March 08, 2006

Curious George: Flash mp3 Player I am looking for a simple, clean, flash-based mp3 player to profile some of my music on my website.

Most of the stuff available is over-produced and take up a lot of webspace (in terms of layout). I am looking for something small and sleek. I checked out CoffeeCup but all the designs were too tacky. This site also had a fair amount of players. But nothing that is inconspicuous and small enough to be included on each page. Ideas? Sources? Happy Wednesday!

  • I assume that you mean besides those at http://www.google.com/search?q=Flash+mp3+Player?
  • I believe T AL Z is looking specifically for recommendations. T, I don't know from Flash, but if lean is what you want, you might be better off just embedding a basic mp3 player and then rolling your own interface.
  • Music Player. Aurgasm runs it to see it in action. Any mp3 blog worth it's salt should, imo, run it as well. It's awesome.
  • As an aside: please don't.
  • I believe you are looking for Wimpy.
  • T A L Z, I would consider avoiding an embedded mp3 player. Surely, everyone in the market for mp3s already has an mp3 player installed. Provide an mp3 link for each song if you like, and consider running a shoutcast server (or other kind of standardized streaming mp3 protocol) to provide an option to visitors that do want to listen right away. Remember, a lot of people can't listen to music at work (especially those in a cubicle environment where headphones aren't allowed). If you choose to embed a player in each page - please don't force the player to begin the music automatically.
  • I would concur, though I hesitated to add that to my answer, as it's borderline out of bounds for the question. But I suppose it does go to questions of design choices. Anytime I visit a website that automatically starts playing embedded video and audio, I am overcome with an insurmountable urge to hit the "back" button.
  • Forgive me if I've strayed into "design nazi" territory, that was not my intention.
  • And a godwin in under 10! (I agree about the non-embedification on behalf of many of us pasty-faced cubicle inhabitants.)
  • And the people who can listen to music on their computer do listen to music, and they really hate pages that plays audio overlapping their music, and that don't visit those pages often, because if I wanted to listen to that, I'd already be listening to it. RAR!
  • I was thinking some of these thoughts. It indeed may be overkill to have it embedded and perhaps I will stick with just the download option...I can see how it could be annoying and unattractive to visitors. Thanks for making me rethink this design issue. I think the bells and whistles that my high school teacher always warned me about were taking over.
  • i use xspf on my netlabel, it's free, open source, and super light. may look boring to some people, but it fits on any page inconspicuously.
  • T AL Z, Options are good. Providing a download link is preferrable to many people for various reasons. Embedding a player isn't necessarily bad in my book, as long as a download link is available and the player doesn't start automatically.