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Write-up on my upcoming Music Download Store


Mediajuggle

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Posted
OSC XML Feed - this is most important... this has been modified to

1. allows me to EASILY upload products in xml file (as well as export and modify). I don't have to worry about model numbers or anything like that. I had so many problems with Easy Populate but this is sooooooooo much easier you wouldn't believe it...

2. it handles master products and download attributes

That would be a great contribution (w00t)

Do I understand this right; you're uploading your products with xml?!

Can you crawl a xml file from a supplier to fill your shop?

  • 1 month later...
Posted

Just received some new press:

 

Where has La Musica gone?

http://top40-charts.com/news.php?nid=17763

 

Musica360 Moves Into Downloadable Video

http://hispanicbeat.blogspot.com/2005/11/m...wnloadable.html

 

The press has been helping and we've been increasing sales slowly but surely which is cool with me because I didn't expect to be an overnight success. It's taken time to alert the Hispanic community to my site but I'm definitely making inroads.

 

I'm trying to get a major magazine or newspaper to pick up the story so I've just hit the Associated Press with a press release so let's see how that goes.

 

Also for people who don't think that links belong on an ecommerce site, know that ALOT of our traffic is coming from people who we've exchanged links with.

 

I've been actively seeking out popular Latin sites, music blog and artists sites and asking them to exchange links. They place us on their page and they can add their sites to our links pages. The bigger one's we've exchanged banners with.

 

The search engines are a definitive source of traffic, but people have their favorite sites that they visit and having your link on these pages definitely help. I've sold somef Astor Piazzolla downloads due to a link on a fan site. I had no idea that this site would bring me as much traffic as it had when I approached them, but it did, so you never know.

My Contribution

Music Download Store Template

http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,4275

Posted

Hi,

 

You have an absolutely wonderful site! I was just wondering if you have any problems handling all the bandwidth downloading from your site? Do you use multiple servers to handle all the traffic?

- The Jackal

Posted

as long as you are on the right kind of server then bandwidth is not a problem.

Posted

Sorry, i didn't phrase accurately...i meant the CPU bandwidth. How many concurrent download processes can a moderate (like a Pentium-based) server handle efficiently before it gets really slow? 50?

- The Jackal

Posted

Looks like i'll be getting a write up in our local paper...

 

Christopher,

 

My name is Gema Duarte, the new Latino Affairs reporter at the Pocono

Record. I ran into a press release about the launching of Musica360.com back

in October. From my understanding, the press release mentioned that the site

would have a full catalog of music by the end of November. Since December

just started I think it would be a good idea to introduce Musica360.com to

the Pocono Record readers. Especially, since there is a wave of Spanish

speaking resident moving into the area and with the limited Latin music

available in local radio stations and even on satellite radio.

 

I checked out the site before e-mailing you and I noticed the variety of

genres.

 

As the new Latino Affairs reporter at the Record I would enjoy writing an

article about Musica360.com if there's a local angle for the paper. I think

there might be since the press release headlined with Pocono Summit, which

we cover.

 

Please get back to me about the possible story as soon as you can.

 

Thank you,

 

I had basically given up on them doing anything on me because they wouldn't even acknowlegde that they recieved my press releases, but I kept emailing them releases everything I sent a new one.

 

I'm glad I did.... I'll post it when it runs...

My Contribution

Music Download Store Template

http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,4275

  • 3 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...
Posted

Alright things seem to be taking off a little more... just recieved this email today:

 

We are doing a small story about your website and I am in need of a 3mb size of your logo so I can plug it in the magazine. We distribute about 250k of the magazine worldwide.

Edgar Hoill

Feature Editor

Lowrider Magazine

 

So that will definitely be a boost to our site. And we need it as three major competitors have entered the space since we've launched. But the one that I'm most worried about is this one:

 

New Digital Music Store Caters to Latin Music Tastes

Date: january, 2006 (11706)

A new player has just emerged in the Latin digital music space, part of a growing niche. The store, called elatinmusic.com, is based in Miami and is one of the first Latin music entrants in the US. In comments to Digital Music News over the weekend, operations director Ruben Ferrer confirmed a launch date of January 25th, while pointing to finalized negotiations with Warner Music and EMI. The company also has a green light from Universal, and discussions with Sony BMG are ongoing. Furthermore, Ferrer said the company is pursuing deals with "independent labels, producers, studios and artists from all Latin American countries, as well as Spain, Italy and Portugal, in the next few months." The site is already live ahead of the official unveiling.

 

The Spanish-speaking population is a huge marketing demographic in the US, and is already being heavily catered to by Madison Avenue. As overall internet adoption ramps up, sites like elatinmusic.com are likely to see a spike, especially among those looking for a specific music collection. For starters, the site is in Spanish, and the catalog is crafted by a Latin-based staff. While the initial collection is being put in place now, Ferrer pointed to the addition of deeper Latin catalog over time, something that will attract various age groups. "We are focusing not only on new material, but getting the old catalogs of the great singers, groups and labels throughout the history of popular Latin music and have it available digitally," Ferrer explained.

