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Web people: what's the best way to stream MP3s?

M

Macette

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 5, 2002
472
0
Melbourne
Some people say Flash, some people say Quicktime... I'm sure there are many other options, too.

What do you guys think? I'm making a site at the moment for a composer, and he needs his tracks online. What's the best way to do it? What programs / server technology / stuff do I need?

It's important to him that people using dial-up can have access too - so I've got some goodly compressed MP3 files to work with... where do i take them now?

Any help would be much appreciated; I really want to get this right!
 
Chances are more people have the Flash plugin than Quicktime. Most browsers have some version of Flash included from the start. It's usually a bad idea to have your client's visitors download something to view his site, at least in my experience. I suggest you have both highly compressed MP3's for dial up visitors and 128kbps or 160kbps for those with broadband. That way, a larger audience can still hear and be exposed to his music and the visitors with a broadband connection will get more enjoyment out of the music, provided it's in your client's visitor's taste.

I also suggest you not have any tracks on pages not specially for listening to music (e.g. background music on a "contacts" page). This would apply more to dial up users since it would take forever for the page to load no matter how compressed each track is. For his broadband visitors, it shouldn't be a problem as far as load times is concerned. I personally find it annoying when I already have music playing, the TV on, or I'm up late and hear music unexceptionally in a quite room. It's up to him of course.

As for how to do it in Flash I simply do not know. I haven't took the time to learn Flash yet. You could try to figure it out within the time you quoted this person for by following tutorials on the web but I would rather like to see you simply tell him "I'm not experienced in this area..." or something to that effect. Displaying such honesty is usually appreciated by most people and once this person does have something you can do, you run a good chance of him coming back to you or suggesting you to others.

If depends really, if you honestly think you can do it, then by all means go for it. I wish you luck and hope my rambling helps you somewhat.

[Edit: Noticed you said this person was a "he"]
 
thanks for that... but it's more the 'how' i'm after! I've got the basic moves down for quicktime and flash, but was hoping somebody had seen something that worked particularly well for this kind of thing.

I've already told him I haven't got the perfect solution for this part of the site, and he's told me to take my time and figure it out - a luxury in this kind of work!
 
I sugest you to do it in Flash.

I have a friend with an espectacular site made in Flash, you can write him and ask him. He has some tutoriasl about it.

Go to www.superhere.net

He actually made it work as a streaming radio station. It is way more sofisticated of what you really need but is gonna help.
 
that's an awesome site mymemory - thanks for directing me to it. it's really slick. going to be too complex for this current job, but definitely something to learn for the future!
 
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