Song/file hosting

[Lunkhead]

I thought we had a thread for this already, but in a few seconds of searching I couldn't find one. So, here's a thread for folks who want information about file hosting services. These can be useful for hosting songs for somesongs.com, sidefights, coverfights, hxaro, etc. or other cases when you don't necessarily need a Web site but want to upload files for people to access (like images/songs to include in message board posts or blog posts).

I just tried this one out the other day, and it's pretty slick. It's just basic file upload/management/sharing/publishing, but it is really polished. They use an applet for their uploader so you can upload multiple files at once, upload a folder and all its contents, upload by dragging files from your OS into your browser, etc., and the whole UI is very clean and simple, yet spiffy. They're giving out 2GB free hosting for their "beta", though I'm not sure what will happen when they stop the beta.

http://www.personalgrid.com/

They have a demo video linked from their home page which quickly shows off what it can do. No, I'm not involved with this project, I was just impressed by its UI.

[king_arthur]

Let me just mention here that songfight is now hosting cover songs - specifically, covers by one songfighter of songs by other songfighters from the weekly titles. We don't have a fancy interface or a link on the front page, but PM me if you have files to upload.

This doesn't solve all of everybody's hosting needs, but to anyone who is doing covers of other fighters' songs, this is available.

http://www.songfight.net/covers

JB or Spud, could we add a link to that area to the songfight.org front page? Thanks...

Charles (KA)

[Reist]

I'm signed up - hoping to use the space as hosting for my demos blog at radnoise.

[Spud]

OK, Art. You got the link. However, do me a favor and use this:



I couldn't find your special folder, or I would have done it myself.

SPUD

[nyjm]

it's not the best of solutions, but i've had good luck with SoundClick (which I found thanks to Poor June):

http://www.soundclick.com/

downsides:
- requires you to use their own pop-up player (and listeners to register for an account)
- limits songs to 10MB and 128K unless you pay
- very unslick web-page

upsides:
- virtually unlimited storage space
- very easy to upload, manage and replace songs and song info (included various kinds of copyrighting)
- a very involved musical community
- free and easy downloading of your content by others
- free and easy posting of your content elsewhere via link-makers and even embeddable players for your blog/myspace/website/etc.

also, Haystack was a neat experiment, but seems to be suffering technical dificulties:

http://haystack.com/

[signboy]

that really is the bitch of it, isn't it? I have been looking everywhere for a site that lets me give people a link that just asks you to save or open. No players, no accounts, no male cow patties.

[jb]

Signboy, I understand the desire for this, but you are really and truly asking for something for nothing. If there's nothing in it for the hoster, no advertising revenue, no service fee, why would they just let you suck their storage space and data transfer? They don't know you, so it's not because you smell...

I mean, we don't even give you something for nothing HERE, although it's pretty close.

These guys give you 500MB of disk space and 50GB/month data transfer for $3 a month. THAT'S $36 PER YEAR. Buy that discount XBOX game next month and pony up the price of 3/4 a tank of gas-- for your ART.

http://www.deltawebhosting.com/

(Note: I don't know that company at all. You probably get what you pay for. But still, even cheap Chinese food is good sometimes.)

Yeah, I'm bitching. I'm almost done. *muttering to self*

JB

[ujnhunter]

OR build a cheap (old) computer with some nice HDD storage and buy a domain name for $16 or so a year... link it to your IP address of you cheap (old) computer and you have your own hosting that you can do whatever you want with!

[HeuristicsInc]

i could be wrong but i would guess there's something in the terms of service for your internet provider about hosting via their service...
-bill

[Kill Me Sarah]

Not to mention you'd have to either pay for a static IP or use a domain forwarding service.

[Lunkhead]

Not to mention upstream bandwidth is usually crippled by the phone/cable companies to discourage you from running a server at home.

[Kill Me Sarah]

Not to mention you'd probably want to then spring for a decent firewall since running your own server at home opens you up to all kinds of malicious attacks (one of the main reasons I decided against trying it).

[nyjm]

http://www.personalgrid.com/

I'm having problems with this. It is because I'm using a PC?

I'll admit the uploading, sharing and management is really easy. However, when I "publish" an mp3 file, it WON'T PLAY. As in:

http://personalgrid.com/48470-allmenwillbesailorsthen

Am I missing something?

[Lunkhead]

Yeah, their Flash player on those pages doesn't appear to work. We should file a bug report. I have been meaning to do that but keep forgetting. It looks like they're just not putting the URL to the MP3 into the "location" tag of their XSPF playlists.

EDIT: I e-mailed them about it. We'll see if they fix it.

[signboy]

are there some kind of settings in the browser that would stop the uploader from working in personalgrid? I have tried with firefox and ie7, and nothing at all happens when I click on the upload arrow or drag files. I do have flash installed.

[Lunkhead]

It's a Java applet, so you need to have Java installed and have the Java plug-in for your browsers.

[signboy]

Good call. Unfortunately, I checked that, and it is on and enabled but still doesn't work. I must just be too dumb to work the interwebs. I'm going to go floss, or something that I'm good at.

[Lunkhead]

Did your browser give you some kind of prompt along the lines of "Do you want to trust PersonalGrid to run this applet?" If so, you clicked "yes" or "trust" or whatever, right? Otherwise, contact their tech support, or try it on a different browser.

[signboy]

Yeah... once I clicked "yes", and the next time I clicked "always". Same thing on ie7. I dunno. I messed with google page creator this morning, though, and it seems pretty slick. You can upload songs, direct link to them, and embed a player in the page.

[signboy]

Here's a link to the google page I made-

http://ringeli.googlepages.com/signboy

it's a bit of a messy link, but I guess THIS works as well.

[king_arthur]

Hopefully not too far from related to the topic at hand, but...

Several years ago, I recorded a CD of "contemporary" covers of hymns by Philip P. Bliss ("Hallelujah, What a Savior," etc.). Looking for suggestions on a site I could put this on to see if anybody would buy it.

I'm pretty sure the market for this thing would include people who do NOT want to download individual .mp3 files and spin their own CDs, they would want to order a complete audio CD with cover art, etc., and not necessarily have to have a PayPal account to order.

And I'd like to be able to do this without having to invest a whole lot of my own money in setting it up. I don't care if I make very little on sales, either, I mostly just want to make this recording available to the niche market who would be interested in it. And it would be okay if the individual tracks were downloadable for cheap/free.

A note on the songs - each song starts out with the original hymn tune being played on (MIDI) piano, and then it shifts into the contemporary version. So a site that just previews the first X seconds of the track won't really work because on some of the songs that won't even get you into my version.

And as I think I've mentioned elsewhere, I'm starting work on a volume 2, entering sheet music into Finale, etc. So when that one is ready, I'd want to add it to the site. And if that worked out, I might also repackage some of my contemporary worship songs to sell the same way...

Suggestions?

Thanks,
Charles (KA)

[jb]

Dude. CD Baby.