How to add code/html/whatever next to links?

You’ll need more than a tiny script.

When someone clicks a link to download a song, you’ll need a way to record that download – and persist it to either a flat file or a database to keep count. Then, you’ll need another script to get a total for the display between the brackets.

Example:

Cog in the Wheel [329 downlaods]

‘Cog in the Wheel’ needs to be a link that passes a variable (to identify which song is being downloaded) to a script something like this:

<?php
$filename = ($_GET[song]);
$dlfile = "/home/username/cgi-bin/dl-count/".$filename;
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=".$filename);
header("Content-Length: ".filesize($dlfile));
readfile($dlfile);
$counter_file = "/home/username/cgi-bin/dl-count/downloads.txt";
$filelock = "/home/username/cgi-bin/dl-count/file-lock.txt";
$got_it = false;
$timeout = 10;
$fp = fopen($counter_file,"a");
$timestamp = time();
$hourdiff = "0"; //0 = same time zone
$timeadjust = ($hourdiff * 60 * 60);
while (($got_it === false) && ($timeout != 0))
{
if (flock($fp, LOCK_EX))
{
fwrite($fp, $timestamp."|".$filename."n");
flock($fp, LOCK_UN);
$got_it = true;
}
else
{
usleep(100000);
--$timeout;
}
}
if (!$got_it)
{
$fplock=fopen($filelock, 'a');
fwrite($fplock,date("M d Y h:i a",time() + $timeadjust)."|".$counter_file."n");
fclose($fplock);
fclose($fp);
exit;
}
fclose($fp);
?>

The above script records each download, in the form of a timestamp, to a file.

If you use this, then you’ll need another script that counts the timestamps for each song and puts the totals in variables that can be used like this:

Cog in the Wheel [ <$php echo $dl-cog; ?> downloads ]

You could do this in a loop if you have several songs.

I haven’t provided an example of the second script because my beer is getting warm. But, yes, it is possible.