Adding Myspace Music.
Many like the idea of adding background music. However, most shy away because of concerns about slow loading pages and large file sizes. There are many different ways to add background music to your site and some of them don't require large files to achieve professional results.
Let's examine all the different ways to add background music to your site and rate them to find the best solution for you.
MIDI Files.
MIDI files are very small because they actually use your sound card's built-in instruments to create the sounds. The problem is most sound cards don't come with any decent sounds. Besides, no two sound cards sound alike. Therefore the results are very unpredictable. music downloads
MIDI files usually sound like they're coming from one of those cheap Casio keyboards. Using MIDI for background music is very likely to make your site seem amateurish. Want to know how to do it anyway? Just add the
<embed src=xyz.mid autostart=true>
line to your site. (Replace xyz with the name of the MIDI file you want to use!) The Autostart command will play the file automatically when the page is loaded. music downloads
PROS; Very small file size, easy to implement
CONS: Unpredictable results, amateurish sounds
WAV Files.
Using the WAV file format allows you to add professional sounding recordings to your site but the problem is even if you use a low quality setting like 11k/8bit, the file sizes are still very large and it will take a long time for your music to load. And slow loading pages are the worst for a website. Implementing a WAV file on a web page is easy. Just add the line
<embed src=xyz.wav autostart=true>
to your page's HTML code. There's an additional command to loop the WAV file but WAV files do not loop cleanly with the embed command.
PROS: Many Quality Levels, Easy to implement
CONS: Large File Sizes, WAV Files do not loop
MP3 Files.
MP3 files are highly compressed and don't take very long to load but the problem is MP3s need to bring up an external player program and which in some cases takes your visitors away from your site altogether. Also, MP3 files don't loop cleanly.
PROS: Smaller File Sizes, Good Quality Possible
CONS: Needs external player software, not loopable
Flash.
If you own a program for creating Flash files, you will have lots of flexibility in adding sound to your site. Flash lets you import WAV as well as MP3 Files and then creates quite small files from these sounds. They load automatically on your website.
Set the quality level. This lets you decide how large you want the Flash file to be. Flash also allows you to loop short pieces of sound to create very small files for 'continuous' background music. But please note, only imported WAV files are looped in Flash. MP3 files do not loop cleanly.
PROS: Great Flexibility, Small File Sizes, expecially when looping sounds
CONS: You need to buy expensive Flash software to create Flash Files
Pre-Made Flash Loops.
There are pre-built Flash Music Loops. These files are professionally recorded, loop almost indefinitely and most of these Flash Music Loops are only about 20k in size so they load almost instantly.
Using pre-built Flash files is easy. Simply upload the "xyz.swf" Flash file to your server and add a few lines from the corresponding "xyz.html" file to your web page and presto...instant professional sounding background music.
PROS: Extremely small file size, professional quality music
CONS: Cost
Conclusion.
As you can see there are many different ways to add background music to your web pages. With the right format, you don't have to worry about slow loading web pages.
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