Best option for streaming music

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Nay
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Best option for streaming music

Post by Nay »

Hello there all,

My mate is an artist (singer-songwriter) in the local area and I'm designing a (probably relatively simplistic, as far as CMS goes anyway) site for him. I'm having trouble though, deciding on what to do about streaming music from the site in so far as optimizing bandwidth. Since the act is still quite small, I'm not going to expect a large amount of traffic but I'm just wondering anyway.

One thing I thought of was streaming from his myspace player, I don't know if that's legal (well, it is his own music) or even possible (myspace to an external site?) I could use a Flash player, or reduce the bit rate of the songs and just settle for the old <embed tag? Host it music off a different server (Shoutcast?) Or what other (good) options are available?

The web sure has changed since I last did a serious web site design/programming. Think, before youtube (2005).

Thanks,

Nay
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pickle
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Re: Best option for streaming music

Post by pickle »

Is the idea to have a small player in one corner of the site that his music plays through? If you want to be really progressive, use the new HTML5 controls. For people without an HTML5 capable browser, I'd recommend using a Flash player. I've seen this one in a few places: http://musicplayer.sourceforge.net/
Real programmers don't comment their code. If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand.
Nay
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Re: Best option for streaming music

Post by Nay »

Thanks, pickle. It doesn't have to be the latest and the greatest, I might've lost my original question somewhere in that post with all the rambling. I mean, what is the best way to stream music in terms of bandwidth optimization?

Thanks,

Nay
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pickle
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Re: Best option for streaming music

Post by pickle »

The less data the better. MIDI is probably the smallest, but the sound quality is reminiscent of 80's video games. Mono for sure - stereo isn't necessary. I'd say you can cut the bitrate down < 96kbps without too much trouble (sure it won't sound CD quality - but people aren't expecting that from a sound player in the corner of a website. Yet.)
Real programmers don't comment their code. If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand.
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