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What I'd like to do is play an audio file exactly once and then it should not be possible to play it again. Is there such a file format or function? The scenarios I had was 1) Some famous music group or DJ plays live a streamed gig on youtube or spotify and then I suppose that I technically can copy it digitally since I can play and listen to it and the copyright owners or the artists would like some measure that prevents exploitation / bootlegging or infringement. So we wondered if there is a file format or a program or application that allows audio or video to be played only once, or is it not feasible?

Another scenario could be that a teacher makes a test for the students with sound files and the sound files should only be possible to play exactly once.

Can it be done? I think that probably a program can achieve it if the audio is not "extractable" from the program, but I've yet to hear about a file format for a purpose like this.

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You can output the file from a call to a server-side script, e.g. http://example.com/getfile.php?file=test.m4a, and after the file has been sent completely, delete it from the server, or make it inaccessible (e.g. storing the information about access in a database). This can be done with any reasonably good server-side programming language.

For live streaming, you could – again, server-side – set up a solution where a video/audio player is embedded in the webpage, and it requests the file (or the stream endpoint) using a custom token that is only generated once (when the page loads), and only valid for one client request. For example, the player in the website would request http://example.com/getfile.php?file=test.m4a&token=abcdef, and once that has been requested, the token is marked as invalid on the server. Any future request with this token would fail, and the user can only get a token once (e.g. by checking via mandatory user login).

Then again, there's this thing about DRM: It doesn't work. If people can listen to your file or play the video, nothing stops them from recording their sound card output or doing a screen capture.

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    "Then again, there's this thing about DRM: It doesn't work. If people can listen to your file or play the video, nothing stops them from recording their sound card output or doing a screen capture." That can't be said enough. If you can hear it and see it, then it can be copied.
    – JNevill
    Commented Jul 21, 2014 at 18:48

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