Forums » Suggestions & Development Discussion » Embed soundcloud tracks?

This may have been brought up before, but, I'd love to be able to embed soundcloud tracks. If that's practical, or even possible? I'm not sure. I know the website offers an embed option for tracks similar to how youtube and vimeo do.

With youtubes increasing copyright crackdowns (and could you blame them?) it's been become harder to locate the right song to place on a character's page for me. I've been finding the music I need on soundcloud.com but, that doesn't help me deck out my character's pages. Soundcloud actually has license deals with a lot of record companies to host the music they do, so it seem's a more legal option. It also allows you to listen to indie tracks and small time artists-- stuff you probably wont find on youtube because it isn't popular mainstream yet.

What do you guys think?

I have never heard of soundcloud, but is it possible to link to a particular song? You could do that for your character like I have done for several of mine.

While that is a possibility, it doesn't make an aesthetically pleasing option for me. I like an embedded song right on the page that someone is able to click and then keep scrolling to read what ive written. I often choose music to set a tone for the section they're reading. Making them leave the website to listen to music kind of removes that seamless flow and distracts the reader, in my opinion.

I just looked into it and SounCloud can be embedded the same way YouTube videos can. (Though this specific blog post may not be applicable to RPR directly, the idea is the same.)

I can see this having a lot of benefits, not just on copyright grounds but bandwith as well (an mp3 is a lot less straining on bandwith than an actual video file).

My main concerns are, can these players be adjusted in size without ruining the functionality of the embed? What about the comments on songs, are they moderated on SoundCloud's end? They may potentially contain content that isn't suitable for an RPR profile. (While YT comments exist, you have to leave RPR and visit YT in order to see them, whereas with a SoundCloud embed they seem to show up in the box itself.)

I can see your concerns with content. If there was a way to embed them without viewing comments would be ideal. Reading up on their help center, they say this.
From: http://shareandembed.help.soundcloud.com/customer/portal/articles/2167180-html5-embedded-player

I, however, have no real knowledge of how (or if you could even) do the coding to allow a website to embed with an unlimited account or if it would instead depend on the viewers account instead.

I didn't think about the bandwidth aspect, that is a great bonus.

It sounds like the person who's listening to or the uploader of the music has the option to disable comments if they have an unlimited membership.

If they automatically filter out content that is not okay (like f-bombs and the ilk) then I don't think it would be cause for concern. I actually haven't seen any bad comments on songs so far at least!

Well to be fair, they don't have to leave the site, all they would have to do is right click it to open it in a new tab and then spend a second or two to get the video to play before switching back to the profile. Still not seamless, but it doesn't force them to leave the website to listen to it.

That's true, but as someone who works on websites frequently, I can tell you that a majority of people just plain click links like that. So expecting people to rely on the right-click method to open something in a new tab is not really viable. Maybe if you put instructions with it, people are more likely to try that, but it's never a guarantee unfortunately. There's also the factor that not every profile creator clearly labels their music link (think of a link named "I LIKE POPCORN" which goes to YT), which means people end up opening a music tab that they don't want to view. (Bandwith can be an issue for that, as well as someone playing their own music while browsing.)

Your idea wasn't a bad one and I don't think there's anything wrong with using it, but there are a lot of good reasons for not relying on it as well.

(Also a fun tip: if you have a scrolling wheel on your mouse, you can usually open a link in a new tab by clicking on the link with the scroll wheel. That's a single click without needing a keyboard. )