Should I prepare an app or an album?

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Level 1

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Should I prepare an app or an album?

Last October I published a music book. I have just completed a set of .mp3s (over 150 of them) reflecting music and examples in the book, along with a .pdf created in Adobe InDesign (for PC) listing them and saying a little bit about what's on them. The .mp3s range in length from 4 seconds to just over one minute.

I am trying to figure out how to offer them to the public (and on iPhone as well!):

1. offer them on my web site (probably for free although I've put in a LOT of hours on them and would like to get a little something back for my time).

2. offer them on iTunes at nominal cost (the tracks still need to be numbered, something I can't do in my music-notation software where these were generated); I would still need to place the .pdf somewhere, probably on my web site.

3. offer an app at nominal cost, creating links from the titles on the InDesign doc to the files (I would need to use a third-party aggregate).

I am not sure which way to go. Perhaps my greater interest here is copyright protection.

Right now I have them all in my iTunes, and they play fine there, so I know they will work there. BUT they don't have any track numbers; I had to create another numbering system to add to the Title field just before each title.

I hope this tells you all enough. This has been a long project, and I am eager to get them out there so that people can use them.

Thank you!

iPad, iOS 7.0.2

Posted on Apr 2, 2014 4:30 PM

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Answer 1

varjak paw

Level 10

170,200 points

Apr 3, 2014 7:03 AM in response to ceilr

1. Probably the easiest if you wanted to make them available for free, but charging would be more difficult. Perhaps you could set up some sort of e-commerce site - there are a number of open-source systems available - and bundle all the tracks in a single archive (such as a zip, perhaps with a password) and charge for that.

2. Probably not practical. You don't have any control over the pricing. Apple charges from US $.69 to $1.29, with no option for a content provider to set other prices. You probably wouldn't get a good response from people having to pay $.69 for a 4-second clip.

3. That's certainly possible. Whether that's your best option is difficult to say. You probably won't want to limit yourself to iOS devices only, so you'd have to create an app for each platform.

Another option would be to embed this all in an e-Book. If you have it all in InDesign, an Adobe PDF e-book might be the most practical since it could be cross-platform, either with the tracks embedded (if that's possible and practical) or containing links back to the clips on your web site, and then sell the ebook. If you don't mind targeting just iOS devices, you could instead use iBooks Author.

Hope this helps.

Regards.

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