 

They seem well funded and use some kind of modified asp version of Oscommerce. We're trying to find some innovative ways to compete with them since we can't do it with budgets. At least not yet....

 

this is gonna get sticky.....

My Contribution

Music Download Store Template

http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,4275

Posted
Alright things seem to be taking off a little more... just recieved this email today:

 

 

 

So that will definitely be a boost to our site. And we need it as three major competitors have entered the space since we've launched. But the one that I'm most worried about is this one:

 

 

 

They seem well funded and use some kind of modified asp version of Oscommerce. We're trying to find some innovative ways to compete with them since we can't do it with budgets. At least not yet....

 

this is gonna get sticky.....

Hmmm ... They seems well funded and got nice design. They have a big catalog also ... But I think the market is big enough for more than 1 player.

In my opinion, here is what you can do:

 

1- Keep the marketing and the buzz on

2- Try to do some deal with small/independent artist to reserve exclusive digital rights to their music.

3- Create a space for live interview/chat with the artist. If that is not possible, make a forum where users can ask questions and send the top 10-20 questions to the artist for answer. Something a la slashdot.org. Tie that with some exclusive promotions on your site.

4- If you can do the above on a weekly/monthly basis. You'll develop a good community base of users. If there is no big diffrence in prices. They'll stick with you.

5- If you can push further and have some free/paid video clips ... and create the top 10 lists. That is a big hard .. since you've to deal with the big records company and they're unlikely want to release it without some sort of stupid DRM.

 

Best of luck !! I'm building my store and am alone too ... It's very far from yours. Just keep working hard. :)

 

PS: Thank you for your answers to my questions.

 

-nocloo

==

  • 2 weeks later...
Posted

You have some great ideas nocloo. We're really looking at a few of them.

 

I have a few updates on our situation...

 

1. The face of HBO Latino, Alba Sanchez, has just joined with us. It's hoped that her high profile through HBO her movies and etc. will bring us a higher profile. We recently sent out a press release that's being picked up about this:

http://ejazznews.com/modules.php?op=modloa...order=0&thold=0

 

2. We're organizing a 10 city Reggaeton tour with some of the artists featured on our site. My partner managed to get a sponsor, a new latin cola, that is flipping the bill for the tour and paying the headliner (which is them costing a small fourtune). THey are also going to create in store displays promoting the tours in supermarkets where ever their product is being sold. Also, they're going to manufacture Musica360 dog tags (an urban thing.. lol) with our download codes on the back allowing concert goers to get a free download from our site.

 

To this end, i'm having CCGV modified so that we can generate unique discount codes 1000 a time and have them exported to an xml file which we can hand to the manufacturer. This is also useful because we plan to do music download cards similiar to what iTUnes and Napster does and sell them in places that the latin community frequents.

 

3. Meanwhile we're still finishing up our business plan and it seems like we have 2 interested investors. I really need this as it will help us compete with the two new major funded sites that have recently launched.

My Contribution

Music Download Store Template

http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,4275

Posted

I just checked Alexa.com and so far we generate more traffic than our better funded counterparts:

 

Musica360 - 459,843

VoyMusic - 529,897

MisRolas - 600,028

LatinCoolNow - 987,484

Elatinmusic - 1,424,409

 

So I'm a little relieved but that can change in a moments notice...... so I'm definitely gonna have to set up the pace....

My Contribution

Music Download Store Template

http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,4275

Posted

My partner in my store. Jenny Garcia, just received a nice little bit of promotion in the New York Post today...

and article entitled: 50 Sexist Single Latinos and of couse she mentioned our store in the article. I want to see what effect that has on our traffic today:

 

50-sexiest-latinos-small.jpg

 

you can click on here to see the larger, more readable version:

http://www.musica360.com/images/50-sexiest-latinos.jpg

My Contribution

Music Download Store Template

http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,4275

Posted

Hi,

 

This my first visit. Maybe u can help me solve my problem.

 

my store processes the download with no problem. But when the customer presses the download link they get an error. If they try a right click save function, it save as a php file. Why doesn't download the music file?

 

Thanks greatly for any good feedback.

Posted
Hi,

 

This my first visit. Maybe u can help me solve my problem.

 

my store processes the download with no problem. But when the customer presses the download link they get an error. If they try a right click save function, it save as a php file. Why doesn't download the music file?

 

Thanks greatly for any good feedback.

 

 

it depends on the browser, operating system etc....

We had a few problems with people downloading initally...

then on our download page, in large type.. we stated:

If you're having problems downloading music, please refer to our Help section

and we provide a link to our faq page.

