Stop mp3 file from streaming in browsers

Question

I have an mp3 on an apache server. I want it to be downloaded as a file when a user visits the link. Instead quicktime, or google chromes media player will try and stream it.

Answer 1

You want to set the Content-Disposition response header to "attachment", and probably the "filename" field as well.

Example:

Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=foo.mp3;

To accomplish this directly in Apache, try putting the following in your httpd.conf or .htaccess file:

  ForceType audio/mpeg
  SetEnvIf Request_URI "^.*/?([^/]*)$" FILENAME=$1
  Header set Content-Disposition "attachment; filename=%{FILENAME}e"
  UnsetEnv FILENAME

EDIT:

Added filename field to Apache configuration example, borrowed from this answer. You should be aware, however, of potential problems caused by filenames with non-US-ASCII characters in them: see this question.

Alternatively, you could use a generic constant filename (since you know the extension already) like song.mp3, but this might not be an option depending on your circumstances.

A third option would be to create a script to serve these MP3s, which can set the header and take care of stripping unwanted characters out of the filename.