Music
Besides designing Web sites, I am an active musician. I studied Guitar (music and guitar theory, and specialised in studio playing) for 3 years in London, at the Guitar Institute. I play several instruments and I write songs and pieces of music on my studio for a couple of different projects. One of these projects involve creating a company that offers music for the media world, such as filming and advertising of any kind. On the other hand, I have been writing songs and music for many years. I have my own Digital studio. If you need music for your Web sites, or any other project at all, please do not hesitate to contact me.
On this page, you can listen to some music inserted in different ways. Creating a link, text or image, that refers directly to the file itself and that will open the file with the default media player for that file in the visitors computer. I use Quicktime. I find it to be quite versatile as it can play several sound and video file formats across all browsers. Compressing the sound is important too, and mp3 seems to be the most popular format for the web nowadays. I can convert your music files to mp3 if necessary.
Listen to "Homecoming" medley by Green day (mp3)
You can embed music as a background on your page and it will start playing when the page opens or you can set it to start playing a few seconds after it does. You can accomplish this by using HTML or by using Flash. This method is not advisable since it is considered obtrusive when not irritating or annoying, as the user does not have control over the music, meaning, the user will not be able to stop the music playing unless the page is closed (or the sound of the pc switched off). In any case, in terms of accessibility it is a bad practice. A better way for this would be to provide a link for the users so they can click it if they want to hear that background music. Using Flash you can achieve this. You can also apply sound to buttons.
Another way is by "embedding" the file right onto your page. This way, the player you insert will be visible and a part of the layout, rather than just a link that opens the file. The player has a controller to manage the start, stop, back...and so on. This way is less obtrusive as it does not need to open another new window.
Also, like this, you can set it so you can disable the "right-click" option that displays the "save target as..." for users with "Quicktime Pro" in their computers and so they won't be able to freely download your music...Listen to "Buck Rogers", by Feeder.
Yet another totally different way for Widows systems would be by embedding an Active component into the XHTML. Like this, an audio player is created. Below, you can listen to another of my all time favorites..."Sweet Gene Vincent", by the unique, awesome artist...and sadly missed, Ian Dury.
Depending on what browser the visitor is using, the music will sound on a player embedded on the page or will open a new window. Try opening this page with Explorer and then Firefox, for instance, and you will be able to see the difference with this last approach.
Obviously, you can't control the browsers or the pluginns the users visiting your Web site will have or use, but at least, you can make sure that one way or the other, they will be able to hear your music.