Question

is there a way to prevent a browser from opening an mp3 in a new browser window?

i have a normal link to mp3 file like

 <a href="link_to_mp3">some.mp3</a>

and of course you can download it with right click -> save as. but some users don’t know that. so if they click on a link, a new window opens where they can listen to that mp3.

issue is, i want the users to download the files once instead of listen to them thousand times over my server 😉

Answer 1

Through html only you cannot force the link to open a file save dialog.

Instead you can achieve that through PHP and with some custom headers as seen here

A simple download.php file could look like:

    <?php
     
     $file = $_GET['file'];
     $dir = "path/to/files/";
     
     if(!file)
     {
         die('file not found');
     }
     else
     {
         $local_file = $dir . $file['filename'];
         $file = fopen($local_file, "r");  


         header("Cache-Control: public");
         header('Content-Type: application/octet-stream'); 
         header("Content-Description: File Transfer");
         header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=$file");
         header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary");
        
         // set download rate
         $download_rate = 100.0;
         // fetch the file
         fread($file, round($download_rate * 1024)); 
         // close the file stream
         fclose($file);
     }
     ?>

Where you can specify the directory where all your files as saved, as well as a download rate if needed to limit the speed at which the file can be downloaded.

Update

Forgot to mention that you will then change your links to:

 <a href="download.php?file=test.mp3">some.mp3</a>

where test.mp3 will be changed to your particular download