Best Practices on Using Music on Websites

Think before you share your favorite song on your website. When using sound or music there are a few considerations before you embed sound, they are:

1. Have you provided controls to turn it off or turn the music down? Not everyone will want to listen to your music. Some will already be listening to their own music and when yours starts up it will simply be an annoyance.

2. Do you own the rights of the music to play it on your website. Just because you bought the song at iTunes, does not give you the right to play it every time your website pages load. It is very important to read the rights on the music you have. For example on nearly every branded artist’s song you can buy online the license is for personal use. Using music on your website moves it to commercial use. Even using it on your MySpace site is a violation of the artist’s rights and can get you in trouble.

3. How long is the music clip? Does the clip play over and over and for a client who stays on your site two to four minutes does it become fatiguing? Before you add music, have some of your friends and colleagues listen to a four minute version of it, what do they say?

My recommendation is if you add music embed a controller to allow others to turn it off, turn it down, or play it over. Only use music that you have bought with a commercial license on the Web, do not use music clips from your iPod or personal library of branded artists, and of course do not embed music to auto load on your pages.

Music and Video Controls – Don’t Auto Play!

How fast are you with the mouse, just visit some sites that embed music or auto-playing video and you will find out, as you rapidly click around trying to turn off the sound!

It is best when you use video or sound files to be courteous and to allow users to turn it off, turn it down, or even replay it. This is one reason why I do not like embedded background music that has no user controls. Typically a site that plays music onLoad is found to be annoying by most users. Sometimes it is an issue that the reader has their own music on, that they don’t like the music you have selected, that the music starts playing too loud, or even as they really review your site the music plays over and over forcing them to manually turn the sound off. Here’s one for you to check out that is a good example of why you should not have music embedded. It can be fatiguing to listen to the same clip over and over.

My tip for best practice is don’t embed background music in your website! If you do add sound files or videos be courteous and provide playback controls. Make sure to have the play, pause, and repeat buttons and consider not playing the video or sound on page load.