Installing the B&W Download Manager on Linux

Revision 2: 2011-05-09

While it's great that B&W used a cross-platform development tool for their download manager for the Society of Sound, they make it a pain to install it on platforms that aren't Windows or Mac OS.

I've started writing a native download client for UNIX, having reverse-engineered the protocol. In the mean time though it is possible to install it on Linux pretty easily.

1. Download the AIR installation file. For some reason, B&W choose to hide the link to this through a broken Flash applet that makes faulty assumptions. If you view the source to the popup that contains this, and then follow the link to the source for badgeInstall.js you will see the link to the actual file. Today, it was http://files.velocix.com/c249/DLM-Assets/Download-Manager.air, but it may change in future. So if that link doesn't work, check the sources to that file again.
2. Install Adobe AIR from http://get.adobe.com/air/. If you're running a 64 bit operating system, you'll want the .bin installer, because as of writing the RPM and Deb packages are for 32 bit systems. If using the .bin installer, mark the download as executable (either via your file manager, or with chmod +x AdobeAIRInstaller.bin from a terminal), and then run it with sudo ./AdobeAIRInstaller.binThis assumes you are currently in the directory where you downloaded the file: you may need to cd ~/Downloads or similar.
3. Install the B&W Download Manager AIR file. You may have a link to a program called "Adobe AIR Application Installer" in your desktop environment's Accessories group. Don't use this; it litters your home directory with rootly-owned files, and while you can change ownership back to you and it will work, it will play havoc with upgrading the Download manager later. Instead, there is a command-line tool: sudo Adobe\ AIR\ Application\ Installer This will pop up a file chooser dialogue. Find your Download-Manager.air file that you downloaded in the first step, and the application will be installed.
4. Run the Download Manager. A link for it will have appeared in the Accessories group (called just "Download Manager", or your can run it with /opt/Download\ Manager/bin/Download\ Manager from a terminal.
5. Log in by giving it the email address of your Society of Sound account. No password is required. Don't be tempted to move the window opened by the Download Manager. It has a habit of crashing as it is rather buggy.
6. Enjoy the delicious FLAC files.