Securing songs streamed from HTML 5

Question

I'm looking to build a jukebox and I am wondering how one would secure songs that are in <audio> tags with HTML 5. I don't want people to be able to download the song, but I'd like to stream it via those <audio> tags. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

It's possible using Amazon S3 (similar to the way Soundcloud does it) to generate secure mp3 links for use in your HTML5 player. You generate a secure mp3 on S3 that is valid for a very short time (seconds or minutes), there by prevent someone from copying and sharing the link. You will need to generate the link dynamically using SDK/API.

See example of how to use PHP to generate secure links.

Answer 2

you could check referer, use some hashing mechanism (unique ID) to verify the streaming player is your jukebox, not the stream saver etc.

BUT: whatever you do, some people will figure it out (or using the last resort - catching the whole stream, following on what kind of data your jukebox sends etc.)

Answer 3

Whatever you give people to listen via a stream can be saved to disk too.

Answer 4

This is not possible. In order for the client computer to be able to play the song, the song has to be transferred there. Period.