I need some Sound advise. :)

[Tom Gilleland]

I've decided to post my Zillion Sounds Collection online so that customers can try out sounds, and then maybe buy a set of say 20 sounds for $5. (You can buy the whole 5,000 sound collection for $20 currently from our site.) The problem is that if I post the 5,000 .WAV files on a server somewhere, it will end up getting indexed by the FindSounds.com bot (and other bots) and then people will go to that site and download my sounds for free. So here's some questions.

1. Is there a way I can protect a directory so that the indexing bots can't get there. But I can still get there via a PHP or Flash script for playing the sound or copying the sound when they but it?

2. I was thinking that one solution would be to rename the 5,000 sound files to obscure names and have my Flash or PHP script translate to a descriptive file name when the customer downloads the files. Can you think of a better way to do this?

3. I was planning on using PHP to create a zip file on the fly so that I can package these 20 sound files for a single download that I create on my server. Can you think of a better way to do this? Would you rather just get an email with 20 links to individual sound files? Maybe both?

4. Is $5 for 20 sounds a good price and quantity?

5. What format do you like your sounds in? WAV, MP3, AIF? The current Zillon Sounds is WAV for PC, and AIF for Mac.

Thanks for any suggestions or ideas, I really do appreciate it.

Tom

[PoV]

Something called "robots.txt" in the root directory of a domain is supposed to tell bots/spiders how to (or how not to) crawl your server. Google it. Though that asumes FindSounds.com and others follow the spec.

[Tom Gilleland]

Yea, that robot.txt will work for Google, but I'm not so worried about them. It's those nefarious index bots...

Tom

[soniCron]

Try using a Flash frontend like Soundrangers (http://www.soundrangers.com/category-results.cfm?storeid=1&cat_id=0008). It's easier for both the customer and your "situation."

[oNyx]

>1. Is there a way I can protect a directory so that the indexing bots can't get there.
>But I can still get there via a PHP or Flash script for playing the sound or copying
>the sound when they but it?

>2. I was thinking that one solution would be to rename the 5,000 sound files to
>obscure names and have my Flash or PHP script translate to a descriptive file name
>when the customer downloads the files. Can you think of a better way to do this?

You can prevent external access to directories through htaccess. Server sided stuff such as php could still access it. However, client sided stuff such as flash would be locked out, too.

But you could write some php script which handles the requests by your player. So the player gets some id or something, requests the file from php script and plays it.

Since its client sided stuff its far from being secure, but one would have jump through a few hoops (and waste quite a lot of time) to get the files for free.

Additionally you should use reduced quality for the player. Saves you bandwidth and its faster for the users.

>3. I was planning on using PHP to create a zip file on the fly so that I can package
>these 20 sound files for a single download that I create on my server. Can you think
>of a better way to do this? Would you rather just get an email with 20 links to
>individual sound files? Maybe both?

Single link. Hm. Maybe it would be nice to buy "credits", which could be used up as you see fit. Say you need those 12 sounds effects, but you dont know what kind of other sounds you may need next. See what I mean?

>4. Is $5 for 20 sounds a good price and quantity?

Would say so. Well, depends on the license.

>5. What format do you like your sounds in? WAV, MP3, AIF? The current Zillon
>Sounds is WAV for PC, and AIF for Mac.

Wav.

And support paypal. I would have bought the collection already many moons ago if there would have been a paypal option.