I am creating two web sites of short stories on audio that will be sold as individual downloads, not as a CD. The recording studio I’ve talked to will give me a “master” with all the mixing, intro tags added, etc. My question is how do I get from a data master to WMA, mp3 and AAC files I can upload and sell on the web site?

I’ve done a search through here and google and I can’t get a clear answer. If it’s in the archives and I missed it, I apologize. Is this something the recording studio should be able to do for me? They are used to giving a master to the musicians, movie, TV company, etc., and they take it and do “whatever” with it. I realize if I were making a CD, I would get a glass master made and my CDs would be duplicated from that. Do I need to take it to a different type of post production facility for codecs/compression to these formats?

Is the change to these codecs as simple as push a “save as” button in the studio or is it complicated? Do I buy software and do something on the computer…..except my master is binary data, not sound, right? Will I need additional post production adjustments to accommodate issuing them as downloadable files instead a CD, or should that be in the original mix and mastering?

Thank you for your help. I'm really at a loss here.

Laura