I'm not new to music--just new to these forums.  If I were just starting out as a composer, I could care less who downloads my stuff.  But I've been working on my album for nearly four years and am just being cautious/protective of my work.

Ah, I see.  So it plays to the audiophile in all of us, counting on the assumption that we won't bother with anything less than high quality audio?  I like it

The reason there is a download link is because it would be easy to download the file anyway (unless you put in some complex protection against it, which we didn't feel like doing.) Even Bandcamp lets you listen to the tracks, and with a little bit of magic, download them without paying. But iirc, the available files are in a lower quality, like 128 kbps MP3, so that is supposed to be the discouragement against that.

Don't be dumb: if you're new put your music up for PWYW or no-one will buy/download it (unless it's incredible)

Well, if you want to let people listen, you could use sound cloud and post the links. Just disallow downloads.

true

"Successful" music here is usually displayed through a release thread. I mean... if you want to share a song or two for free to give people an idea, that's also very nice. But you can always do that on Bandcamp, as well. When users see other users chiming in on something, it'll usually attract attention
Otherwise, sharing releases doesn't really happen anywhere else on here but in the releases section.

Ah I see.  Thanks for helping me to assimilate

Yeah, you'll probably get more attention if you make a thread than if you just posted in the music section anyways. Not as many people go there regularly, as far as I know.

Many thanks!

I had figured as much, but I wanted to be certain.
I hadn't planned on uploading the whole thing anyhow.

Just don't upload every single track on your album to the music section. Just upload a few that you don't mind giving away or whatever if it is in favor of promoting your release. You can still create a release thread and shamelessly promote your "for-pay" stuff here that way.

I don't think there is an option to disable downloads from the music section of this site. You can remove submissions from the music section though (booooo)

Perhaps I should have opened with the fact that I'm bawling infant, new to the chipmusic forums and incapable of locating any settings or editable parameters regarding the downloadability of a given track.

Does not need to be free

Greetings all.
Just curious if it's required to allow music posted here to be free-to-download.  I don't have any extreme trepidations posting one or two songs, but I plan to release and sell my album soon and it would be...  Counterproductive to have it downloadable.  At the same time, I feel this place is a great venue for some shameless self-promotion.

Conundrum