I'm almost entirely certain that they won't, and if you're just putting .mp3 files (for which you own the copyright, obviously) on your website for download then I can't see them having any reason whatsoever to bother you. Users of your website will almost certainly beat you to death if you set it as ambient music for your web site, though.

Heya,

I'm pretty sure that they won't... particularly because it's the Thompson group that handles mp3 licensing.

http://www.mp3licensing.com/help/enduser.html

Might help you out a little bit. As far as I know, microsoft pays a lump sum for the MP3 codec and unless your website becomes incredibly popular and you get revenue in excess of $USD100k then you don't have to worry about paying them. Of course, I'd say "use Ogg Vorbis - it's free" but there's limited support of it, and I'm all-out against sites which have ambient music... it ruins the playlists that I've got running in the background.

CJM

The download time isn't a problem to me - I was just mentioning it as a factor to consider. What bugs me about web page background music is that I often play my own music through my stereo system, and I may have a few different websites open at once. It's somewhat disconcerting having random music appearing out of nowhere, especially if I've turned off the music that the computer is playing, but not yet gotten around to turning off my amp.

If you do it properly (have a media control or somesuch, and give the user an option to stop the music, or better yet have it off by default and give them an option to start the music) then it should be OK.

Bear in mind that I'm somewhat of a minimalist when it comes to web design, and so I'm possibly being too grumpy about extra 'fruit' such as this. Other (possibly more up-to-date) web developers, feel free to disagree with me. :)

Background music is anoying for one thing and unless it is a part of a Flash movie (where it is almost expected to have some music or sound byte), background music will give your site an very un-professional feel too it.

If you still feel it absolutly nessassary to have background music though - design some kind of controller so the user can turn the music off if he/she does not want to be bombarded with sound.

Also note that different bousers handle background sound differently (i.e. Netscape uses one HTML Tag, IE uses anouther). So make sure you test out your site on different brousers to make sure you get the effect you want.

Like I said, the general rule of thumb is to always allow the user to have full control of sound in a website (unless, again it's a Flash/Shockwave movie - and even then it might be a good idea to allow the user to turn off the sound).

Usially though - if I come across a website that plays some cheesey music (usially no one plays Led Zeppelin or some other cool music - it's always something cheesey) - I almost always hit the BACK button.

Roach

Quote:Original post by Kazgoroth
You're fine for having mp3 files, as long as you own the copyright to them (or don't, but have the right to distribute them). You'd have to pay the licencing fee if you had an mp3 encoder or decoder (actually... you'll have a decoder embedded into the page, won't you... I'm not sure about this actually...)

No he won't. Not really. The decoder is installed on the user's machine, just the mp3 file and the object info comes from the page. Unless he creates his own ActiveX or Java component to play the music on the user's machine, that is. I'm assuming he won't.