Advice for a musician website

Hi, Martin here with my first ever web site. I'm a musician wanting to promote my music and attract potential colaborators. My site is www.walkerhandmade.doomby.com. I'd like to know things I can do differently to make my site better. Opinions and advice are always welcome.

Right now I know I need to continue adding content- my blog is on the way. Mostly I'd like to know how to add a music player with multiple songs from my catalogue. Currently I have only one song for visitors to hear unless I add several of the same type doomby players.

Any ideas will be greatly appreciated.

Hi walkerhandmade. Like the site background (nice choice), though you might like to increase the side menu font size to make the links a little easier to read.

Here's a few links to playlist-enabled and embeddable music players (I'm pretty sure only the Yahoo one is a no-Flash player - anything using Flash is going to be inoperative on iPhones/iPads and other non-Flash devices):
http://www.wimpyplayer.com/products/wimpy_mp3.html
http://www.flabell.com/flash/Flash-Mp3-Player-29
http://flash-mp3-player.net/players/multi/
http://developer.yahoo.com/mediaplayer/
http://www.alsacreations.fr/dewplayer-en
http://www.premiumbeat.com/flash_music_players/

If you get stuck, or need a hand, contact us at the support desk and we'll point you in the right direction.

Hey Colin,
Thanks for the quick response and Menu suggestion.

Just to make sure; You are saying that if I want my friends with smart-phones to have access, the Yahoo player is the only one- right?

And, if Yahoo is the right one will there be audio quality concerns?

Sorry for the long wait before replying - busy day, and a lot of testing and researching of the Yahoo player. I didn't dig far enough last time - it'll display on an iPhone, but apparently some of its sending and retrieving code is Flash-based, so no-go on smartphones. It is kinda neat as a player though, as you can personalize it (adding album art, for example), and has a built-in playlist. Oh well. I'll keep looking, and if I find something better, I'll let you know. In the meantime, I'd suggest you use the one that you prefer, and add a more compatible player later if one comes along. Note that if you add a note with a link to a separate page for smartphones, you can simple list the mp3 files as "a" links and let the smart phone's own player handle the audio.

As for audio quality - all players will handle it in the same way: they just provide the access interface for the music selection, and pass the audio off to the appropriate browser plugin to handle it. The player you choose shouldn't have any influence on the quality of the music.

I have found a few different players I'd like to try on an extra hidden web page before I go live. I just don't know how to install the players.
I prefer one that will allow me to upload directly to the player files instead of a link. I did not find a tutorial on these topics. I'm sure it is simple but new to me.

If you'd like, shoot me off the links to the players so I can point you in the right direction.

This is a free player I'll go with for now. I'll want to use the version with a playlist so I can show multiple songs. Once I get the hang of it I may get a paid player that looks better. Here is the link, http://www.flamplayer.com/

BTW- I'll get on the phone with you guys in about a week- working OT right now. Thanks for your help.

Nice choice graphics wise, but I don't think it'll work - it seems to require a back-end PHP/MySQL infrastructure, which you don't have with your site. Of course, you could set up the PHP/MySQL externally, and maybe that's what you had in mind, but that's getting very complicated ... It refers to the possibility of uploading elsewhere, but after a quick read of the install instructions, I can't figure out how that works (whether it's files hosted on their servers or elsewhere). Maybe you've had time to go more in-depth than me ... :)

Look forward to the call (we're around from 1pm to 5pm GMT - if the call is answered in French, just ask for Colin ;-)

Colin,
I'm not finding anything better than your original suggestions. I like the wimpyplaver with the 'cosa' songlist skin. If this is a workable option for my doomby site I'll make the purchase. Just let me know. Thanks.

It's doable, though it'll take a little fiddling. By default, it'll want to look for things in a hierarchy Folder > Subfolder > Sub-subfolder. Things don't work quite like that in your file store, so you'll just need to edit the links manually. We can help with that on the support service (we get the messages and can respond quicker). I'd kinda like to have a trial run with a free version (don't think they do one, so I'll use Dewplayer), and would like it to be meaningful for you so if you'd like, upload the MP3s to your file store (or send us the links via the support if they're already online somewhere), and I'll have a play around to integrate them into a playlist-type player. It probably won't be until this Saturday, but I'd love to give it a go if you're in any doubt as to how to go about it.

