You may have noticed -no steam shovel- has a bit of a sound-track now. Not just that same damn song, over and over. Some variety…
It took some time, but my quest for embedded blog music has come to an end with FineTune. Check the MORE link for more on the topic, and why I chose them over the competition…
For a good long while I have been looking in to embedded music for blogs to no real avail… I found a good number of embedded solutions, but none seemed to work the way I wanted them to.
Below you will find a few of our options, not really in any order, as well as a description and the pros and cons of each. As you may know, I hate paying for things, so all of these are free, and most importantly, legal. I believe I am about done adding content to this, so there shouldn’t be any more updates unless anyone has anything I should add to the subject.
In this post I will take a look at divShare, FineTune, last.fm, Radio.Blog.Club, Music Video Base, Sonific, the Streampad Widget and the Traditional Embed method for adding music to your blog…
[Note: Now updated with iMeem!]
divShare - FineTune - last.fm - Radio.Blog.Club - Music Video Base - Sonific - Streampad - Traditional Embed - iMeem
Conclusion
divShare is a file hosting service. Compairable to RapidShare and the ilk, divShare provides a place for you to upload any kind of file you wish (provided it falls within their TOS) so that others may access it as they wish by following a link that you give them. Unlike services like YouTube, files uploaded to divShare are unsearchable by the general public, and are only accessible via a link that only you can retrieve.
What makes divShare different from other file hosting services? I have never used any file hosting service long enough to effectively rate divShare in the grand scheme of file hosting services. However, divShare differs from other file hosting services in that it supports a purpose-built flash-based mp3 player by default. If you upload an mp3 file (I am unsure about other formats) it has the ability provide you with am mp3 player that you can include in any webpage/blog/forum on which you can post plain HTML.
Are there any downsides to divShare? Oh my, yes. One, you can not upload copyrighted music. So, unless you are a musician, have access to freely licensed music, or like breaking the law, it is likely your choices of music will be fairly limited… Two, the player only plays one song… So to get new music you must upload a new file, get the new code, and repost it. So, if you have MySpace, you are better using their music player, and if you have a blog, you have better options… And also, as with most options, the player size/shape can not be modified to fit your application… Bummer…
Who should use divShare? divShare is for the user who wants it simple, not that there is anything wrong with that. All you do is upload an mp3 of your choice, copy the code, and place it where ever you wish. It is also great for the aspiring artist who wants to place his/her/their music in a blog or forum post for the world to see (although there is a better option for this as well…).
I use FineTune. FineTune provides stand-alone flash-based music players. You select 45 tracks (we’ll get to this) in your/a play-list, grab the code and go. They have quite a few albums (I was not left in want of anything) and a really easy play-list system.
What makes FineTune stand out in a crowd? Well, as I said, you must fill your play-list with 45 tracks, all of which play at random, which is nice. You aren’t stuck with one song, and you don’t always get the same song when you reload a page. Also, they have a nice “I’m Lazy” feature that you can use after you have added three or more tracks. “I’m Lazy” will use space-age technology to determine your exact music tastes by analyzing your selected tracks, and it will auto-populate your play-list with music that it believes will suit your tastes. It is very accurate and it will help you find new music and artists.
FineTune also allows listeners to purchase tracks/albums they are listening to through its player. Unfortunately, they don’t cut you a check for such purchases. Due to the way the software works, you only need add your play-list once, and you can edit/change/rearrange the tracks at will without ever touching the code…
Are there any downsides to FineTune? Sure. You need a play-list of 45 tracks, you can only use three songs from each artist and although the player will show you the last track, it doesn’t have a “back” feature. And again, the player size/shape is static… Aw shucks.
Who should use FineTune? I think it is perfect for MySpace (as well as other social networking sites), as well as traditional home pages and especially blogs. Its ease of use, selection of music, slick interface, etc, make it perfect to just place and go. It livens up an otherwise silent speck of the web with ease and grace. I often just load up my blog and let it sit in the background, just for the music. But thats just me…
last.fm is the music industry’s wet-dream. It isn’t so much a service to consumers, as it is, first and fore most, the most ingenious consumer polling program in the history of man. There is only so much information the music industry can gather on listening habits from radio station request lines, and random polling in music magazines. last.fm takes consumer polling to the next level, by offering a program that will actually report back on every-single-song-you-listen-to.
