People listen to the radio for entertainment, usually to listen to the latest music or to their favorite radio program. In between the program, advertisements on products and services are being played.
It is then that the benefits of using music on websites were discovered.
However, there had been a problem with illegal music download in which artists, musicians and record companies have lost millions of revenues.
After that, internet radio streaming became popular. Radio streaming does not allow the music files to be downloaded.
How can we use audio stream for our sites?
First, is to stream a radio program from your site or blog. You can find free affiliate programs that allow you to stream their radio content from your site.
This means that your site will have new audio content every time it is visited. What’s even great is that the content is being updated even without much effort from you.
In this case, what you needed to do is to signup with an Internet radio station and have the link embedded on your blog or website.
Another way is to stream mp3s. To do this, you just need to upload your mp3files on a server and add the files’ links to the page. When the link is clicked, the browser opens a media player window and plays a file. However, since the file is in mp3 format, it may also be downloaded.
A third way to add audio to you blog or website is to stream music through organizing playlists. Playlists are m3u files, which if downloaded, will not play music if offline.
Here is a short instruction on how to do it.
- Save your mp3 or wma file on the server. You may skip this step if you know that the file exists on another server and know the link to that file. Make sure that the link has a .mp3 or .wma extension.
- Open your text editor and type the path to the file. Include the http:// and the file extension. Repeat this step until you have included all the links to the files that you would like to be included in the playlist.
- Save the playlist with a .m3u extension.
- Upload the m3u file on the directory where the music files are hosted or to your server.
- Open your html editor and embed the link to the m3u file. Through this, you can also set if you want to have the playlist to autoplay if someone visits your site of if you want your visitor to control playing the music. You can also set the volume level.
After the code is embedded on the html file, and whenever your site is visited, the songs in the playlist will be buffered, streamed and played one after another. If your playlist has several songs, the user can skip forward or go back a song in the playlist using the media player controls.
Doing this setup works for many website owners. Through this you can customize the type of music being played on your site. You can even play recordings related to your product to boost product awareness.
It requires knowledge of html to be done. But if it will be the best way to increase traffic to your site, why not request assistance from programmers. After all, having audio on a website is a proven way to increase sales.