 

on our FAQ page it states:

 

ow to Download Music?

Musica360 is designed to be compatible with most browsers.

 

For Firefox users we advise that you disable the MP3 plug-in that comes with your browser (Tools, Options, Downloads, Plug Ins). This will prevent the browser from automatically playing, rather than saving the song!

 

For Windows users, when your download links appear on the final page, you should right click and choose "Save Target As", and then complete the dialog box that opens.

 

For Mac OSx users using Safari, hold down ?ctrl? and click (or right click) on the Song title, then choose ?download linked file?. Safari will then automatically see the file as MP3 and save it to your desktop or wherever your computer is set to download to.

 

For Mac OSx users using Internet Explorer, hold down ?ctrl? and click (or right click) on the download icon. Then choose ?download link to disc?. You will see a box with ?save as ?download.php?. Your purchase will then download to your desktop or wherever else you have set your mac to download to. You can then name the file correctly by substituting the word "Name_Of _Song.mp3" for download.php

 

Since posting this, I haven't received one email from someone with a problem downloading music from our site.

My Contribution

Music Download Store Template

http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,4275

  • 4 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...
Posted

Hey, I just did a redesign...

I've tested it in most of the Mac browsers and safari on Windows... can someone please test it in IE and Opera on Windows and if there's something screwy... send me a screenshot so that I can correct it?

 

Thanx in advance....

 

http://www.musica360.com

My Contribution

Music Download Store Template

http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,4275

  • 1 month later...
Posted
I just got a write up on the Playlist mag website. For those not in the US, PlayList is a magazine that focus' on all aspects of digital life. They have a print magazine as well.

 

Now i have more incentive to finish my store:

 

http://playlistmag.com/features/2005/05/musica360/index.php

Great Article, but...

When I looked at the website I was confused, because it appeared you have taken a break from the programming. Maybe it was just my browser?

 

We too are using OSC for providing niche services and it inspires us to keep going when we can read articles about others in our situation, S.A., so hang in there. When $$ is tight and you can't afford to hire a programmer you find out that the public library section of computer programming books becomes your 2nd home. Your site looks nice, like you got some skins or just good programming talent. Not like ours which is still the basic store out of the box (will dress it up whenever it starts working as we'd like).

 

And because you have that article in the paper then I know somebody had to reach out and let the press know you were around. All of us do the same thing, build our sites from our dreams, get the local press to write about it, get interviewed on the early Saturday morning TV shows about local entrepreneurs, and spend late nights programming. Our friends ask if we've made any money yet, and we have to justify why we do it for no income. And if you have a family who can't assist then you have to spend time in front of the computer instead of with them. (if-then, else)

 

You talk about helping the indies, and we focus on the same niche here in my area. Allowing them to put their bio and pics up in a category, and include links to some of their music. Can we then sell new music for $.99c? Maybe, so we look here in the forums for others working on the challenge so we can ask "How'd you do that?" How'd you get all of that press coverage when you are almost broke?

 

Si se puede!

Doctor Mason, World's #1 "Temporary Webmaster"

  • 4 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...
Posted

Hi just wanted to know how you store your music files, I have just read through this whole thread and I am impressed with what you have acheived I am trying to do something similair in the UK with urban artists, I have been building my catalog all year and now I have over a 1000 titles I have stored all the tracks in a server and its well over 100GB that is because I have the singles files plus the zipped files of the album. I do not own my own server so I have them hosted on server where they are hosted for free and i just pay for the bandwidth. My Oscommerce store is hosted on a different server. I know that oscommerce looks in the download directory for the files to download and if they are not here it says they are missing, I just wanted to know if you store your files locally or is there a way you can store them somewhere else and just provide the link in oscommerce. I know this is not a support thread but I have been asking about this for a while and no one seems to reply so any information is appreciated.

 

Well Done

Ateh

 

ps. Im gonna write up a press realease and see what I can do I hope I have even half the success you did.

Posted
Hi just wanted to know how you store your music files... I just wanted to know if you store your files locally or is there a way you can store them somewhere else and just provide the link in oscommerce. I know this is not a support thread but I have been asking about this for a while and no one seems to reply so any information is appreciated.

Ateh,

I'm currently paying for a dedicated server and have all my files stored on that one server. I too have seen the question of having files stored on other servers for download and I think someone might have even posted an answer in the "general" forums though I don't know if it worked or not. You should start your search there as that question has been asked alot in the past few years.

 

Well Done

Ateh

ps. Im gonna write up a press realease and see what I can do I hope I have even half the success you did.

 

Thanks.. and good luck to you....

My Contribution

Music Download Store Template

http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,4275

  • 7 months later...
Posted

Hi,

 

Do you encounter that artist or labels are intimidated by the fact that your store does not use DRM to secure their content?

 

 

Thanks,

 

GK

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