Providing a subscription service

Another method of providing content to users is as a subscription service. In this scenario, a user pays a fee to play back content a certain number of times and to receive licenses for a variety of content each billing period. When implementing this scenario, consider the following:

• Determine the method for licensing your content. For more information about the methods for streaming protected Windows Media-based content, see the Windows Media Rights Manager Software Development Kit (SDK).
• Use the Windows Media Services snap-in to create on-demand publishing points on your server to distribute subscription content.
• Enable the authentication and authorization plug-ins that you want to use to control access to your content. You may also want to enable a logging plug-in to record the activity on the publishing point. Using data collected in the log files, you can create reports to verify that your system is performing as expected.
• Let your users know that content is available. You can create a link on your existing Web site that users can use to connect to your publishing point and access your content. You can also create a default Web page with a link to your content and then customize the page to meet your needs.

Related topics

• About publishing point types
• Configuring security options
• Obtaining content
• Sourcing from files
• To access the Add Publishing Point Wizard
• To add a publishing point using the advanced method
• Streaming programming to subscribers