The song preview from emusic is something that will more likely work as a URL.
Brighternow or one of the other people who keep putting those song samples up as a post response should be able to tell you what to do. Some sort of M3U code. Maybe just [M3U] [/M3U]?
Jonahpwl, thanks for all the guidance. I tried the bandcamp thing first - the embedded player shows up on preview in firefox but in Chrome all I get is a white space where it should be. Same goes for the archive player. But Chrome has been doing weird stuff with other sites too lately for me.
I don't like that the bandcamp player forces you to include the album art - makes it harder to integrate with your existing design for the post.
That post has a Bandcamp player, a Soundcloud player, and a Reverbnation player. If you can see all of those in Chrome, then there's no reason not to use any of those in your post.
If you can't see all those players with Chrome, then I have some fixing to do on my site perhaps.
Go into your post that you can't see the player in Chrome. Go onto the HTML side and look at your player code.
Do you see something like this near the top of your player code...?
<param name="movie" value="mariocoded.swf" />
If yes, then first copy it to your clipboard, then delete it from the post. If that fixes your problem, then done.
If not, copy that line back in and I'll give you another suggestion.
Apparently Chrome modifies certain code for embedded players. I think if you used Firefox to create your posts, you wouldn't be running into this problem.
About the Bandcamp artwork and formatting... try this...
After you hit the Share/Embed button, then select "Other" from the drop-down menu, you are then given the option to format your audio player. I think if you choose "Short" (at the very bottom of the sizing options), that might give you a result closer to your preference.
Go ahead and delete that "class= etc etc etc" code that Chrome is adding to your stuff and see if that doesn't fix the problem.
I've been reading up on it, and apparently there are reports of Chrome adding all types of useless/detrimental language to code of embedded objects. Apparently it's because Chrome reads what's there, misinterprets what it sees and because it thinks it sees something other than what was intended, finds flaws in it (based on its misinterpretation) and adds extra code to "fix" it. With embedded audio players, it seems the common Chrome addition has to do with an extra layer of "object" coding, which when doubled up on the back of the existing language, confuses Chrome which then just ignores the whole damn thing ala you can't see your player even though you know it's there.
Solved. There is an option in Chrome to "enable phishing and malware protection". Turn that off and the players all appear. Well, solved in the sense that I can make them show if I don;t mind turning off some protection. Is there any way of doing the code that might make the players appear non-hostile?
And what that doesn't quite explain is why all the players on your blog appeared to me, but not the ones on my preview. Both included bandcamp players in the same format.
That second part is easier to answer than the first.
Hitting the Preview button is an "Action" (for lack of a better word), whereas just seeing the browser and hitting the play button is just a "View". That Preview is going to create a new tab/window on your screen (or overwrite the current one) and your security is going to view that new tab and all the code on it in a different light than simply going to my totally awesome blog and checking the embedded audio players out.
As to the first part... I'm working on that now. I'm basically trying to do the same thing with Myspace players, because my system sure as hell don't like those when I try to embed them and hit a Preview button.
Ah, that makes sense. So presumably that also means that once the page is actually posted on the blog and I just visit it, all the players will show correctly.
BTW, I downloaded two of the tracks on that page from your blog after listening to them on the players.
I can clear up one thing. Authors were restricted in the HTML they could use. I've given them the unfiltered_html capability so they can embed to their heart's content. I don't know if that will do anything for Germanprof's preview since he already had that capability. It may be a weirdness of the preview.
In other news, I have a tweak from the theme developer that should fix the problem with long titles. I'll get it done today.
My preview issue is unchanged, it's a Chrome security settings issue - but it doesn't matter provided it's only a preview issue - it works in preview in Firefox.
jonahpwll, in your Soundcloud instructions above, the third instruction says:
"3. It'll open a box for you with lots of social media buttons. In the bottom half of that box, you'll see something that says "Embed", and just to the right of it "Edit Your Widget". Hit the "Edit Your Widget" button."
I am not seeing that. I want to embed - when I click on the "Share" button below the album art thumbnail I do indeed get a popup with social media buttons, but in the bottom half it just says "Get the link" to copy the url - I do not see an "Embed" button at all. Tried in two browsers.
