Mailbox: Audio Players

I've gotten some emails asking about the audio player's playlist, specifically how to add individual songs to the playlist. This isn't too difficult but there are a few steps involved and people have been confused by the process so I thought I'd go ahead and spell it out in detail.

The first step is to make sure to upload your music. The only problem you might encounter here is impatience. On most connections a three- to four-minute mp3 could take one or two minutes to upload. You should get a message back if it times out, so you should wait as long as you can before deciding that something went wrong with the transfer.

After the file uploads it needs to be processed on the server side so it can be played on our audio player. A green progress bar will appear to show you how this operation is proceding but it too will appear to have stalled sometimes. The good news here is that at this point you can't screw it up, you can close your media manager, exit your browser, and come back later to find the file still uploaded and (hopefully, by that time) processed. It will go straight to your media bins for you to use on your pages.

To use this file in an audio player you must first have an audio player element on your page. If you don't already have one, create a new element and set it to the "Audio Player" type. When the page refreshes you should be able to click on a button underneath the player that says "Edit Playlist." Now, there are two options for you to use to edit your player: (1) the auto play option which, when checked, will make the music start playing automatically whenever someone comes to your page; and (2) the "add songs" link. Click this link to bring up your media manager's audio file tab.

Clicking on any of the thumbnail versions of your audio players will bring up a detailed view with an extra button for each, a big button labelled "Add to current playlist." For each song you want in your playlist, click this button. It will be added to the playlist underneath the media manager. When you've added all the fiels you want you can close the media manager panel and scroll back down to your audio player where the new songs have appeared in the playlist above the "add songs" link. You can drag around and drop these songs wherever you want them to change the order of your playlist.

Now that your playlist is set we have come to the most important step: click the save button. Most people have been tripped up by forgetting to click this button and trying to reload the page to listen to their new playlist before it has been saved. Once you click it the element will return t o the normal audio player view and, finally, you can listen to your new playlist.

Let's nto forget that these players should not be used for any copyrighted material for which you do not have the rights or permissions to play. Any such use is a violation of the iHigh Terms of Service ("TOS"). These audio players are meant to showcase original works by iHigh users, so make sure the music is yours before you upload it.

Hope that helps,
Ask iHigh

Posted by: askihigh

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