Making music downloads available to buy?

Hello everyone,

One of the people whose website I look after has asked me if it would be possible to set up a system whereby somebody can purchase individual music tracks from their website as a download - i.e., have a list of music tracks where, if someone hits a "Buy" or "Add to Cart" button next to each one, they can purchase whichever individual tracks they like from an album.

My friend who would like to add this feature to his website writes all his own material, so copyright isn't an issue.

My only (limited) experience of adding this type of functionality to a website is via PayPal - however, this has only ever been for someone to sell physical goods (namely CD's). My friend in question has an active PayPal account, and so I'm wondering whether there's a way that PayPal could be used as a shopping cart facility for digital download music tracks?

I've tried doing a Google search for the answer to this question, but wonder if I'm using the wrong search terms as I can't seem to find any info.

I'd be very grateful if you guys would be able to advise me about this as I'm very eager to try and help my friend find a way of achieving this if possible.

Many thanks to everyone for all of your kind help!

Best wishes,

Chris

Tags: buy, cart, downloads, music, paypal, shopping

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Harvey Raybould on June 26, 2011 at 9:32

Hi Chris,

I hope you are well.

I have no personal experience of using any of these products, but if you do a search in Google for Ecommerce Music, this will bring some options up for you, however I beleive they all have to be paid for.

Oscommerce has some download shop Addons, but obviously this would mean creating the shop in Oscommerce, but atleast it should be free.

http://addons.oscommerce.com/info/7783

There is also a WordPress Ecommerce plugin that I believe has music download capability, if not straightaway as a paid plugin.

http://getshopped.org/

http://getshopped.org/extend/premium-upgrades/premium-upgrades/down...

I hope this helps.

Regards

Harvey

Permalink Reply by Chris Davis on June 26, 2011 at 23:51

Hi Harvey,

Many thanks for your reply, as always I really appreciate the excellent service here at Compila Exchange!

Both of those links are very helpful. Unfortunately I think my friend is looking for a rather simpler solution than the Oscommerce option - although, I will add that I'm very intrigued to read about open source shopping cart facilities like Oscommerce and Zen Cart, and these subjects may merit a future thread from me asking for more info! ;)

The GetShopped plugin looks EXCELLENT, and exactly the sort of thing that would do the job - but unfortunately my friend's site isn't powered by WordPress and so it would mean completely rebuilding it in WordPress simply to be able to add this plugin.

Nevertheless, for future projects, I can definitely see a WordPress site built around this plugin as a very viable option - I'm extremely grateful to you for letting me know about that!

I think what my friend is looking for is some straightforward facility such as adding a PayPal "Add to Cart" button for each download, but it doesn't appear that PayPal has the facility to support this. Does anybody know of some similar option or plugin (for a non-WordPress site) that might work in this way?

Thanks again Harvey for the excellent information, it's very much appreciated!

Best wishes,

Chris

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