Hi Guys,

Does anyone know what the best way to incorporate a music player on a WordPress site? I need for the user to be able to start/stop and choose songs from a playlist, with the name of the current song displayed. If the client could easily update the playlist through the dashboard, it would be perfect. I'm also concerned about copyright issues. I've been playing with the imeem embeddable widget. It does all those things but it's not very stylable, as far as I can tell. Any ideas?

Hi Anne,

I'd look for a plugin. My brother looked at a few for his site, rivulets.net, but he may be lollygagging making a decision. :)

I used to recommend PodPress, which was primarily a podcasting plugin for WP, which included embeddable MP3 players among lots of other features. Unfortunately, development on this plugin halted for a bit, so I'd look for something else.

I'd love to hear what you decide on - this one looks okay:
http://wordpress.org/...

Here's a search for MP3 players on WP.org:
http://wordpress.org/...

Good luck!

Eric

Thanks, Eric I will look into those. What I'm really trying to do is avoid any copyright problems, which is why I was looking into services like imeem that take care of all the licensing for you. But their embeddable player is branded and doesn't really go with the look of the site I'm working on. I'm not really clear on what the copyright rules are for music on websites. If I purchase an mp3, can I play it on my website if I make it not downloadable?

Hey Anne,

I'm really not sure what the best solution is.

Are you looking to play specific songs/artists?

I know there's some embeddable widgets from last.fm and (I think) Pandora, but I don't think you can select individual songs.

> If I purchase an mp3, can I play it on my website if I make it not downloadable?

I don't think so. You're purchasing the rights to play the music for yourself, but by putting it online, you're 'authorizing' the whole world to hear it without paying.

Sites like last.fm get around this by having royalty agreements with BMI and other music managers.

Honestly, I'd have to google around for more information. I'm really curious to find out more about your application and what you find out. :)

Regarding copyright; I "think" copyright allows you to play up to 30 seconds of a melody. That's how the mash-up artists (or whatever they call themselves) can create entire albums using other artists materials. They never exceed 30 seconds of one tune before blending it into the next tune. It's an interesting affect and allows the untalented to create "music".

You might want to look at allwebco.com - they've got some neat stuff.
In particular: http://allwebcodesign...
and http://allwebcodesign...

Yes, specific songs for specific pages. It's for a restaurant, and they already have licenses from BMI and ASCAP to play music in the restaurant, but, of course, there's a separate license needed to use the songs on the website too. There's even a different (more expensive) license required if you allow the user to select a song from a playlist. Imeem will work, it's just that the look and feel does not at all go with the site I'm working on. Also with the imeem widget... they haven't gotten full rights to all of the songs, so some of them only play the 30-sec excerpt when you embed them on your site (it's not obvious which ones those are until they are embedded... unless I'm missing something).

Thanks also, Rich... cool templates.