My other option is to embed it from youtube - but what do we think about linking youtube videos that are ones where users have ripped a track and posted it with still pictures, rather than being from the band or label? Is that too close to supporting copyright infringement?
Yeah, I've noticed that in one other instance, too. All I can say is to search around on soundcloud for other instances of the track and use that instead. I'm able to pull up your song in a separate playlist, but I'm not sure yet how to break it out. I'm pretty sure that when I take a closer look that I can modify the playlist ID with the individual song ID and get it to work.
But, yeah, it appears that some tracks don't have an Embed option.
Go ahead and do the youtube thing. When you embed, just change the height from "315" to "35" and it'll take out everything except the playstrip, including any external links language.
While I prefer not to use a youtube video that links to a pirate site, I feel like the goals of music discovery and getting the word out exceed any problems with using a "sketchy" youtube video. It's not like MiG is doing it for the money, y'know?
So this is interesting. I was using Soundcloud to imbed some players (thinks jonah!) when I went to imbed a Lykke Li track. The track is all over Soundcloud but it appears that editing the player is disabled and you can only drop it immediately into Facebook, Twitter, etc. Accordingly that track is not on my post.
I don't know that we have a conclusive list of where to look for embedded audio, but here's where I go (and pretty much look in this order):
-Bandcamp
-Soundcloud
-Reverbnation
-Grooveshark
-Youtube
-Artist site (rare to find anything)
-Label site (rare to find anything)
-Myspace (sketchy to use; I don't even like to link there sometimes, much less embed)
Yes, if you go e.g. here http://www.junodownload.com/products/1881683-02.htm and click "Get Player" on the player it gives you embed code. It seems to have kind of a different system - lets you choose your 30 second sample from anywhere in the track. So I think in the end it's only a sample player.
Do we have some coders here? I'm trying to creates some custom taxonomies on my site and I'm running into problems. I feel like I've got a good handle on where it's supposed to go, an okay handle on what exactly the language means, but I'm not so sure I've got all my i's dotted.
What I'm trying to do is have an additional organizing level for my Tags. Let's call these new organizers Parent Tags, for lack of a better word. My four Parent Tags will be called Musicians, Labels, Sounds, and Scenes. I can't use the Categories for this because I have them tied up with something else.
Huh, let me stop there for a moment. I wonder if all I really need to do is simply switch my Categories and Tags and then skip all the custom taxonomies. Let me think about this.
But, still, if anyone thinks they might be able to peruse about seven lines of code that I need to stick into my themes_php, that would be helpful. Even if I don't use it, I'd definitely learn something.
1. Soundcloud players: I discovered recently that iPads and iPhones don't support Flash media language. As a result, certain embedded players that rely on Flash don't display on the Pad or Phone. For Soundcloud, there's a way around that. They have a tab option called HTML5. It's right next to the embed tab that we currently use. For instance...
-Go to the player on the soundcloud site and hit "Share" (same as before).
-Go to "Edit Your Widget" in the bottom right hand corner of the pop-up window (optional before; mandatory now)
-Select the HTML5 tab.
-If you want to make the box smaller, uncheck the "Show Artwork" box.
-Copy the embed code (begins with "<frame" language).
It's gonna put a different looking player than before. I've been sizing it down to 90% on the length and "85" on the height. That way I get some of the play bar graphic, so readers are able to get a sense of how long the song has played and will play. But that's really up to each of you how you want to handle it. As before, you don't have to worry about specific measurements if you just click and drag the box and resize it in the Visual editor.
Bandcamp doesn't have this problem. Reverbnation DOES have the problem, but I haven't yet investigated a workaround yet.
Also, MiG might not want to not use Grooveshark anymore. Aside from loading issues and broken links, it may have some bad rep as a copyright violator. I've only begun looking into it, so if anyone has more knowledge of Grooveshark (who I only discovered like a month ago), then please add in.
I'm working on a draft and included a grooveshark audio embed, so somebody let me know if I need to take it out. (If so, I'll have to just not not have an audio sample - seems like most every artist I write about is not on bandcamp or reverbnation.)
