Creating a music catalog

[dymaxionfm]

Hello!

I'm using squirrelcart to handle sales at my record label. I'm posting this to see if anyone has experience/advice regarding posting physical/shippable items (e.g. vinyl records) as well as downloadable .mp3 albums that have the same name.

For example, a single album in the catalog will have the following metadata and products linked to it.

1. album name
2. artist
3. order vinyl record
4. MP3 album download
5. Track one .mp3 download
6. Track two .mp3 download
7. Track three .mp3 download
8. Track four .mp3 download
9. Track five .mp3 download

etc.

It shouldn't be too difficult to figure out, but if there are some best practices to guide me, I'd love to know about them.

Thanks!

T

[Jamie]

While I can't claim to have any experience setting up a music store or album/song products, in general I usually recommend controlling your shipping costs via weight. Use our real time rate features and/or manual shipping rules that offer rates based on weight.

Assign weights only to items that physically ship. If you do this and the customer orders nothing but e-goods, no shipping rates will appear. If they order physical goods, they will get shipping rates.

[dymaxionfm]

Good advice for shipping, Jamie! Thanks!

Would that be a way I would designate if the product was a download or a shipping order? Or would the Vinyl (shipping) version of the album be one product and the mp3 download of the album be another?

Perhaps I could also set the album title to be a category and have the vinyl album, MP3 download album, and mp3 songs be individual products in that (album) category?

Thanks!

T

[Jamie]

Would that be a way I would designate if the product was a download or a shipping order?

Yes, items that weigh zero would not be shippable.

Or would the Vinyl (shipping) version of the album be one product and the mp3 download of the album be another?

Perhaps I could also set the album title to be a category and have the vinyl album, MP3 download album, and mp3 songs be individual products in that (album) category?

That's really up to you. You might want to experiment and see what works best for your business model.

[dymaxionfm]

I think I figured this out, and I'd like to post my progress for any others who may need to do what I'm doing.

First of all, Squirrelcart is working out great for us. We've used other shopping carts but none were as usable and easy to set-up as squirrel-cart. Also, the fact that we can optionally get installation and upgrade support makes this the perfect solution for a small company that prefers to devote its time to core business processes rather than learning how to use/modify its commerce software.

What I've done so far for the record label is this:

1) I set each recording artist as a category.

2) Each album release is in the category of its recording artist.

3) Each album has one option (that is a "select") with two option choices:
a) Download MP3 Album Now
b) Order Vinyl Record (Comes with Free Download of Complete MP3 Album!)

No matter which option they choose, it allows for the download of the .MP3 album.

Now, we need to also add individual song purchases and downloads. After we get that set up, I'll make another post. to detail how we did it!

Thanks!

[Jamie]

Thanks for the feedback. Glad you are happy with Squirrelcart, and that you got that working.