[thelist] mp3 player for website?

David Kaufman david at gigawatt.com
Thu Nov 13 21:18:37 CST 2008


Hi Erika,

"Erika" <ekm at seastorm.com> wrote:
> Client would like a nice-looking, user-friendly mp3 player to integrate
> into a website, to play her songs without allowing them to be downloaded.

I was just researching the same thing for a client recently.  Their 
requirements were:

1. a bit more stringent than yours: they wanted a no-cost player, not a 
low-cost player, and
2. a bit less stringent than yours: they didn't care to hide, stream or 
otherwise obfuscate the source .mp3 file to prevent someone from just 
downloading it

I ended up recommending http://musicplayer.sourceforge.net/ which comes in 
three sizes: large, small and really small.

The examples on that page never play for me.  They probably can't afford 
the bandwidth. Here is a test page I setup to demo the small, and really 
small versions to our client:

small: http://dkaufman.erlbaum.net/flash-mp3/xspf_player_slim/ -- I dig 
this one cuz it looks like WinAmp minimized :-)

button player: http://dkaufman.erlbaum.net/flash-mp3/button_player/ -- just 
a play button

Being open source, the looks and feels are completely customizable.  If, 
that is, you have, and know, flash and can hack the .as and/or .fla source 
files you see there.

There is also a really sweeeet project here 
http://www.schillmania.com/projects/soundmanager2/
to develop an *invisible* flash mp3 player that can be completely scripted 
using Javascript.  Of course its only sweet if you're an extremely 
motivated JavaScript programmer :-)


> I'm still interested in good, low-cost, or free mp3 players.
> [...] Thoughts on Quicktime streaming?  I use Dreamhost.

I'd strongly suggest using a low-cost dedicated streaming media service 
like:

1. http://streamguys.com/ <- client uses them
2. http://playstream.com/ <- different client uses them, bought by Akamai, 
or
3. http://vidavee.com/ <- yet another client uses them, bought by Vignette

Dunno how cheap #3 is, after recently being acquired (and no longer 
displaying pricing)

If these guys stream your audio (or video) it not only guarantees that 
sufficient bandwidth will be available (so your player doesn't die like the 
sourceforge site above) but streaming servers using rstp:// links (as 
opposed to "bare" .mp3 URL's) also make it reasonably difficult for the 
average user to dig up the URL to the source file and download it.

hth,

-dave









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