info on mp3 players for website?

Steve Atwood · Post by **Steve Atwood** » 14 Sep 2012 3:18 pm

I'm building a website for my mother, who is a Christian songwriter. She has over 100 songs, and I'm thinking the site should have a page with a music player playing 20 or so of her best recordings continuously, and another page with 20 more songs each on its own player, with text alongside and a link to the sheet music.

Can anyone advise me on the different types of music players out there? Which ones have worked for you and which ones have problems?

I would prefer to have the music played on the site, as opposed to linking to SoundCloud, for example, or having the listener download the songs.

I put a site online using WordPress, but plan to hire a webmaster and start over. (I have someone in mind but would be open to any offers or referrals.)

Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks

Richard Sinkler · Post by **Richard Sinkler** » 14 Sep 2012 4:26 pm

I am looking into the same thing. There are several free ones online that you can integrate into a web page. The one I am looking the most seriously at is called Speakker (Google it and you'll find it). Speakker has the ability to have a playlist. Most of the ones you find will only play one song. Hell, I can do that with HTML5.

I would also be interested if anyone knows a way to make the embedded HTML5 audio tags be able to have a list of song files and use the same instance of the tag to play any of the songs, instead of having to have a separate instance of the player for each song.

Wiz Feinberg · Post by **Wiz Feinberg** » 14 Sep 2012 4:53 pm

I think that the Coffeecup Web Jukebox is just what you want. If the page loads at the top, find the link, or scroll down to Web Jukebox. It does playlists.

Pete Nicholls · Post by **Pete Nicholls** » 14 Sep 2012 5:53 pm

Check out my music page at http://petenicholls.us/music and see how mine is done. There are many variable configurations, see http://www.flashmp3player.org/download.html

Cheers,

Richard Sinkler · Post by **Richard Sinkler** » 14 Sep 2012 5:59 pm

Thanks guys.

Douglas Schuch · Post by **Douglas Schuch** » 14 Sep 2012 8:14 pm

Richard (and others): I find it irritating when a song starts, and each time you click on a new page, either the song starts over, or a new one starts. If you have multiple pages and want background music, I think you would want a player that opens in its own mini-window (or a link on the homepage for "MUSIC SAMPLES", or "BACKGROUND MUSIC" that opens it.

Pete's site is one page only, so not an issue. Thoughts?

Richard Sinkler · Post by **Richard Sinkler** » 14 Sep 2012 9:07 pm

Richard (and others): I find it irritating when a song starts, and each time you click on a new page, either the song starts over, or a new one starts. If you have multiple pages and want background music, I think you would want a player that opens in its own mini-window (or a link on the homepage for "MUSIC SAMPLES", or "BACKGROUND MUSIC" that opens it.

Douglas, I didn't say anything about having music play when a page opens. Only to have the ability to have a page that has many Mp3's that can be selected and played in a player embedded into the page and have a playlist so you don't have to play one song, when it ends click on another and let it play, etc...

Having a song start playing on a page load is outdated old school crap, just like all those animated GIF files that had moving email boxes and stuff like that. It is actually frowned upon in the web design community these days, according to the many sites I have visited and studied from (including the W3C). But many sites need a way to play multiple files without having to open a new page/window every time you select a song because HTML doesn't support this.

I am doing a website for a band that needs to have a page for prospective employers to check out. This needs to include sound clips. If you remember back in the days when a band used to give a cassette tape to a club owner, he would listen to about 30 seconds of the song and if he had the patience, he would fast forward to the next song, but usually would toss the tape into the trash can. Along the same lines, if a club owner had to click on a song and wait for a new page to open every time, he probably won't stay on your site very long and you probably won't get hired.

Both my site and the site for a band I am in (I did that website too) have an audio page that lists the songs and you have to click on the song and it has to open a page written for the song along with the music player and wait for it to load. then you have to navigate back to the main page and select another song, wait for it to load, etc ... you get the picture. That method requires a separate web page for EVERY song. A player will let you have one page that will play 50 songs instead of 50 pages that will only play 1 song.

Actually, my sites NOW have a page that has an interactive video player (using the native HTML5 video player and jQuery (javascript)) that has thumbnails and opens the video in a light box that pops up and plays the video. I take Mp3 files and actually make an Mp4 video using 1 or more pictures so the listener has something to look at while listening. That was the only way I found to do it without separate pages for every Mp3 file. But, I would just rather have a player to play Mp3's. Making those movie files was really time consuming. By the way, that is the same method most use to put Mp3 files onto YouTube. I believe YouTube still doesn't support audio only files, but I may be wrong about that.

Richard Sinkler · Post by **Richard Sinkler** » 14 Sep 2012 9:44 pm

Forgot to mention, I am actually more interested in HTML5 players, not Flash. I still believe Apple iOS devices can't play Flash files. That's a big obstacle in designing web sites these days.

Wiz Feinberg · Post by **Wiz Feinberg** » 15 Sep 2012 6:04 am

Richard;
I have a possibly simpler solution for you. Create the playlist as a group of soundclips, then use JavaScript to play them in sequence, setting a TimeOut() function to move to the next one after x number of seconds. The entire playlist could open in a pop-up window that can be positioned, or closed without impacting the main browser.

Alternately, upload the soundbytes to YouTube and let the audience choose Flash or HTML 5.0.

You are correct about i devices. They don't play Flash. I showed this to a friend who wants me to make a website for his band. He was going to show me all the cool stuff he wanted; until he found he couldn't see that fancy Flash content on his iPod. There's no sense in isolating people using Apple products, as they are typically in the music and arts business.

Richard Sinkler · Post by **Richard Sinkler** » 15 Sep 2012 7:40 am

Thanks Wiz. That would work for the site I am building now, only 3 songs as of this time (when I figure out how to program the Javascript part). But on my website, I have probably 50 sound (video) files and wouldn't want to have them all play in sequence. Best to let the listener pick and choose.

What surprises me is, there are thousands (or millions) of apps for iPhones/iPads. Why hasn't someone written one that will allow Flash playback?

Richard Sinkler · Post by **Richard Sinkler** » 15 Sep 2012 8:58 am

I'm really leaning towards using Speakker. It has an HTML5 music player and Flash fallback for older browsers. The audio files should play in any browser including those on iOS devices. I'm going to play around with it in the next couple of days and will report back.

Steve Atwood · Post by **Steve Atwood** » 15 Sep 2012 1:26 pm

Excellent information- Thanks!

Another simple way to stream is to upload songs to SoundCloud and put them into what they call a "set" which can then be embedded in a SoundCloud player on your site. (Simple for my teenage nephew anyway - I couldn't figure it out.)

Richard Sinkler · Post by **Richard Sinkler** » 15 Sep 2012 2:39 pm

Steve, I will look into that too and let you know.