Customer trying to download mp3s on iPad

[HafnerDesigns]

Hi. My client received an email from a customer of hers stating that she purchased an album of songs but couldn’t get them to download. Her email stated, “I had some trouble downloading a few of the songs. It may have been because I tried to do it on my ipad and when they didn’t open I went to my computer and some opened and some didn’t. I didn’t get tracks 1,2,8,9,and 12.”

I’ve checked that all the links and products are there… I even sent a link to myself to try to download on my ipad. It will not work. The first time I hit the link, I got a black screen. This second time I got this message:

“The secure download manager ran into a problem that it couldn’t handle, and is unable to process your download request.

The problem was due to the following reason:

The download link (see browser address bar) has been used too many times. If you think this reason is in error, please contact the site administrator.”

The only limitations I have is 3 downloads in 24 hrs. So, theoretically, you should be able to hit the link 3 times… Right?

I’ve read in this forum that iPads/iPhones have trouble with downloading zip files, but this is NOT a zip… it’s mp3s.

I appreciate your help!

[wzp]

It might be a “media disposition” issue with the iOS browser; instead of saving download files with .mp3 it may be trying to play them. Please see if this helps:

https://support.tipsandtricks-hq.com/forums/topic/force-a-file-to-download-instead-of-showing-up-in-the-browser

[HafnerDesigns]

@wzp, thanks for the link, but it’s not answering the problem of downloading mp3 files on a mobile device. I have one client who has all mp3’s on S3 server and we’ve got the Content-type set to audio/mpeg and the Content-Disposition set to attachment. This is not allowing mobile safari to download. I don’t see a Content-Type for ‘application/octet-stream’ as stated in that post. Perhaps this code is too old then?

<FilesMatch ".(?i:pdf)$">

ForceType application/octet-stream

Header set Content-Disposition attachment

</FilesMatch>

The point is, no matter what, I can’t get a link to download using Safari or Chrome for iPad. Since you can’t really right click, you can’t save it.

There do seem to be iOS downloaders available but they don’t seem to download a streaming MP3. Also, using an enabler for either browser would mean jailbreaking a device. I don’t think I want to go that far.

Am I doing something wrong?

Thanks

[wzp]

The issue is not particular to eStore. Like the previously mentioned ZIP file issue, it seems that Apple has decided it is “best” not to allow the ability to save MP3 files from the web browser:

[http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/3955/is-it-possible-to-save-http-hosted-mp3-files-directly-onto-an-ipad]

Think of it this way… why should Apple make it easy for anyone to compete against iTunes?

[HafnerDesigns]

Thank you, @wzp. I guess for now we’ll have to advise customers to use their desktop/laptop computers to do the downloads.

[Author]

Posts