Here’s a common question I get from musicians running their own websites: How do I post my music onto my blog? What free tools are available to me? And what cool embeddable music players are there out there?
Well, here’s my simple list of 4 solutions.
POSTING SINGLE FILES
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Plugins for WordPress: Audio Player + exFM
If you run a self-hosted WordPress blog, get the Audio Player plugin for WordPress. This allows you to upload your music files to a folder on your website, and then with a simple code in a WordPress post such as [ audio: songfilename.mp3 ] you can have your music file appear as a playable widget on your post. Just be aware that uploading mp3s will quickly eat up server space and bandwidth, ok? (Which is not a problem if you have one of those unlimited storage and bandwidth packages with your webhost.)
Alternatively, the exFM Player Plugin might be an even better solution as it automatically adds a play button to any direct MP3 link. So, simply listing URLs of MP3s on a page turns it into an instant playlist.
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Get on the Music Sites
There are dozens of music websites which allow users to post their tracks and then embed these tracks on your own websites and social media channels. Take note however that most of these websites have limits as to number of uploads or amount of bandwidth used by your tracks. Which means you may have to spread them out a bit if you are a prolific musician. Here are my favorites:
- Soundcloud – Great embeddable player which shows the audio waveform. Free account limits you to 100 downloads per track and only 120 total minutes of music.
- Jamendo – Huge global musician community for open source music and creative commons. An OK player.
- Alonetone – Ultra cool musician community with a cool embeddable player and unlimited uploads for artists. Drawback – commenting system isn’t the best, also no genres.
- Soundclick – Old school embeddable player with large Soundclick advertising.
- Bandcamp – Allows lossless file download. But totally free downloads are now limited to a certain amount, which means free downloads turn into paid ones with enough people downloading.
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Get on the Video Sites
An alternative to the music sites would be to output your tracks as video files (a much more laborious task, but not without benefits) and upload them to video sites such as YouTube and Vimeo.
PROS: There are millions of users on these sites already. Why not try to get at that audience by offering your music there? You have the added bonus of getting stats (or what YouTube calls “Insights”) on how many people are actually watching/listening to your embeddable tracks.
CONS: Not having actual moving images is just plain… sad! You’d best search for some creative commons or open sourced video with which to build a real music video.
POSTING PLAYLISTS
YouTube Playlists
If you’ve never used this tool before, then you’re missing out on one of the best free curation tools out there. YouTube playlists allow you to string together YouTube videos and embed the playlist on your blog (for example). Instant show.
Mixtape Websites
For uploading and embedding longer music such as DJ sets or albums, make use of the mixtape websites. My faves are currently: Mixpod and 8tracks.
Website like these allow you to create an embeddable playlist from files that are available over the web. This means you need a place to store the mp3s you want to play online. You can simply create a folder on your domain and point towards those files. But if you have no webhosting, there is always the Internet Archive or file uploader websites such as Fileden and 4Shared.
Hope this list helps. If you know of, or are using another solution, I’d love to hear of it. Hit the comments section below and share your tips on embedding music.