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RealAudio

To hear RealAudio , you first need to have downloaded & installed the FREE RealPlayer plug-in for your browser. Check periodically for FREE upgrades to the latest version, currently version 5.0 - Also available: Next Generation RealSystem G2 preview (beta) release

Why is it free? To promote its widespread use - RealNetworks hope you'll pay for an upgrade to a professional version, that allows you to record, as well as play!

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Get Shockrave Music from Macromedia for interactive music content. First you'll need to have the free Shockwave plug-in installed to enjoy this exciting music zone, from the Web's premier multimedia company!

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GOT A BAND? GOT A SITE? GET SOUND!

Article by Chris Gillham

This article is aimed at:

prompting bands to place audio on their sites and
suggesting the most suitable format to deliver quality music to the internet masses

1 - If you've got a site on the net or are thinking of creating one, keep in mind the one thing that web surfers from around the world want if they decide to click a link taking them to your site... MUSIC!

About the only surfers interested in simply reading about your past performances, your lyrics, the sex life of your drummer, etc... are your fans. If you haven't got audio links on your site, you'll deliver nothing of interest to people from Zimbabwe, Finland, San Fransisco or wherever. This in turn will discourage people from visiting unknown band sites and is to the detriment of the wider industry. Your ISP probably allows you up to 10 meg or so of free server space to create your site and you can get all the necessary software to create audio files for not much more than $100, so cost isn't too much of an obstacle.

2 - OK, if you agree with 1), you might be wondering what audio software format to use. If you'll excuse the promo, this site will give you a clue. The same songs have been formatted in three different ways - RealAudio, Shockwave and QuickTime. Why? Because you should try to cover all your bases and cater for whatever type of browser plug-in your visitors already have operating in their computers.

It's obviously sensible to give them a link to the developer sites where they can download the necessary plug-ins, but you're gambling that they have the time and possibly even the technical expertise to upgrade their browser. Having put the aforementioned page together, here are my recommendations - use RealAudio and duplicate the same tracks in QuickTime.

The RealAudio encoding software costs U.S.$49.99 (RealPublisher G2) or U.S. $79.98 (RealPublisher) and caters for the majority of the world's audio surfers. The audio quality isn't perfect, although the new G2 format is getting pretty close, but the music is streaming. You don't have to pay any extra money to get the music streaming to your visitors... just create a tiny text .ram file containing nothing but the URL to the .ra file sitting next to it in your ISP server. This legal and free procedure tricks the RealPlayer into accepting streaming audio at the visitor's end.

The QuickTime3 encoding software costs U.S.$29.99 and provides superior quality audio despite compressing the file to save you server space. A 3 minute song, for example, can be compressed to less than 400k and begins streaming music to the visitor in about 30 seconds. If you decide to add video or pictures to that 3 minute song, the file size might be pumped up to around 1meg. But, since it's semi-streaming, who cares? The QuickTime quality is close to CD quality, and anybody who can tell the difference has damned good hearing!

Both RA and QT plug-ins are free, as is the plug-in for Shockwave, and are both Mac and Windows compatible. Remember, Macs might comprise only 10% or so of computers in the world, but there is a much higher proportion of net participants using Macs. Shockwave quality is very good, but the encoding software might be a bit too expensive if you want to deliver streaming audio.

Just remember... don't bother with a music site which doesn't have music, aim for quality audio to be heard by visitors, and give them a choice if you're able to. See more on this

Cheers! Chris Gillham, Webmaster Urban EXcentrics

This article first appeared in the Guitar Newsletter #8, Sept 28, 1998

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FREE DOWNLOAD
1 2		Get Shockrave Music from Macromedia for interactive music content. First you'll need to have the free Shockwave plug-in installed to enjoy this exciting music zone, from the Web's premier multimedia company!