Am I the only one having trouble saving drafts lately? Last night I couldn't save and lost quite a bit. Tonight I successfully saved once and when I hit the 'save' button again, it just keeps going to preview. I had to just exit and lose my latest changes.
(@kez, I've had no issues with drafts)
A question about images. I have a hi-res jpg publicity shot of Sebastian Plano to accompany the interview. It's 12MB. Any suggestion as to the best options for formatting it for the blog? With the software I'm using (which is turning out to be less good than I thought, I'm about to try another option) converting it to a PNG gets it down to 4MB or so, which still seems kind of large, but retains quality; with current software, reducing it to a smaller jpg makes it small (74kb) but also visibly grainy. Will try some more options, but any thoughts on ideal format? And if the file is large bu the blog post specifies it displaying at a smaller size, does the full size of the file then still have to load for the user when they access the page?
Comments
Brighternow or one of the other people who keep putting those song samples up as a post response should be able to tell you what to do. Some sort of M3U code. Maybe just [M3U] [/M3U]?
I don't like that the bandcamp player forces you to include the album art - makes it harder to integrate with your existing design for the post.
Go to his post on my site using Chrome...
http://www.birdistheworm.com/?p=752
That post has a Bandcamp player, a Soundcloud player, and a Reverbnation player. If you can see all of those in Chrome, then there's no reason not to use any of those in your post.
If you can't see all those players with Chrome, then I have some fixing to do on my site perhaps.
Go into your post that you can't see the player in Chrome. Go onto the HTML side and look at your player code.
Do you see something like this near the top of your player code...?
<param name="movie" value="mariocoded.swf" />
If yes, then first copy it to your clipboard, then delete it from the post. If that fixes your problem, then done.
If not, copy that line back in and I'll give you another suggestion.
Apparently Chrome modifies certain code for embedded players. I think if you used Firefox to create your posts, you wouldn't be running into this problem.
About the Bandcamp artwork and formatting... try this...
After you hit the Share/Embed button, then select "Other" from the drop-down menu, you are then given the option to format your audio player. I think if you choose "Short" (at the very bottom of the sizing options), that might give you a result closer to your preference.
Cheers.
<iframe width="46" height="23" style="position: relative; display: block; width: 46px; height: 23px;" src="http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/v=2/track=2765247530/size=short/bgcol=FFFFFF/linkcol=4285BB/" allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0"><a href="http://futuresequence.bandcamp.com/track/occident-express" class="external external_icon">Occident Express by Hybernation</a></iframe></p>
But what I have in the html editor view is this:
<iframe width="46" height="23" style="position: relative; display: block; width: 46px; height: 23px;" src="http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/v=2/track=2765247530/size=short/bgcol=FFFFFF/linkcol=4285BB/" allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0"><a href="http://futuresequence.bandcamp.com/track/occident-express">Occident Express by Hybernation</a></iframe>
so there's an added
class="external external_icon"
(I also loaded the page in preview in Chrome and went to page source
I've been reading up on it, and apparently there are reports of Chrome adding all types of useless/detrimental language to code of embedded objects. Apparently it's because Chrome reads what's there, misinterprets what it sees and because it thinks it sees something other than what was intended, finds flaws in it (based on its misinterpretation) and adds extra code to "fix" it. With embedded audio players, it seems the common Chrome addition has to do with an extra layer of "object" coding, which when doubled up on the back of the existing language, confuses Chrome which then just ignores the whole damn thing ala you can't see your player even though you know it's there.
And what that doesn't quite explain is why all the players on your blog appeared to me, but not the ones on my preview. Both included bandcamp players in the same format.
That second part is easier to answer than the first.
Hitting the Preview button is an "Action" (for lack of a better word), whereas just seeing the browser and hitting the play button is just a "View". That Preview is going to create a new tab/window on your screen (or overwrite the current one) and your security is going to view that new tab and all the code on it in a different light than simply going to my totally awesome blog and checking the embedded audio players out.
