Posted by Mike on February 27, 2007 Thanks to YouTube, bloggers regularly post video. Sites like Flickr allow the posting of pictures. But there’s one thing that I haven’t seen–or more accurately, heard.
Are there any bloggers who incorporate music (or other sound files) into their blogging? I don’t mean an mp3 that can be downloaded, but music that starts playing when you access that post. Think of it as a post-appropriate soundtrack.
Just wondering. And you heard it here first (I think…)
Uh, I think that would be the best way to get knocked off of people’s bookmarks, or favorites, or whatever your browser-of-choice calls them. People who read at work usually don’t want to advertise the fact. I know where the mute button is on my computer, I can get to it fast, and I have my own office, but other’s aren’t so lucky.
I know that Warren Ellis occasionally throws out a “currently listening” post with some linked MP3 files.
There were several services of that type in the late 90s early 2000s, but the RIAA had them all shutdown with threats of legal action because the majority of them, like the majority of the YouTube content today, grossly violated copyrights.
The YouTube revolution happened too quickly for the MPAA and tv studios to keep up, but back then things moved more slowly and the RIAA was winning its many rounds against Napster. Its final victory against Napster pretty much sealed the idea of anybody being a public repository of users’ sound files, since that’s effectively what the original Napster service was.
Part of what made YouTube work is how it uses built-in plugins (Shockwave) rather than requiring the user to install a new tool, with all the incompatibilities attached to it.
There were some attempts at having a “bg-sound” tag as well, but those failed again for lack of support and standards.
So between the threat of RIAA action, the lack of standards back when the ideas were first being proposed, and the lack of easy storage (those are still big files that would blow anybody’s bandwidth limits if abused), the idea has simply faded away.
MySpace has got it, but they’re not sharing their technology as a service one can import into other pages – they just want you to go visit them and their ugly pages.
…music that starts playing when you access that post.
ARRRRRGGGGGHHHH!!!!
Anything that starts playing, honking, flashing, spinning, or scrolling without me explicitly requesting that it do so is an abomination.
But I wouldn’t want you to think that I felt strongly about it … 
Abomination might be too strong … might.
Music that plays if I decide I want to listen to it, okay.
Some people use sites like Odeo to embed music. Metafilter music is another example. All are based on the same principle as youtube – small embedded flash players, of which there are probably a dozen.
The problem with your suggestion is that people typically like their audio and their text separate. I’ve got my own music collection, and if I want to hear spoken words, I’ll find a podcast.
Myspace pages kinda work how you describe, but it’s not so much used for blogs proper. Though it can be.
As Coin notes, MySpace offers this capability to users using an embedded player based on Flash, and yes, it’s one of the many annoying features of MySpace that tend to make me stay away. Way back in the day (90s-era web) there was a precursor, where people would add MIDI files to their pages to autoplay.
Either is likely to annoy people more than please. I often surf the web while listening to podcasts and wouldn’t want my web browser to jump in and interrupt me. Luckily, Windows Vista now has per-program volume options so that’s way easier to manage.
In summary, though, not an idea I like. Sorry.
There’s a Firefox add-on that stops autoplay; it’s called Stop Autoplay. It doesn’t seem to work for MySpace, though, but there’s a Greasemonkey (best add-on ever IMNTHO) script for those.
I’ve run across a few sites that do that. I don’t go there any more. I am reading this from work.
No auto-start, but embedding a playable audio button is quite easy with Odeo. Here’s an example (but in the case of my blog I usually make audio a stand-alone post): “Good night to be.”
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