Should I host my mp3 files off site?

[T.C. Elliott]

After reading a response by 64G's it occurred to me that I may have taken something Pedro said and ran with it before really thinking it through. After the face lift he said that he thought that on site hosting was essential. I so started uploading instead of linking my new songs (even though they are already on another site and can be streamed that way.)

Two questions. 1) does the jukebox still only play songs hosted on site? 2) Would it be better if I linked these songs instead of uploaded them?

For what it is worth, if the answer to #2 is yes I will edit my recent posts and from here on out link instead of upload. I just wanna do what is best for the site.

Thanks,
Tom

[Tony W]

the Jukebox will not play songs that are linked from other sites.

Pedro's no longer in control of the site.

I think it's very safe to say that the site has stabilized and you can host here as long as you see fit. *Big thanks to Jemima's Kite and 64Guitars*

[64Guitars]

After reading a response by 64G's it occurred to me that I may have taken something Pedro said and ran with it before really thinking it through. After the face lift he said that he thought that on site hosting was essential. I so started uploading instead of linking my new songs (even though they are already on another site and can be streamed that way.)

I agree with Pedro's assessment that on-site hosting of MP3s is essential. However, they take up a lot of storage space and that could lead to problems in the future with performance and costs (it also makes site transfers painfully slow).

Two questions. 1) does the jukebox still only play songs hosted on site?

Yes, the jukebox currently only plays songs attached to messages. I'll be looking at the source code in the coming days to fix the problem that it only includes original songs. If I can make any other improvements while I'm at it, I will. But I suspect that it won't be practical to make it include songs stored offsite. Instead, I might create an alternative jukebox which members could maintain manually. That way, they'd have full control over which songs are included and they could use any combination of offsite and onsite files.

2) Would it be better if I linked these songs instead of uploaded them?

For what it is worth, if the answer to #2 is yes I will edit my recent posts and from here on out link instead of upload. I just wanna do what is best for the site.

Thanks Tom. That's basically what I was suggesting in the other topic. Everyone's welcome to continue uploading their songs here. But, if some of the more frequent posters were to voluntarily setup their own site at weebly or some similar free host and link to their songs with the [singlemp3][/singlemp3] tags instead of uploading here, our attachments folder wouldn't grow quite so quickly. That might allow us to increase the 5MB upload limit.

The challenge with storing your songs offsite is to find a free host that's compatible. Most seem to hide the actual URL of your MP3s or change them every day or two so that linking to them is not practical. SoundClick hides the URL, forcing us to use their own MP3 player gadget instead of the [singlemp3][/singlemp3] tags. It also means that we can't include SoundClick-hosted songs in our festival jukeboxes or the "Play all my songs" jukebox. SkyDrive offers 25GB of storage for free, which is great. But they change the URLs of your files frequently which makes it useless for linking to our MP3 player and jukeboxes.

I haven't tried weebly yet myself, but from what I've read and seen on Epinay's site, it looks like a great place for members who want to store their MP3s offsite. They don't hide or change the URL at all, so we can link to weebly-hosted files and include them in festival jukeboxes, etc. And it looks really easy to setup, with no technical knowledge required. Check out their video:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOW7ALVVVUc

The bottom line is that no members will be required to move their songs offsite. Everyone's welcome to continue uploading here. But, if some of the more frequent posters voluntarily move some or all of their songs offsite, it will slow down the growth of our attachments folder and possibly even reduce it. That will help to avoid future performance and cost problems, while also allowing us to increase the upload limit for less-frequent posters.

And there are some additional advantages to storing your songs offsite:

• No filesize limits. You can use higher bitrates for better sound quality, and your songs can be any length. So you can post a high-quality cover of "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" without having to worry about upload limits.
• Using the [singlemp3][/singlemp3] tags, you can place the MP3 player anywhere in your message, with text above and below it. When you upload your song as an attachment, the MP3 player is always at the bottom of the message, so there's no way to add text after it.
• You can create a really cool website which you have full control over (see video above and Epinay's site). Create a blog, post pictures to share with family and friends, etc. It looks easy and fun!

