How Can I Add Audio Streaming To My Website?
When starting a website, every rookie web designer
has questions about how to make their site better.
Here, we take a look at some of the key questions surrounding streaming…
What is streaming?
Mp3, mp4 – in fact, any kind of audio file you may have,
can be made available to your visitors before the file has fully downloaded.
Think of it as reading a letter while it is still being written, or watching a play unfold.
Why streaming?
The internet is an impatient place, full of competition for your traffic’s valuable time.
The main advantage of streaming over downloading to a hard drive,
is that visitors can listen to your audio content very quickly.
It will still be dependent on their connection speed,
but not to the same degree as downloading an entire file.*
The other main issue is one of copyright. If you don’t have streaming set up,
your visitor will have to download the entire file.
Quite apart from the fact that this may be annoying to them,
there are now copies of your material on other people’s hard drives-
not ideal if you are trying to monetize your content.
Is it difficult to set up?
Not at all. Setting up streaming for your website is a simple matter
of writing a text file with a link pointing to the mp3 you wish to stream.
Once saved as a .m3u, the file joins the link on your website with the audio file.
All the support for the actual streaming is already on your visitors computer.
How do I configure the audio files?
Let’s take an example. Imagine you have a file called ‘mellotron.mp3’,
saved in a folder entitled ‘sounds’, which is in a website folder called
‘ericspsych’, saved on the C drive.
The file path, uploaded to your website in the usual manner, would be
C:ericspsych/sounds/mellotron.mp3.
Now we must create the .m3u to link our rockin’ mellotron track to the link
on your website. Using notepad (or whatever software you prefer) type your file
path with web address and the name of the mp3, as so:
http://www.ericspsych.co.uk/sounds/mellotron.mp3.
Next up, save the file as C:ericspsychsoundsmellotron.m3u and upload it to your site.
Then add the link pointing to the .m3u (NOT the mp3) to your website
(http://www.ericspsych.co.uk/sounds/mellotron.m3u).
Now when someone clicks your link, the m3u file kicks the media player
into action and the mp3 starts to stream.To create multiple .m4u files,
simply repeat the above steps with new mp3s and filepaths.
Can I create continuous streaming?
If you want mp3s to stream concurrently, just create a .m3u as usual,
but list the various mp3 file paths under each other. *For some of the quickest,
least restricted internet access on the market, have a look at Sky's best broadband deals.
