How To Stream An MP3 : (and hide the source file)

All,

Found this today on my hosting company's website; thought it was pretty cool.

-JK

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1. Upload your MP3 to your server
   
   
2. Open notepad. write the entire url of the mp3: ie: http://www.myserver.com/mp3s/mysong.mp3 (obviously the full real url of your mp3)
   
   
3. Do a 'save as' and call it something but add .m3u on the end of it. eg: mysong.m3u
   
   
4. Upload this .m3u file to your server too.
   
   
5. This acts as a pointer to your mp3 file and the m3u extension tells it to stream. So in your page you just link to the .m3u file. When people click your link it goes to the m3u which auto redirects and streams the MP3 you pointed it to, in the default player of the users operating system. In my case, realplayer.
   

The beauty of this is that as the URL is contained in the notepad document no-one can see where the MP3s are to download them. You can use the exact same technique to stream video and audio in realplayer. Your realplayer file is a .rm - so you create a notepad document with the extension .ram and it functions exactly the same. no need for embedding. just pops up in realplayer.