Music Licensing Software

[Mark Lewis]

You’re welcome Edouardo. I’m very happy that you got your music licensing store up and running.

[Art Munson]

Hi All,

This weekend I finally got around to setting up a music store with Mark’s software. I have been promising myself to do this since Mark first released it. As I tell Robin, many times, I always get around to doing what I say I will, sometimes it just takes me a while.

Because I have all of our music metadata in a database I wanted to export 200 cues (over 1600 files) out of the database, into a spreadsheet, to a csv file and into the store software. All while avoiding entering data by hand as much as possible. The hardest part was coming up with the Excel formulas so I could conform it to the requirements of the import file.

BTW this in no way implies that Mark’s software is lacking anything. It’s terrific out of the box and free!

Here a few things I learned along the way that I thought I would share.

1. Genres. I did not want to type all those in so I exported my genres to an csv file with their unique ID numbers (you can add your own, just make sure they are unique). I then used phpMyAdmin to import them into the composer_genre table. If you are planning on doing this you will need to duplicate the fields in your csv file to match those in composer_genre and populate those fields before importing. Create a “test” genre and look at in phpMyadmin and that will help you. I did notice the date field format is odd. As an example it shows as 2019-09-15. Seems like it should be 2015-09-19. I’m not sure why that is but I followed that convention.

2. I had a couple of false starts and found that I needed to truncate (or empty) 3 tables if I wanted to re-import. These tables are composer_edits, composer_song and composer_song_genre (do NOT empty composer_genre!).

3. I use Amazon S3 so make sure to set permissions to “public” (read only).

4. I also found that I could not get it to accept a png for my logo so I used a jpg.

5. I also disabled the MB size display as I explained in an earlier comment.

MAKE A BACKUP FIRST AND PLEASE USE MY SUGGESTIONS AT YOUR OWN RISK, I MAY HAVE BROKEN IT AND NOT KNOW IT YET!

As I mentioned, this is great software, out of the box, and a BIG thanks to Mark for making it available!

Oh, and the site is here http://cueteam.com. Any glitches, please let me know.

[Mark Lewis]

Wow, congratulations Art, your site looks/sounds awesome.
And thanks for outlining your experience with the installation. Very helpful.

We are keeping list of immediate todo’s and long range todo’s.

Immediate would be to add a package price field to the CSV importer. Total oversight on our part.

I think we can also add a ‘download preview’ function fairly easily as well.

We will keep everyone posted.

PS- Don’t forget to add unique descriptions in the genre headings as this is very helpful for SEO.

[Art Munson]

Thanks Mark,

Love the software, very fast and it’s on the old MLR host provider which was notoriously slow for MLR. Not for your software though!

If you haven’t added these to the “to do list” it would be nice to be able to be able to re-import the catalog if one makes a mistake or wanted to make changes.

The other thing was the odd date format in composer_genre table. I noticed it when I created a test genre and looked at it in phpMyAdmin. Maybe it should be that way?

PS- Don’t forget to add unique descriptions in the genre headings as this is very helpful for SEO.

Yes, that’s my next big project.

Thanks again Mark. A great thing you have done and are doing!

[Edouardo]

I am with Art on this one! This software is just amazing and really works rock solid! I just finished populating it with my NE catalog , and since today the shop is officially online! The ergonomy of Music Loops is really cool, and now I have it on my own website!

It was also a good occasion to get out of Word-press a little and explore how my little corner of server works.

I tested the buying process and I noted something just in case some wish to embed the shop within your own website like I did. You need to make sure that somewhere during the buying process you direct the visitor out of the i-frame, or Paypal will not respond. For example I just added a ‘_top’ target argument to the ‘check out with Paypal’ button, and it worked like a charm.

Again Mark, thank you so much for sharing this.

