asked on
I'm being asked to look into the possibility of offering to my user the opportunity to download mp3s in a manner that would be similar to what they do on Amazon using their "Cloud" player.
At first I recommended using the "zip" approach, only because you're automatically prompted to select a location for your download, whereas a a "raw" mp3 is often opened up using quicktime and it can become less than intuitive.
The other concern I had was that in some instances, the "playlist" that's being downloaded will include a video so you're looking at a download that's over 60MB when you include the songs and the video file, so displaying the selections one at a time with a corresponding download button seemed the best route.
In any event, I'm looking for feedback to either reinforce my recommendation that my client offer the selected playlist as a:
- list of selections that are to be downloaded one at a time with each file being a zip file
- one big file (possibly cumbersome) as something other than a zip file, but I have no idea what that would look like
- duplicate of what amazon.com offers in terms of a "cloud" player, but I don't know if that's going to be feasible since we're not collecting any customer data and there will be no way to provide an individualized web interface
Bottom line: Is there another way to facilitate downloads easily without using a zip file approach? I'm thinking, "No," but I wanted to run it past some minds greater than my own.
Thoughts?
At first I recommended using the "zip" approach, only because you're automatically prompted to select a location for your download, whereas a a "raw" mp3 is often opened up using quicktime and it can become less than intuitive.
The other concern I had was that in some instances, the "playlist" that's being downloaded will include a video so you're looking at a download that's over 60MB when you include the songs and the video file, so displaying the selections one at a time with a corresponding download button seemed the best route.
In any event, I'm looking for feedback to either reinforce my recommendation that my client offer the selected playlist as a:
- list of selections that are to be downloaded one at a time with each file being a zip file
- one big file (possibly cumbersome) as something other than a zip file, but I have no idea what that would look like
- duplicate of what amazon.com offers in terms of a "cloud" player, but I don't know if that's going to be feasible since we're not collecting any customer data and there will be no way to provide an individualized web interface
Bottom line: Is there another way to facilitate downloads easily without using a zip file approach? I'm thinking, "No," but I wanted to run it past some minds greater than my own.
Thoughts?
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