The draw? It tells you, and most importantly, the big guy, whats hot. It also allows you to show the world what you think is hot (based on your listening habits) by posting your most-played/recently-played/etc. tracks on your blog/website. Additionally, and also, why we are here, it will let your listeners… er… listen. Sort of. And the database is filled with real music. No no-names, all the hits.
What does last.fm have that the others don’t? Ease of use. It will create a recommended play-list automatically, based on your listening habits, that you can post once on your blog, and forget about. Also, you can create and share play-lists as well. The kicker is that the recommended play-list is eternal, and forever changing based on what you played in iTunes this afternoon. So as your tastes change, the music on your website will as well.
This sounds pretty good. Are there any downsides? Meh… The player is a static shape and size, and as such, doesn’t fit into the layout of my blog. Also, you are kind of giving up some of your privacy. But thats how the whole system works, so its a given. Myself, I don’t go for that whole Big Brother non-sense. Besides that, I can’t see anything else too terribly awry with the service, and I would use them if it weren’t for the shape of their player…
Who should use last.fm? The casual, connected blogger. Like to let the world know your every move? Well then, go for it. You can show them a few lists of your habits, give them a taste. While your at it, go ahead and upload that video of your colonoscopy, we’d love to see it…
Seriously though. This is a pretty good solution for the common person, if you can make the player fit. You have to upload a small plug-in for iTunes to get it to work, but thats the name of the game…
I placed this here because I heard a rumor you could post music from their service to your blog. However, as I looked in to their service I got quite thoroughly confused, lost all concept of its workings, and gave up. From the looks of things they give you access to a vast archive of music, through which you can dig, and even listen. There is a play-list feature, but that is as far as I got. I had heard you could post single tracks in a nice little player. However I found no such feature.
Instead, I found their stand-alone software “radio.blog.2.5″ for playing music on a personal website/blog. Normaly I would review the software, however I will pass on this one, and merely re-post the contents of the software’s instruction documents. The choice is up to you…
; —————————————————–
; Radio.Blog, version 2.5
; Author: Astro @ Mubility.net
; Mail : astro@mubility.com
; Updates/Blog: http://www.radioblogclub.com/
; —————————————————–Radio.Blog Instructions
———————–01.Install Radio.Blog
———————
- Copy the radio.blog directory on your web server.
- Edit config.xml to change the color of the skin.02.Creat a SWF Sound
——————–
- Copy your MP3 into the creat.sound directory.
- Double-click on convert64.bat (this will convert all your MP3 files in RBS format files into the sounds directory)
- Wait
- Copy your RBS files into your sounds directory on your web server.
- refresh and enjoy.03.How To
———
- Include radio.blog in my webpage:
Insert this code in your page:
<iframe src=”radio.blog/index.php” name=”radio” scrolling=”no” frameborder=”0″ width=”220″ height=”320″></iframe>- Autostart a track:
add ?autoplay=# in front of your url, for example to autostart track number 2:
http://www.domaine.com/radio.blog/?autoplay=2- Remove my radio.blog from the radio.blog.club database:
Set the value of the register tag to 0 : <register value=”0″ />
Next time the crawler will visit your radio.blog (less than 48h), your radio.blog and all the tracks references will be removed from the radio.blog database.
Ignoring a glaring inability to spell the word create, the instructions make the simple task of playing music on a personal website almost prohibitively complicated. If you are considering this solution, skip it and proceed with either divShare or Streampad, as they both allow you to upload your own music of choice with much less hassle or much more flexibility.
Music Video Base is pretty Bad Ass, and I am ashamed to say I haven’t had the time to put it though the ringers. It is very similar to a mix between last.fm, YouTube, and Sonific (below). You can select single tunes from various current hit artists to feature on your website… legally.
What makes Music Video Base special? It’s the VIDEOS, hello! Sure you can only post one track at a time, and when you want to change it you have to do the whole thing over again. But its a Music Video… Awesome! You can’t do this with YouTube if you don’t own rights to the track, are you out your mind?
What is Music Video Base best suited for? Single entries in Forums and Blogs, as well as MySpace pages. Everyone likes a good video, its spicey. However, don’t put it on a main page (MySpace is an exception, as EVERYONES page is a virtual-seizure), or in critical templates. Again, do not put it in the template of a site or blog, as its constant loading (time consuming) and playing of the same song, over and over (annoying as hell) will not bode well for your return rates. So, for the most part, keep it to MySpage, and your golden.