If anyone here decides to give weebly a try, let us know what you think of it and how easy it is to setup.

[Oldrottenhead]

i just got a weebly page but not got a clue how to use it.

[T.C. Elliott]

I use fileden and it seems to work great. I'm not sure I understand how the jukebox won't play songs stored off site. The one that pops up is the same one used at FAWM.org and I know that every song there is off site. Even the ones hosted by fawm.org is a different site and linked through an url.

That being said, I'm the most un-tech savy guy on the forum, or at least in the running, so what do I know?

I'd hate to lose the play all my songs link with the song a week challenge going on, but it's not something I'll lose sleep over. I'm going to start linking songs instead of uploading and perhaps I can go back and change the others as time permits.

Thanks again for the responses and the time and energy everyone is spending keeping this site up and running.

[s.w.goatlips]

That's all very well......  but I never really liked "inna-gadda-da-vida". Iron Butterfly were so over rated.

[T.C. Elliott]

Just signed up and made a weebly page. uploaded a song and copied link location. Put a post up in originals and it worked fine. (I then deleted it as it's a repeat song.)

I signed up for the Weebly account. I selected a page. I then clicked on multimedia on the left hand side and chose "file." I then selected the file off my computer to upload. It uploaded it and then I right clicked on it and selected 'copy link location' (this is in firefox)

I then came here and hit the Stream a single mp3 icon and put in the hyperlink and posted it. TWALA, magic. Pretty easy really and free.

[64Guitars]

I use fileden and it seems to work great. I'm not sure I understand how the jukebox won't play songs stored off site. The one that pops up is the same one used at FAWM.org and I know that every song there is off site. Even the ones hosted by fawm.org is a different site and linked through an url.

When you upload a song here, information about that song is stored in a database. When you click your "Play all my songs" link, a program runs which queries the database for all songs posted by you. It then uses that data to create a playlist which is used by the jukebox. But when you link to an offsite song with the [singlemp3][/singlemp3] tags, that information doesn't get added to the database. So the program has no way of finding your offsite songs. FAWM.org probably doesn't use an on-the-fly playlist creation method like we do. Instead, they probably have a playlist file stored somewhere and just add to it as needed. In that case, it wouldn't matter if the files are stored onsite or offsite.

I'd hate to lose the play all my songs link with the song a week challenge going on, but it's not something I'll lose sleep over. I'm going to start linking songs instead of uploading and perhaps I can go back and change the others as time permits.

If you like, you can maintain your own playlist for this jukebox:

https://songcrafters.org/Festivals/mp3player.html

It's very easy to do and can contain a combination of onsite and offsite links. All you have to do is create a plain text file with each line containing the necessary info for one song. That info consists of the full URL to the file, followed immediately by a pipe character ("|"), then whatever text you want to appear in the player for that song (song title, date, etc.).

Here's a sample playlist to get you started:

https://songcrafters.org/64guitars/Playlists/Members/PigfarmerJr/Playlist.txt

Follow the same format to add your other songs, then upload it to fileden. You can then add a link to your signature consisting of the mp3 player URL, followed immediately by a question mark and the URL to the playlist at fileden. For example, here's a link using the sample playlist I created for you:

https://songcrafters.org/Festivals/mp3player.html?https://songcrafters.org/64guitars/Playlists/Members/PigfarmerJr/Playlist.txt

You can also create multiple playlists for different purposes. For example, you might have one playlist just for your Song a Week Challenge, another for collaborations, and another for everything else. Just give each one a different filename (for example: sawc.txt, collabs.txt, and MainPlaylist.txt).

I hope that helps.

[T.C. Elliott]

Indeed! That is above and beyond 64. Seriously.

[T.C. Elliott]

The txt files I've uploaded to fileden and to weebly are not populating the jukebox which does come up. It just doesn't have songs. It's not a big deal and I'll be busy most of the day so I'll try to see if I messed something up a little later. Thanks for all the help, 64.