Sounds like a plan except I will be working 15 hr days untill 1/26/11. (Strange schedule- difficult to explain, trust me)

I'll make time for the phone call once weeks' work is done. Thanks

I can relate. When I was younger ... I had weeks like that.

In the mean time, if you get a couple of minutes, played around with a few of the Dewplayers, to see how much work was involved, and how - and where - would be OK for storing the files. I used Dropbox, but you could do it in the file storage space of the site manager if you'd like. Each reference is editable, and storing the stuff like this:
music and artwork, then XML playlist and Flash files
means you'll have the URLs you need for each step before moving on to the next.

The first one is neat, but kinda buggy - it doesn't want to display the album cover art. Oh well.

From what I read about the Wimpy player, the principal is the same, so it shouldn't pose a problem (at least, the non-PHP/MySQL version).

Colin,
I was thinking that it could be helpful (for me at least) if I found a doomby member who already uses a music player. Perhaps an artist or band with a playlist for visitors to hear and purchase original songs or complete albums.

I can't imagine why such an individual would not at least offer up a few suggestions. What do you think? Is there such a person here among the Doombians?

Just a thought,
Martin

As much as I'd love to help, none come to mind, even on our French platform (it's been around a lot, lot longer). You can dig around on the directory, but I'm not sure you'll come up with much (we tend to hear about our active users, and have a pretty good idea of what's being done with members' sites).

I don't know if you'd come across this in your researches http://newmusicstrategies.com/2008/09/02/how-can-i-sell-mp3s-from-my-website/, but it takes a look at the various steps, and more importantly, has some actually useful input in the comments section, in addition to the usual spam ;)

A player like the one in the I set up (or Wimpy) will do a pretty good job of allowing you to display the music. To enable purchasing, you can set up PayPal pages (doombyPLUS) or simply create PayPal buttons externally and add the necessary HTM code to pages detailing the song/album to be purchases. You could go all the way and subscribe to the full e-commerce solution to handle digital music sales (the secure one-download-only link is unique, and only generated after the payment has been accepted).

An alternative solution is to get a specific player/sales solution to add to a page on the site. This one looks perfect, and comes in a not-too-expensive version http://www.websitemusicplayer.com/index.php

Hi Colin,
I forgot about the international call and decided to just continue here in the forum. Obviously I'm in no hurry since this is really just a learning experiment for now.

I will create a new web page and download the free 15 day Wimpy Player Demo. I will want to sell songs eventually but I'm not really ready yet- only a few songs are complete. It will be nice to already know how to commercialize when I am ready.

One other thing I wanted to mention is that my recording software (Cakewalks' Sonar 8.5 PE) came with a publisher that includes an album player. I may be able to use it if I can figure out how. As you can tell I know little about this part of being a musician. I will also try to upload the Cakewalk player or the link.

I suppose I could really mess up my web pages but why not try? There's not much to lose at this point.

And, should our dialogue here be relocated to a sub-topic of the forum? There doesnt appear to be much traffic but I don't want to abuse the 'Meet And Greet/You Gotta Have Friends' area.
BTW- I'm guessing English is you native language? Just curious.

Hope you have a great afternoon,
Martin

:) yeah, I was going to move the topic last weekend, but got side-tracked planning a trip (to ... Vegas). I'll get around to doing it one of these days ...

If you need any help figuring our if - and how - to get the Sonar player (or Wimpy) to work, just holler. You can't really mess up the pages, or at least, if you do, it'll just be the page that'll suffer. Don't fret - we're pretty good at fixing stuff up. Just avoid using IE 9 or Firefox 4 and you'll be right (both are still early-stage betas, and can do strange things to the code driving the visual page editor).

English is indeed my one and only mother tongue (though my vocab gets smaller with every passing year ... ). And it being Australian bred, there's bound to be a lot of "odd" spelling as well ;)

You have a great ... morning? ... too!