I used Sonific to feature music on my blog for a few weeks. I liked it at first. It is simple to use, easy to implement. Sonific was designed from the ground up to serve music on personal web pages, it allows you to choose from a large collection of music, and gives you clean and easy to understand code to place on your web page. The website interface is easy to understand and navigate as well. A nice change from the competition is the ability to customize, to some degree, the embedded player to fit your layout and color scheme.
The downsides are not many, but glaring… First, Sonific’s artists are unknowns, and you will rarely find a track that you recognize in their database. Also, as with the majority of our options, you can only select on track, and to change tracks means re-posting code.
Who should use Sonific? Well, if you want a quick ad dirty solution, go for it. Sign-up is easy and quick, selecting a track is easy a quick, and embedding the player is easy a quick. If you don’t mind the lack of popular artists, and lack of multi-track support, by all means, jump on the Sonific bandwagon. I believe it is ideally suited for a small personal website. Not a social networking site, as most of them have their own media players built in (with popular artists) and if you are customizing a blog you probably know enough to use something a little better and a little more complicated…
I have never actually used the Streampad Widget, but it sounds quite nearly revolutionary. It is a self-contained mini-widget that you can place anywhere on your blog to play music.
Whats so revolutionary? Well, by clicking the above link you are taken to a page that asks for a URL, if you want it to autostart or not, a width and a height. Once you fill those out, it hands you a code to place in your blog and your done. The URL you give it needs to point to a file that contains links to mp3 files. The player then connects to all those files, makes a play-list, and goes to work.
Whats so revolutionary about that? Well, at its most basic, this allows you to upload mp3 files to a directory and assemble your own play-list on an html file by linking to the mp3 files using anchor tags. This makes your play-list super customizable. On the even cooler end, you can point the widget at an RSS feed, an m3u file, or even a category in your blog. The widget will crank through whatever you throw at it to find links to mp3 files, place them in a play-list as it finds them, and play them to your visitors. KICKIN’!
Who is it for then? Well, international copyright laws limit what you can distribute on the Internet, so you must be legaly allowed to distribute/access the music you will be playing through this widget. This in mind, this widget is perhaps the best thing to happen to musicians EVER! If you have a blog you can set this in your side-bar and forget it. Point it at a category like “new-releases,” and every time you post a new mp3 file to that category, BAM!! People can listen to it. If you are wary of granting access to your music to the general public then have the links housed in a hidden html file, or go a different route and use divShare to post the files individually without revealing their location.
This is a method, rather than a service. This is a method of writing code to embed MIDI tunes (I am not sure of other formats) in actual HTML. You have various options on how to embed the file. Say I had a MIDI file named “mySong.mid” that I wanted to embed on this page.
I could either link to it:
< a href="mySong.mid">Click here to play music </a>
This way my user is presented with a link to the music file, and they must click it to hear it. The downside is that it will either take them to a different window, or open a media player in a different window, which is pointless.
I could embed the track on my page so that it plays automatically int he background once it loads. I could do this by placing this inside of the HEADER section of my page:
<embed src="mySong.mid">
<noembed> <bgsound src="mySong.mid"> </noembed>
This way, the track would play for infinity in the background, and the user would have no control over its execution.
I could embed it in the body of the page with a shut-off button. I would do this ply placing this code wherever I desired the shut-off button to appear:
<embed src="mySong.mid"
width=25 height=25 autostart=false repeat=true loop=true> </embed>
This would allow the user to begin playing the track and cease playing the track at will.
Or I could embed it in my page with full controls by placing this code where I wanted the controls to appear:
<embed src="mySong.mid"
width="140" height="40" autostart="false" loop="FALSE">
</embed>
This would give the user full control over the track: Start/Stop, as well as position inside of the track.
What are the downsides to this method? Well, you’re limited to what you can play. I don’t know if you can only play MIDIs, but I do know that if you can play anything else (MP3, MP4, AAC) the user must at least have the codec to play it, which is hit or miss… Also, implementation is shoddy. Want an example? Ok, have a go at this. You must hose the file and you are limited to only one track…
Who should use this method? No one. Really, there are so many other, better, options. You may only want to use this if all you want to play in the background is a MIDI, as they load super fast and your user doesn’t need flash or anything else to load it. If you need something this simple, go with divShare… I would even use Radio.Blog.Club over this method.
