Blogging Pet Peeves: Auto-Play Music

I’m the first person to tell you that I love music. If I’m at work, I’m probably listening to my iPod. If I’m at home, I’ve got some sort of music playing. It’s an important part of my life.

It isn’t, however, part of my blog.

If you’ve ever read any sort of blogging tips, I’m sure you’ve seen this classic: Thou shalt not have auto-play music on thy blog.

Personal bloggers are especially guilty of this. I’m not sure why. Maybe they like to go to their own blogs to listen to music rather than listening from another source?

While I’m all for expressing yourself, and I believe that a personal blog is a great way to do that, I must draw the line at auto-play music (this also applies to auto-play embedded videos). I have a few reasons for this:

1. While you might have your favorite song playing on your blog, it might not be my favorite song. It might even be on the other side of the spectrum for me.
2. I’m a big fan of tabbed browsing. That means that I can have many websites open at the same time without a huge effect on my computer’s performance, so what I do when I come across a bunch of links I want to check out is to open them all up at the same time. It’s not unusual for me to have 20 tabs open. If even 2 of those pages that I just opened have auto-play music, then it’s really annoying, and I have to figure out which of the dozens of tabs are the guilty ones so I can close it.
3. I also have either Mister’s music in the background or I’m playing music from my iTunes collection or iTunes radio at the same time. Again, it’s a fight for my brain and I get auditory overload. I don’t know too many people who can listen to multiple songs at the same time without some sort of discomfort. Do you watch tv and listen to the radio at the same time?
4. Some people out there, believe it or not, have not yet figured out how to turn the sound down or off on their computer. Volume settings are as foreign to them as C++. They end up getting blasted with music at top volume.
5. Some of us (not me) might want to sneak a peek at our favorite blogs while we’re at work, which ends up giving co-workers a not always appreciated musical interlude.
6. Auto-play music can seriously affect the load time on your blog. It might take a few minutes for all the text, pictures, and widgets to show up, but gosh darn it, the music starts up before I can read anything.
7. Exception: You are only allowed to auto play music if you are a musician and I’ve come across the front page of your website. THIS IS THE ONLY EXCEPTION!

What’s a blogger to do if they really, really, really want to feature their favorite music? There are a few options.

Go ahead and put the music player on your blog, but let the visitor decide whether or not to listen to it. Also, don’t hide it down at the very bottom of the page so we have to scroll for miles to find it. Alternatively, you can write a post featuring your favorite song or musician.

I’m going to use a weird analogy here, because that’s how my mind works.

Think of it this way: if you were over the moon about how delicious your favorite TV dinner was, how would you handle it? Would you force visitors to your house to eat it, shoving it in their mouths the second they walked through the door? Or would you forgo the assault on their taste buds and simply tell them how much you loved that TV dinner, and why it was so good?

Now substitute “TV dinner” for “music” and “mouth” for “ears” and you get a clear picture of what auto-play music is like for visitors to your blog.

Please, I’m begging you – stop the auto-play music. Now.

Other Posts Like Me:

• Blogging Pet Peeves: Feeds
• Personal Blogging Crusader
• Talk to Me
• About Pages for Personal Bloggers
• Blogging Pet Peeves – Who Wrote That?