Hi Colin,
I am a mechanic by trade. Unfortunately for me wrenches have little to do with bytes- of any sort. If you know of a 'How to' guide for monkeys (with chapter and page #s) it could possibly save us both a great deal of time. : I

I got myself free acounts with mediafire.com and filezilla.com. because I thought they were things I need (hosting and transfer?). I uploaded a few songs to mediafire just to see how long the different file types would take- mp3 is fastest (duh). I then tried to copy one of the song links and paste it onto my 'links' page. Each time I tried to access the link from my website link page it could not be found.
I was fooling around with that because nothing else seems to do much.

For whatever reasons, my attempts to down load free music players did not work. I found the one I was planning to try, pressed download and downloaded it. I can see my downloaded music player file but don't know how to get it onto my web site.

I can completely rebuild a 14L Detroit Diesel engine in a little more than 24 hrs, but for the life of me I cannot wrap my brain around this file sharing/storing/playing/selling/transferring etc. business.

Obviously these are things I need to understand. I will try to find the study materials, and if you know of any let me know. Thanks.
P.S. I hope you enjoy your trip. When will you be going?

And I'd be (and am) useless with an engine, so we're even :)

If you're interested in finding out the basics of the web, though I don't have a particular book in mind, I'd go for a "dummies" or similar guide - they're usually written for easy-access, and don't use anything than the bare minimum of technical terms. Start with a "how browsers work", then move to a "how websites work".

As for the link, the address you entered was fine, it's just that when you add a link to the Links add-on, it automatically adds the "http://" - you'd added "http://http://www.mediafire.com/?4o46x73zx0s0rac", which just didn't work (a link in a navigator needs to tell the browser how it should handle the link (in this case http://) then provide the address where it will get the information from (www.mediafire.com/?4o46x73zx0s0rac). In this case, it was trying to find an address that didn't exist.

There a a few different ways of hosting files. Some will provide an off-site download-only experience, like Mediafire et. al. Others, like the file storage space of the site manager and Dropbox.com, function more like folders on your computer, with a way of accessing content via a web browser. To give you an idea of the difference between the way they work (and how your browser will react differently to them), compare this:

http://http://www.mediafire.com/?4o46x73zx0s0rac

with this:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17944878/player/music/01%20Track%2001.mp3

The first one basically tells the browser to go to a website, display a page, then do some stuff so the user can click and download a file. The second tells the browser "here's a file, if you know how to handle its content, then display/play it". You'll want something like this second one to integrate stuff on pages of your site (like via a music player), if you don't want to start sending visitors off here and there to get stuff (not good, they'll get confused and bored).

On the other hand, for selling music, you don't want someone to access it directly, so the first method is better (except that you'll want the download page to be private, and only made available to people who have been authorized to access it).

If you want to tinker and learn as you go, then I'd say stick with the 'make your own site' thing, for as long as the process is actually enjoyable. I'm (we're) happy to help out to point you in the right direction (we get paid to :), and help where we can. If frustration/time constraints dictate otherwise, then maybe an itunes-like platform would be better (there are bound to be ones oriented to new artists, right?).

PS In June, unless some other volcano/natural disaster intervenes ... You gotta do Vegas once, right?

Colin,
That's the guidance I need. As a matter of fact I think I should just hold off on anything new for my doomby site for now. I have looked at a few other musician oriented sites. After I learn more about how things work, it could be that Doomby just isn't the right vehicle. Or perhaps it can be useful as a 'sister' site. I don't know enough to make the call yet. It will work out in time.

Viva Las Vegas! And do be careful.

No worries - if you need a pointer, or want to bounce an idea around, just holler.

I think I'll be sitting in the room sleeping the whole time anyway (it's sandwiched in between a drive to Yosemite, and another to the Grand Canyon), so really just a place to rest for a couple of days in a remarkably affordable, air-conditioned hotel. Just what the doctor ordered :)

Hey Martin, I was just digging around in the directory when I came across this site http://ericblackerbymusic.doomby.com/ which has a player on the front page from this site http://www.reverbnation.com. If you look at the player closely, there's all kind of integrated links (including email, video and ... sales :)