Selling Access To Audio Streaming

Design help Ecommerce
1

Hey guys, I’m trying to build a website to sell my music to fans. The website needs to have customer accounts, an audio player that plays a 30sec preview of songs before purchase, and if possible a way fans can create playlists from the songs they’ve purchased.

The albums and singles will be for sale individually for a 1 time purchase, once paid for I want the audio file to go into the fans music library NOT be a downloadable file.

I also need the site to act exactly like a mobile app. With a bottom tab bar for ease of use. Since it seems to be easier for me to create a website vs building an app.

Does anyone know how I could achieve this?

Something very similar to https://even.biz would be great.

I’ve seen a few ways to sell audio, but have only seen them offer digital downloads. Not have the content automatically be placed into the listeners library. Plz help lol.

Here is my site Read-Only: LINK
(how to share your site Read-Only link)

2

You’ll want to adjust your approach here-
Your site would be for promotion and music samples, maybe tour dates and newsletter signups.

Don’t try to deliver your DRM content there… there’s no sense in trying to rebuild Spotify.

Webflow hosting does not provide any form of DRM, streaming, or asset protection - but more importantly, music listeners need their purchased content to be accessible to them. As a result you want to focus your attention on popular platforms that already offer streaming delivery, DRM, content control, logins, playlists… and also offer one-off purchasing.

I’d start by identifying those platforms, and then… you’ll want to be on all of them.
I’m not a musicion, so do you research maybe on Reddit, but these may be your best bets;

  • Youtube Music
  • iTunes Music
  • Google Play Music, if it still exists separately from Youtube

Then check;

  • Soundcloud
  • Spotify

Platforms that do not offer puchasing, you’ll still want a presence on if you can, but it would just be samples, remixes, covers, other things that help you develop your audience and brand, and point fans towards your paid content.

You might also check podcasting systems, since some of these have good DRM, but I think they typically run customer billing on a subscription model.

And finally, systems like Patreon are always evolving. Worth a glance after you’ve exhausted your primary channels above.

3

Thank you! I’ll check out the podcast DRMs etc. - I have music on all streaming platforms, the reason I want to build this website for my music is so that fans who want to show support can purchase music directly from me. Spotify pays artists less than half of a cent (around $0.004) per stream. So selling individual albums for $9.99 would be far more lucrative for me.

I’ve thought about the subscription model also, but that seems more like rebuilding Spotify versus the 1 time purchases. The website I want to build will also have my merch for sale.

I think I’m having trouble finding what I need because I don’t know the correct terms for exactly what I’m looking for. Lol

4

Yeah, I agree, but Spotify is also the radio station. They own a huge share of the listener base, plus the tech that allows people to securely stream that content, protect it, playlist it, socially share it… they’re not just your secure broad-access delivery platform, they’re your marketing platform too.

it’s a sucky model, but it’s the same problem a farmer has. You either take a big hit on your pricing and let the grocery stores take the lion’s share, or you work farmer’s markets, or look for other creative avenues like direct-to-restaurant channels.

Spotify wouldn’t be my first choice for your album-sale approach, I think iTunes and Google Play are better positioned in that space - but you do need their tech to deliver securely, and make it convenient for users to purchase and access - and they take a big chunk for that.

I’ll just add another thought to ponder-

If you’re a smaller artist, the fear of losing a substantial portion of your income to file-sharing / piracy is probably not strongly founded. Most people who are passionate about smaller artists know that they’re smaller artists, and are also passionate about supporting them in their creation of new great content. The people who file-share would likely have never bought anyway, but they do add to your visibility so it’s a trade-off.

The most successful artists I know focus on the creative process and the audience connection, and don’t spend too much effort trying to control their content distribution. The value they get out of “as big an audience as possible” is too great, and that turns into superfans, gigs and tours, merch…

A couple of years ago I ran an artists’ forum and we invited in a loop artist named Kawehi who had built her community on those principles. Very successful, she started funding albums through kickstarter and got excellent presales… enough to simply not worry about file-sharing.

Dig through her site, youtube, kickstarter, etc. you’ll pick up a lot of strategy that might be useful for you.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kawehi/evolution-2

5

hi @bfapp why you do just not focus on creativity with your music and use eg. https://bandcamp.com. It has almost everything you require (account, user, preview 30s play, player lib, pre-sales etc.) a just put links to your music on your profile site. BTW I’m buying there to support independent musicians.

m2c

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6

Sup Stan, I like bandcamp, I’m wanting it to be more exclusive tho. I feel like it would be a better or simpler experience for the fans. Creating an account on my site directly, and that being the only music on the site versus them creating an account on bandcamp, then having to find my profile, etc. Just seems more simple to me. BUT, i may try bandcamp as an alternative if I cant get the website created that I’m looking for. I thought about Patreon too.

I also thought about creating an app solely for my music, that fans could pay like $4.99 per month to stream my music. Not sure tho.

7

Not sure about this when you are not a developer as it is quite complex task you trying to achieve. If you prefer exclusive website with all these features I will suggest to hire a someone who will do it for you and Webflow is IMO not a platform to be used for it. It would not be cheap but it will be better option than spending your time to learn to be a full-stack developer.

m2c
good luck :wink:

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