The radio station where I work is considering switching from serving our online
audio as RealMedia files via a RealMedia server to serving MP3 audio files via
the Flash Media Server. We have many (as in thousands) of hour-long audio
files where we want the end-user to only listen to a short section of the file,
for instance from 50:25 into the file to 55:45 into the file. With Real, it's
trivial to do this...just attach a ?start=50:25&end=55:45 query string to the
URL of the RealAudio file, and the Real server starts playing at the correct
point.

Is this also doable with the Flash Media server using MP3 audio files (not flv
files)? Is there a way to stream just a designated portion of an audio MP3,
without the user having to download everything from the beginning of the file?
This is a real deal breaker for us.