Protect uploaded previews

WordPress puts Media Library audio at a public path under /uploads. Anyone who copies that URL can keep it. Protect uploaded previews swaps that path for a short-lived BeatStore link. Listeners still hit Play. The file is not sitting at a bookmarkable address.

Off by default. SoundCloud and Dropbox previews are unchanged.

Turn it on

BeatStore → Settings.
Enable Protect uploaded previews.
Optional: leave Block known AI crawlers on, and set Preview link lifetime (default 60 minutes).
Save.

Then Settings → Permalinks → Post name, Save, if /beatstore-preview/ 404s. Install and plugin updates usually flush that rewrite.

Reload the player page so it fetches a fresh catalog. Old /uploads preview URLs in a cached page keep working until you stop serving those files.

What the player gets

The catalog and the player receive /beatstore-preview/?token=…&sig=… instead of https://yoursite.com/wp-content/uploads/…/beat.mp3.

The token carries the beat id and an expiry. The signature is checked on each request. After the lifetime you set, that URL stops working. A new catalog load mints a new one.

Known training crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Bytespider, and similar) can be refused on the preview stream and on play counting. Filter beatstore_ai_crawler_patterns if you need to add a user-agent. See PHP Hooks.

What it does not do

A still-valid link can be saved. This is not a save lock and not DRM. The Media Library file still lives in /uploads. Protection stops the player and catalog from publishing that path. It does not lock the file on disk.

If you do not want the clean mix in the player, upload a tagged, lower-quality MP3 as the preview and keep the full file in EDD or Woo download files.

PHP serves these bytes instead of the web server handing out a static file. That is why the setting starts off.

Requirements

Audio preview source is Upload (Media Library).
Pretty permalinks help. ?beatstore_preview=1 still works if permalinks are plain.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	What to check
`/beatstore-preview/` 404s	Setting is on, then resave permalinks
“This preview link is invalid or has expired”	Reload the player so the catalog issues a new URL. Default lifetime is 60 minutes
“Too many preview requests”	Per-IP rate limit on the stream. Wait and try again
SoundCloud or Dropbox still shows a third-party URL	Expected. Protection is Media Library only