I have heard the term “muti-headed hydra of a [insert category here]” before, namely in reference to the Ultimate Tag Warrior 3 plug-in, which I happen to use. I suppose that is fairly accurate, but I just can’t help but feel that term is better used for something else… And I believe that is iMeem.
Wait… Why? Why? WHY!? Listen here kiddo’, iMeem ain’t your ordinary… er… thing. The creators of iMeem had to of been some ADHD, multi-tasking, scatter-brain kind of chaps. iMeem isn’t one single solution, iMeem takes on social networking, file-hosting, blogging and media sharing, all in one fell swoop. Unfortunately this is both a blessing and a curse.
Ok, but why? As a social network first and foremost, iMeem is killer. They let you easily customize the very layout and structure of your profile, customize the theme, manage content, even integrate your NetFlix, del.icio.us, BlogLines, Amazon, Digg and Audioscrobbler account, seamlessly. Its even a fully functional blog. But I digress…
Ok, so why are you mentioning it in a review of media solutions for blogs? I’m getting there. iMeem lets you upload unlimited pictures, music and videos to your profile. It then lets you create play-lists of this content, as well as any other content in the iMeem universe. You can even create as many separate play-lists as you chose. Now, this is cool enough, as it puts MySpace right to shame, but iMeem goes a step further, and gives you code to embed any of your play-lists anywhere you like… You can not mix media (have both music and video in the same play-list) but it is pretty bad ass to have one go-to place for both formats.
Cool, cool. So, what, no sour apples? Well… Unfortunately, yes. iMeem is wonderful, as a full solution, unless you don’t want to do the whole social networking bit along with the media bit, then its a little too much… See, if you are already a member of one of the big two social networking sites (Facebook and MySpace), chances are slim that your going to want to go through all the trouble to start another, especially if you don’t have any friends on it already. If thats the case, then you will be left with this feeling that something is unfinished and messy, as your profile goes untouched and to waste… If all you want is the media, and not everything else, iMeem isn’t for you.
So… Ok, who’s iMeem for then? iMeem is for those of us/you that want to stick it to the man, start over, or start…period… As I said, the way we all like to customize things now-a-days, it’s a big hassle to get a social networking account up and running the way one might like it. That in mind, if you already have a social networking account (Facebook, Myspace, Virb, etc), pass by iMeem. However, if your the kind of person that enjoys diving head-first in to uncharted waters, by all means, feel free. The waters of iMeem are fresh, warm, safe and welcoming. You’ll get a good number of useful perks to boot. Also, if you don’t have any form of social networking site yet, you might want to give iMeem a try as well. If you don’t keep it, at least you’ll know what features you deserve in such a service.
It’s all up to you, bucko’. To each his own, really. Each of these solutions works different for different people. I will, however, weigh in on the matter.
For the “have a look at this” forum guru who just wants to throw sound someones way, without bothering with finding space to host it or any of that other non-sense, stick with divShare.
For the normal blogger who just wants good (known) music, in a simple widget, with a play-list she/he can modify at will, without changing code. Go with FineTune.
For the connected blogger who likes to show off, get last.fm and be gone with ye.
For the artists out there, have at the Streampad Widget and be merry.
And last, and sort-of least (I kid… kid), for the MySpace kiddo who just wants flashy things that annoy the hell out of people, go the way of Music Video Base and don’t friend me.
Also, a warning to the lot of you, stay away from Radio.Blog.Club, don’t waste your time.
Hi, thanks for the excellent advice. I like Finetune too.
I have one query which nobody seems to have addressed yet - is it possible to have the music player installed so that once you click to play the track it will play *continuously* no matter which window of the blog is open?
At the moment I can embed the player in the sidebar but as soon as another post is opened the music stops, loads up and plays from the beginning again. This is useless.
I suppose it depends on where you embed the player but I can’t work out where to do this. I use blogspot and wordpress as hosts. Blogspot is easier to configure because you can’t tweak the style sheet on wordpress without paying extra.
Thanks in advance.
One thing you mis about imeem is that you don’t even need to upload the music to imeem to put it in a playlist, you can build a playlist from anything that’s posted to the site. So you can grab tunes from some of the artists promoting music on the site, add in some obscure hip-hop from some inner city kid’s profile and then round it out with a couple of uploads of your own. Imeem is an amazing repository of content I just don’t find anywhere else on the web
I thought I covered that
but I’ll add some emphasis to be sure… thanks.