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What is this
thing they call Data Transfer or Bandwidth and why is it so important to me?
Bandwidth and Data Transfer are
sometimes used interchangeably. We like to call it Data Transfer
so for the rest of this page when we say Data Transfer if you want
to think bandwidth that's OK. Well data transfer is very important
to websites. For instance if your web provider offers you 2 Gig of
data transfer it means that when people listen MP3's from
your web site it uses part of your total data transfer for the
month.
Well that makes a lot of sense eh?
Not yet I'm sure. We're going to base our explanation using a 2
Gigabyte of data transfer website. Now think of it this way. 2
Gigabyte in real numbers is 2,000,000,000 bytes. Let's now
translate this easier. Suppose your 2 Gigabyte of of data transfer
is like a swimming pool that contains 2 Gigabytes (2,000,000,000)
gallons of water. Each month you are allowed to give your users a
maximum of 2,000,000,000 Gallons of water. When you've emptied
your pool you have to wait to the next month for it to fill up
again.
Now let's translate the 2,000,000,000 gallons of water back into
computer numbers and songs. Most songs on the internet are in MP3
format. So let us say that you have an
MP3 file that is 1,177,600 bytes
in size (1,177,600 gallons of water). If someone plays your MP3
file from anywhere on the web your pool will be using 1,177,600
gallons of water, or 1,177,600 bytes of data transfer. Are you
with me now? Think of it this way. You have a 2 Gigabyte
account. You can give 1698 people 1,177,600 gallons of water
during the month, or in our case, 1698 people can play play this
MP3 song from your web site each month.
Please realize though that you
really don't need as much data transfer as you might think. First of
all we know that the website owner and friends and family of the
website owners do download the MP3 files. Well, most of those
downloads will not count against your data transfer. that is
because when you've played the song once and have not cleared your
browser cache the song will not download again. It will play it
from your local drive. Please realize that this does not happen
all the time but it does save your transfer for your prospective
customers.
When Creative
Records was first starting up we were using another host provider.
Our data transfer was 1.5
Gigabytes a month and we only had 50 Megabytes of disk storage. We never ran
out of it. We always used less than the 1.5 Gigabytes of data
transfer. However we started to come close to the 50 Megabytes of
storage space. At Creative Records Web Hosting
Services we give you a minimum of 2 Gigabytes of data transfer and 150
Megabytes of storage. That is quite a bit.
How much data transfer do I need and what should my resolution be
for my MP3 files
Some of our customers know a lot about MP3 files. If you don't
know about MP3 and listening quality
just read on and we'll tell you something about it. When you
have an electronic version of your song from a CD or just out of
the mixing studio it is a 44100Hz, 16-bit,
Stereo wave file. This file is quite large and you'll see by our
samples below that it can be as large as 41,531,252 bytes. This is
a high quality file that is written to CD's for sale. You do not
want to put this type of file on your web site for people to
listen to. A lot of people have dialup modems and they'd have a
lot of trouble downloading and playing your song. Aside from that,
with a 2 Gigabytes of data transfer account you will only be able to have
48 downloads of your song per month before you ran out of
water, so to speak. Ouch......Well don't worry about that. You can convert
your wave file to an MP3 file for streaming on the web. The same
41,531,252 file (see below) can range in MP3 format from 1,177,600 Bytes to
3,768,902 bytes. What a difference that is isn't it?
There are different qualities of MP3 files. We are going to talk
about the qualities that are best for musicians and record
companies. The better quality that a lot of people do use is
128Kbps MP3 files. That is the one that is
3,768,902 Bytes long. However sometimes a 40Kbps or a 60 Kbps file will work as
well as a 128Kbps saving you more data transfer. The same song in
40Kbps is 1,177,600 bytes in size saving you triple the
data transfer.
Don't be confused by people telling you that you
MUST use 128 Kbps. Listen to our files below. It ranges from a
full wave file to a 40Kbps
file. Please don't try the wave file if you are on a modem. you
might be able to go out and have dinner before it is downloaded. Make up your own mind on what to use. We also recommend
having two different files on your site. Maybe one at 40 Kbps for
dial-up modem users and one at 128 Kbps for Cable Modem or DSL users.
I hope that we've been able to help you with your concerns about
data transfer. If you don't understand anything
email us and we'll give you any answers you need.
Do you want to do the calculations yourself with your own
songs?
Here is the information you need to find out how much data
transfer
your song needs. Get the size of the file on
disk and divide that by the amount of data transfer available. For instance,
with the 40Kbps version, if you have 2,000,000,000 (2 Gigabyte) of
data transfer available and divide it by the size of the file which is 1,177,600
bytes you get the value of 1698 which means that you can
download this file 1698 times before you run out of data transfer
available.
Where with the 128Kbs file you only get 530 times and if your nuts
enough to have a wave file of over 40,000,00 (40 Meg) it will be
only 48 times till you run out of the 1 gig data transfer
available.
Take a few minutes of your time to hear the quality of the
different formats. You might be very surprised at what you hear. |