As to the first part... I'm working on that now. I'm basically trying to do the same thing with Myspace players, because my system sure as hell don't like those when I try to embed them and hit a Preview button.
BTW, I downloaded two of the tracks on that page from your blog after listening to them on the players.
In other news, I have a tweak from the theme developer that should fix the problem with long titles. I'll get it done today.
"3. It'll open a box for you with lots of social media buttons. In the bottom half of that box, you'll see something that says "Embed", and just to the right of it "Edit Your Widget". Hit the "Edit Your Widget" button."
I am not seeing that. I want to embed - when I click on the "Share" button below the album art thumbnail I do indeed get a popup with social media buttons, but in the bottom half it just says "Get the link" to copy the url - I do not see an "Embed" button at all. Tried in two browsers.
My other option is to embed it from youtube - but what do we think about linking youtube videos that are ones where users have ripped a track and posted it with still pictures, rather than being from the band or label? Is that too close to supporting copyright infringement?
But, yeah, it appears that some tracks don't have an Embed option.
Go ahead and do the youtube thing. When you embed, just change the height from "315" to "35" and it'll take out everything except the playstrip, including any external links language.
While I prefer not to use a youtube video that links to a pirate site, I feel like the goals of music discovery and getting the word out exceed any problems with using a "sketchy" youtube video. It's not like MiG is doing it for the money, y'know?
Craig
-Bandcamp
-Soundcloud
-Reverbnation
-Grooveshark
-Youtube
-Artist site (rare to find anything)
-Label site (rare to find anything)
-Myspace (sketchy to use; I don't even like to link there sometimes, much less embed)
I think that covers most of my usual suspects.
Any additions?
What I'm trying to do is have an additional organizing level for my Tags. Let's call these new organizers Parent Tags, for lack of a better word. My four Parent Tags will be called Musicians, Labels, Sounds, and Scenes. I can't use the Categories for this because I have them tied up with something else.
Huh, let me stop there for a moment. I wonder if all I really need to do is simply switch my Categories and Tags and then skip all the custom taxonomies. Let me think about this.
But, still, if anyone thinks they might be able to peruse about seven lines of code that I need to stick into my themes_php, that would be helpful. Even if I don't use it, I'd definitely learn something.
Cheers.
1. Soundcloud players: I discovered recently that iPads and iPhones don't support Flash media language. As a result, certain embedded players that rely on Flash don't display on the Pad or Phone. For Soundcloud, there's a way around that. They have a tab option called HTML5. It's right next to the embed tab that we currently use. For instance...
-Go to the player on the soundcloud site and hit "Share" (same as before).
-Go to "Edit Your Widget" in the bottom right hand corner of the pop-up window (optional before; mandatory now)
-Select the HTML5 tab.
-If you want to make the box smaller, uncheck the "Show Artwork" box.
-Copy the embed code (begins with "<frame" language).
It's gonna put a different looking player than before. I've been sizing it down to 90% on the length and "85" on the height. That way I get some of the play bar graphic, so readers are able to get a sense of how long the song has played and will play. But that's really up to each of you how you want to handle it. As before, you don't have to worry about specific measurements if you just click and drag the box and resize it in the Visual editor.
Bandcamp doesn't have this problem. Reverbnation DOES have the problem, but I haven't yet investigated a workaround yet.
Also, MiG might not want to not use Grooveshark anymore. Aside from loading issues and broken links, it may have some bad rep as a copyright violator. I've only begun looking into it, so if anyone has more knowledge of Grooveshark (who I only discovered like a month ago), then please add in.
A question about images. I have a hi-res jpg publicity shot of Sebastian Plano to accompany the interview. It's 12MB. Any suggestion as to the best options for formatting it for the blog? With the software I'm using (which is turning out to be less good than I thought, I'm about to try another option) converting it to a PNG gets it down to 4MB or so, which still seems kind of large, but retains quality; with current software, reducing it to a smaller jpg makes it small (74kb) but also visibly grainy. Will try some more options, but any thoughts on ideal format? And if the file is large bu the blog post specifies it displaying at a smaller size, does the full size of the file then still have to load for the user when they access the page?