Looking for web MP3 player which plays seamlessly across links

Mr. Flibble

I'm looking for an MP3 player for my web site which will continue to play as people navigate across the site. I saw one one claiming to do this (without frames) but I can't find the link again. Does anyone know something that will do this?

Malice

I had come across this before: XSPF Music Player but it requires Flash so I don't know if it's the same thing you found. Also, it doesn't answer your query but using music on a website available to the general public is very bad practice.

Kudos

malice_ wrote:

I had come across this before: XSPF Music Player but it requires Flash so I don't know if it's the same thing you found. Also, it doesn't answer your query but using music on a website available to the general public is very bad practice.

Flash is about the only reasonable thing you can use for playing mp3s on a website (java is a load of cock). That player doesn't play seamlessly across pages unless you use a popup, which won't happen automatically because most browsers will block it as spam otherwise.

Musicians websites are a perfect example where using music on a website is not bad practice.

Mr. Flibble

malice_ wrote:

I had come across this before: XSPF Music Player but it requires Flash so I don't know if it's the same thing you found. Also, it doesn't answer your query but using music on a website available to the general public is very bad practice.

Myspace did alright out of it.

I'm actually using that XSPF one at the moment, but it doesn't offer any way to continue as people move from page to page.

It does exist somewhere tho! Any other takers?

Kudos

Mr. Flibble wrote:

Myspace did alright out of it.

I'm actually using that XSPF one at the moment, but it doesn't offer any way to continue as people move from page to page.

It does exist somewhere tho! Any other takers?

By all means keep looking, I think you'll find that as a stand-alone technology it does not exist. Whatever happens you have to keep the flash player open in the given page. The only way this will happen is if you wrap your window in a frame or if you use AJAX for to change the page (bad idea if you ask me, just imagine what google will make of it [unless it's on a microsite]).

Mr. Flibble

Yeah, I'd say its not stand alone. Perhaps javascript which timemarks where you at in a song and tells a DB, then the player looks this up when each page loads. The song would be interrupted but would continue from where it left off.

Malice

Mr. Flibble wrote:

Myspace did alright out of it.

True, MySpace and Bebo did do well with embedded music. Typically though, the user knows what to expect when they visit those sites and hopefully the sound doesn't start until the user clicks the play button.

I meant that sound is a terrible idea if it just suddenly blares out of your speakers without warning. People have different tastes in music. You might think that your site is cool if the first thing the user gets is a blast of Hawaiian Nose Flute but your users probably won't. There are plenty of other issues to consider such as copyright, volume and download time but I've probably already gone off-topic enough.

To go back on topic, have you checked your browser history? If you visited the site recently it might still be there.

Kudos

Mr. Flibble wrote:

Yeah, I'd say its not stand alone. Perhaps javascript which timemarks where you at in a song and tells a DB, then the player looks this up when each page loads. The song would be interrupted but would continue from where it left off.

You could hook into all the links on the page and run a javascript function that marks where they are in your playlist onclick, no need for a db, just cookie it. It'd take a lot of work to get mp3 streaming working so that it'll start at the same timestamp, I've done it with video (like the google videos skipping function) but i'm not entirely sure how well it would work with mp3s.

Mr. Flibble

Found it. Its a modification of XSPF to use cookies to save where the song left off. http://www.boutell.com/xspf/