Streaming Audio Files on Website???

[Kenny Davis]

O.K. - Anyone know how to add streaming audio to an AOL website?

[Jim Phelps]

I think I can answer this since I've had my site at at least 30 different free homepage places before I got pro webhosting.

First, read ALL the rules of policy and red-tape junk that you probably if you're like me and everyone else, skipped through when you got an AOL homepage (if you do mean it's an AOL homepage.) If your homepage is at another site and AOL is just your ISP, read their policy toward homepages. Most of the free homepages have a lot of tiny print and somewhere in there it usually says you waive ALL THE RIGHTS TO ALL CONTENT YOU UPLOAD TO THEIR SERVER. If you have songs or other art you don't want to give away, I'd suggest you make sure it's already copyrighted or get a webhosting account somewhere else. It's not expensive, I'd be glad to tell you where you can get great hosting for very little.

Also, many free homepage places don't allow any kind of media file such as mp3, real audio or .wav, because of pirating of copyrighted stuff. You'll find that also in the policy rules.

If you find one that allows them, you upload them as you do any file, if you use mp3's you can link directly to the file, if you use realaudio you need to get RealProducer (they have a free version) to convert to .rm files. To have them start playing immediately, you make a .ram file and upload that. If your website is you.com and your song file is song.rm, and you put your music files in a subdirectory called "sounds", you make a "page" that says this:
http://you.com/sounds/song.rm
and save it as a .ram file.
You make your link to this, it makes the file stream instead of download.

I don't know if you can understand everything about it from this brief explanation, but if you have any more questions feel free to email me directly from the button above. You can check my song links at my page at http://jimphelps.com/clips.html if you like, yes they all work! By the way, most Realaudio files stream very well on regular modem connections unless the server is really bogged down, but mp3's don't stream too well except on high-speed connections, so usually mp3's are just downloaded and not streamed unless you make a streaming link just for high-speed guys. Good luck.
<FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Jim Phelps on 17 February 2002 at 12:28 AM.]</p></FONT>

[Kenny Davis]

Thanks Jim - Let me digest what you said. I may be e-mailing you later.