Just a comment, I have been tweaking a little the license argument. It appears in three files. In the Resend_receipt.php file in the Admin folder, it is still signed off as ‘Partners in Rhymes’ instead of the composer variable… Very easy to correct, but I thought I’d mention it for the next update.

Here’s my new shop!
http://www.synaptic-machines.com/license-our-music/

[Art Munson]

Finally getting around to checking my PayPal integration and ran into the error “This page has expired/timed out. Please contact support.”.

The problem is that I have PayPal Auto-Returning to an MLR page. If I recall I think there is a way to designate different returns in PayPal but haven’t figured it out yet.

[Art Munson]

Edouardo your site looks great! I had been thinking of doing the same. Embedding in a WordPress site with an iFrame. Any tips on that?

[Mark Lewis]

Hi Art-
In regards to PayPal return URL try this in your PayPal account
Log into PayPal
Go to ‘profile’
Go to ‘my selling tools’
In the list you see go to website preferences and click ‘update’
You turn on auto return and then enter the URL to the thank you page / download page.
I didn’t think it was required to actually enter the return URL but it might be. You do that in the field on that same page.
I’m not sure of the exact name of the page right now.
I will check with my programmer in the morning and get back to you.

[Edouardo]

If I remember well when I tested Paypal (my brother in France did the Purchasing part using his account), Paypal appeared to have returned to the main page of the root. Would it be what is happening with you Art?

I still have to fix this too actually. Either by an automatic redirection or just by offering a link to the visitor (return to shop or return to site)…

For the Embed, yes there is something i discovered on the way. You need to call the software from the root.
For example
if you have something like
MLR Root – Subfolder: Cueteam.com – Subsubfolder: Shop
then
<iframe src=”http://www.rootsite.com/cueteam.com/Shop/”></iframe&gt;
should work

IF you call it without the root
<iframe src=”http://www.cueteam.com/Shop/”></iframe&gt;
The players do not work, at least for me!
(Don’t ask me why lol!)

[Art Munson]

Thanks Mark and Edouardo! I have more work to do. 🙂

[Mark]

Hi Art-
I see what you are saying now. You already have a return URL designated for another domain.
I asked my programmer how we got around that and he said we had to move up to Paypal Payments Pro (at that time) and now we are fully on Paypal Express Checkout.
Not sure if that helps or not.
– Mark

[Art Munson]

I asked my programmer how we got around that and he said we had to move up to Paypal Payments Pro.

That makes sense. I had a Pro account before with my tape.com company and where I remembered that ability from. I do have another PayPal account so I will use that one. Thanks for steering me in the right direction.

[angopop]

This is great, Mark, thank you.

I’m in the process of uploading it. In the response to Edouardo, you write “Once you have everything copied over go to the install page of our software and follow the instructions.” I don’t see an install page on your website, am I missing something?

Also, using cPanel file manager, where should I upload the software to ( there are many folders [home, public, cPanel, etc…]).

Thanks,
A

Login to cPanel.
Under Files, click File Manager.
Select Web Root and Show Hidden Files, then click Go.
Click to open the folder to which you’d like to upload files.
Click Upload from the top toolbar.
Click Browse (some web browsers will have Choose File instead).
Select the file on your computer that you wish to upload.
Once the file has been selected, it will automatically upload. You may select additional files while uploads are in progress.

You should probably create a new directory for your music licensing store unless you want it to show up as your main website at root level.

Once you have everything copied over go to the install page of our software and follow the instructions.

[Mark]

Hi angipop
Sorry, you would go to the install page of our software that you are uploading to your server (not on our website).
You will see a file called install.php when you upload the files, that is where you go on your own server to set up your new website.

In regards to where to upload it you should create a folder where you see your other html files for your website. It would be under html or www or something like that (it varies for different servers).
The folder where you want to creaet a directory will have your home page in it, like index.html or index.php.

Ask your host support for specific details for your server.
Good luck.

[angopop]

Thanks Mark, I’ll contact HostGator support.

[Author]

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