Bruce wrote:
>I don't think that it should be unexpected that you should use Real audio
>for a music site. The use of real audio is widespread for music and news.
<snip>>Also, while it is possible to encode sounds in real audio directly,
it will
>also encode from existing .wav files :) How about you do it that way and
>the extra step to make them real files is easy. Offer both... check the
>logs... make a final decision based on your audience's choices. :)
One consideration for an ongoing music site project is the time involved in
uploading files to the server. Do you really want to spend a lot of time
uploading files in multiple formats? If this is a site that you're going to
be maintaining and updating with new selections every few months, make it
as easy on yourself as possible. Creation of audio files is time-consuming
and it isn't all that mentally stimulating after you've figured out how to
do it. I noticed some time ago that a major music site, Sony I think it
was, offered each cut on an album in a wide variety of formats. That's fine
if you're working on a big corporate site with unlimited resources and lots
of people. But for a one man shop, I would keep it as simple as possible by
doing only RealAudio.
Also consider hosting costs: besides possible RealAudio hosting fees, you
may have to pay extra for storing all those music files. Perhaps you won't
want to pay to store more than one format?
When we built our music site on a Mac server, the RealAudio server software
for Macs didn't work well. We ended up putting the RealAudio files on an
entirely separate NT server run by a local musician/geek here in Ashland.
His music hosting server is called amp.org (Ashland Music Professionals).
That tacked an extra $50/month onto our hosting costs, which our client can
handle, but it might be too much for a solo musician client (musicians
*never* have any money <g>) We will soon be moving our music site to
Digital Forest (forest.net) for Filemaker4 hosting plus RealAudio. There
won't be any significant reduction in costs by having RealAudio on the same
server since we'll be paying extra for FMP4. We're still looking at over
$100/month for the bundle of services we need. However, two years ago, our
client was paying $300-400 a month for similar services on its current
host, so things aren't as grim as they used to be.
MPEG music is another very popular option as a high quality format option.
(I think it's the same as mp3) We had one or two test files on our music
site for awhile, and users demanded more. We finally scrapped the idea of
offering MPEG, just to keep our costs down and make things easier on
ourselves.
Though I hate plug-ins in general, RealAudio is so popular that I'll make
an exception for it. People who shop music sites tend to have it and use it.
Suz
Suzanne Stephens, Dave Stephens Design; Ashland, Oregon
541-552-1190, 541-552-1192 http://www.KickassDesign.com/
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