To play or not to play?

Oregon I have just had a suggestion from a reader to take the embedded music off the site because it apparently slows the blog down.  Now, I have ULTRA fast broadband at work and at home which is probably why I don’t notice it so much but for people with slower broadband or worse, dial-up I can see that the music might be a bit of a nuisance.  So I’ll put it to you guys… to play or not to play?

Obviously I like the music because it makes the site feel more homely and I’m PASSIONATE about music (it’s actually integral most of the time to the way I dress!) and sort of a bit more ‘me’ if you understand.  Plus, I thought it would be ok because you can switch it off if you want by pressing the pause button.  But if it is causing problems viewing the site’s content, then I’d rather take it off completely.  What do you guys think? 

16 comments

  2. I think you should leave the music off. Provide links to music you love but let people browse with their own music (or silence – some of us are at work). Your site is slow because of the music, too.

  3. i like the music you chose and enjoy it but a i always have to remember to turn it off because i have itunes on.

  4. yeah, love the music you do play, but some people don’t like it automatically playing once the page loads. just about everybody in the world has broadband, so it doesn’t slow things down much. maybe you could have it there to play, and if we want it playing, we can hit Play, instead of hitting Pause when we want it off. sometimes it’s not that convenient in an office setting or if we’re already playing something (frequent).

  5. i think putting automatically downloading and playing music is a terrible idea.
    the music is very nice (i personally love massive attack), but i’m paying for bandwidth (i.e. 4 cents/megabyte) from an australian university. almost didn’t come back again. now i’m reading through an rss reader.
    additional problems:
    -> i listen to music on background as i read and surf. most people do. your music interferes.
    -> slowness
    -> if i want to stop i have to hunt around the page for the stop button. on the first visit, that’s pretty much “i’d rather click back then spend more time on this”.

  6. Thank you for all the feedback guys! Wow…had no idea what a nuisance it would be……..
    What I have done for the moment is put a false autostart on the music so that it doesn’t start up when you go onto the site and if you want to listen to it, then you just hit the play button. I think that speeds the site up too because then it doesn’t automatically try to download the song when you go on the site. If that’s still not good, then I will pull the music down altogether.

  8. yeah, i love the site but i use wireless and it always takes forever to load because of the music. i’m sorry to say i’d rather have it off, completely off.

  9. i actually like the music bit. you could decide to create a link that would popup a small window with the music player in the background so ppl can choose to listen to it instead of being forced to load it on every page.

  10. Adnan! I’m so dense…that’s an awesome suggestion! I will work on that tonight…. might make a pretty music pop-up page..!

  12. Yes..I have now taken it off until tonight when I will create a link where you can click on and then a window will pop up with my tunes blaring out at you.

  15. thanks for taking the music down.. unlike vivien and “everyone she knows” (17/4 @ 3.28) i am on dial up, so loading the page took forever, when it eventually loaded it said i had to run active X before closing down – very frustrating.

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