Downloadable products, How? (Music)

[Beppo5]

Hi,
I am making a zen cart site for a record label.
Though I am an experienced web designer this is my first foray into the world of zen cart.
My clients want to make there music downloadable. Through research I have come to the understanding that this is possible with zen cart. What I have not found is how to actually do it.
One post I came across referred me to the Attributes controller but I am a little lost here. The attributes controller seems to want an option name and value. But these products have no options, they are just songs. I am sure I am misunderstanding something here.

Any advice/help with getting my music files to download for my zen cart site would be MUCH appreciated.

Best

[Beppo5]

just found a tutorial in the zen wiki.
http://www.zen-cart.com/wiki/index.php/Downloads

The options seem to be a requirement to get the downloading functionality to work. Could someone please explain why. I want to know only so that I can gain an understanding of what I should set my options as.

Right now it doesn't make sence to me. For example right now this is how I might go about setting up the options:
Product Name: Song Name
Option Name: Song Name
Option Value: Song Name

It seems redundant. Any input would be appriciated.
Best

[DrByte]

Here's another tutorial for setting up music products. Perhaps this will help clarify:
Setting up music products with audio previews
plus
Setting up attributes
Adding multiple downloads to a product

[Beppo5]

This is great!
Thanks Doc!

[Beppo5]

I am having a bit of trouble with getting the music to stream
info in this tutorial
Setting up music products with audio

this bit is giving me trouble:

6. Create your media collections using Media Manager .... these are like albums/mixes of songs which can be tied to one or many products.

* "Insert" to create a new media collection. Just give it a name, and click Save.
* Click "Edit" and now you can add media clips to the collection
o Click Browse to select a file stored on your PC, based on the selected media-type.
o When you click Add, it will be uploaded to the Media Directory selected in the pulldown menu (by default, this is the "/media" folder on your server).
o After each item is uploaded, you can click Edit again to add another clip
* If you need to delete a clip, simply click the Delete button next to a given clip

7. With your media collection still selected, click the "Assign to Products" button

I am selling individual songs off of the site and would like to have a streaming sample for each.
My first go through followed step 6 and uploaded each song to a collection. Than I went to assign the collection to a product (step 7) and I became confused. Am I assigning all of the mp3 files to a singal product? That's not what I want to do. If this is the case than do I want to only have one song per collection? If so than why call it a collection? I am not sure if I understand what is going on here. If anyone has any experience with this and would like to share advice I would be most appriciative. If I figuer this out for myself I will post my solution. Thanks

[Beppo5]

I have done further research and from what I understand, and sorry if this is obvisous to anyone, the collection refers to the group of products associated with a clip.

So if I want one clip for each product/song I need to make each product a collection and assign the clip to it.

Am I right on this?

I am going to play around with it, I will post the results.
Best

[Beppo5]

I am still having trouble with this! I think I have narrowed down my problem to uploading. I go through the process described in the tutorial, and above, for adding clips. And it seems that something is happening however the file does not seem to upload.

If I go to the folder via ftp the mp3 file is not in there. I am at the end of my rope with this project. I am over worked and underpaid. I know that there are people out there who have successfully uploaded and streamed previews of music on their zen cart sites, I am hoping that one of them will step foward and please, throw me a bone!

Any advice would be most appriciated.
Thanks

[JenBaby]

Best I read the tutorials and have the same questions. I understand the media clip manager. Each collection represents one download I believe. So in other words if you wanted to sell an album, 10 clips would be associated with the media collection name, then the one name is assigned to the music product you created for those songs. If you want to download them separately I think you will have to list them separately.
Example
Collections names: Group - Song title.

Did you figure out the attribute thing. I can't think of anything to differentiate it by. It doesn't have a color or size or anythng elso.

do you know how to make clips? According to some of the tutorials we should offer a sample clip. Maybe that is the attribute. Then would I need a collection of clips and a full length collection for download???? Just speculating!!!
Jen
Will check back with you.

[Beppo5]

JenBaby,
Great to see I'm not the only one posting here . I can get music to download, that was a big step for me!. As far as setting attributes, I set the value as mp3. I only put one. For some reason you have to give a product an attribute in order to make it a download.

do you know how to make clips? According to some of the tutorials we should offer a sample clip. Maybe that is the attribute. Then would I need a collection of clips and a full length collection for download???? Just speculating!!!

I can't figuer out how to make clips, I am having trouble getting the mp3's to upload to my server. I am at a loss as to what to do and was hoping that someone else might have run into this problem and know the cure.

Have you tried the tutorial? What was your result?

I found this link to a sample site on the forum http://demo.jswebconsole.co.uk/ the user and password is admin, admin. Here is an example of a succesful music download product with a sample.

It can be done!
but how?
Best

[JenBaby]

Best I haven't created any new clips, I am afraid I am going to have to skip that part for now. Maybe I will get back to it later. Right now I am under a dead line and am putting up bare minimums just to get live. Hope you find your answers.
Jen