Is there a way to stream MP3s stored on Amazon S3 via a Flash widget embedded in a website, or some other method?
2 Answers
Yes it is. Firstly, you need to create a bucket in your S3 account which is all in lower case, is globally unique and is DNS-compatible; so for example I created a bucket called ‘media.torusknot.com’.
Then to make it all look nice you need to create a DNS CNAME entry to map a sub-domain of your site to that S3 bucket. That will allow you to access your files you upload to that S3 bucket via ‘http://media.example.com/somefile.mp3’. You do just need to set the ACLs on the files & the bucket to make sure public access is allowed.
Finally, if you want to stream video files via a Flash player from S3 to another domain, you also have to tell Flash that it’s ok for the content to be pulled in from a different domain. Create a file called ‘crossdomain.xml’ in the bucket, with these contents:
<cross-domain-policy>
<site-control permitted-cross-domain-policies="all"/>
</cross>
That allows the media to be accessed from anywhere - you can be more specific if you want but this is the simplest approach.
Related resources:
To update the answer to this question, if you want to actually STREAM to clients, you can use Amazon Cloudfront on top of your S3 bucket (as mentioned by Rudolf). Create a "streaming distribution" in Cloudfront that points to your S3 bucket.
This will stream via RTMP (good for web and Android devices). You can use JW Player or a similar player to play the streamed files.
Cloudfront Streaming uses Adobe Flash Media Server 3.5.
There is also the ability to play secure content using signed urls.
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