your HTML. Then look at the playlist parameter. Then download the playlist file and the URLs to all your songs will be visible.

I don't think most people who go to a band's website are going to know how to do that or would bother trying.

There's a much easier way that i know of.. i've heard people doing this...

opening up a freeware editor like cool edit.. In the settings set it up so that the program will record what ever is going through the sound card..

then it's just press record and then play on the mp3..

again not everyone will know how to do this but this is how easy it is to steal music.