Is there an easy to use mp3 widget/plugin for Wordpress?

September 8, 2006 10:48 AM

I would like to add a mp3 player to the sidebar of my Wordpress blog where I can offer a daily selection of mp3s that my readers can play or not.

I have tried to get Musicast working with no luck (maybe firewall issues? It successfully creates the feed...). Is there a relatively easy to use plugin/widget for Wordpress that I can use to play DJ?

posted by persona non grata to computers & internet (9 comments total)

I'm very happy with Podpress for posting mp3s and podcasting. Don't know about sidebar support, though.
posted by piro at 10:56 AM on September 8, 2006

You could use a flash mp3 player. There are a bunch out there.
posted by rhapsodie at 11:31 AM on September 8, 2006

I found this Flash MP3 player for a friend's site - however, he didn't integrate with Wordpress or anything.

However, if you're comfortable with editing template files, it shouldn't pose too much of a problem - it's just not in nice plugin form.

Also, check perhaps check out the Wordpress support forums - I ran a little search through for you, though you can probably find more.
posted by djgh at 11:34 AM on September 8, 2006

The trick is having the player integrated into the sidebar. I should have emphasized that more. That's what Musicast offers with a third-party widget but I can't get it to work. Thanks for the links so far. I will eventually get into podcasting.
posted by persona non grata at 11:52 AM on September 8, 2006

This is pretty cool - a little javascript that will turn any link to an mp3 into a play button:

Playtagger
posted by DandyRandy at 1:22 PM on September 8, 2006

The trick is having the player integrated into the sidebar.

Can you elaborate on which part of that is tricky? I manually embed a flash player into a per-post div on one of my sites, and the difference between that and the sidebar is just the bit of code I have it in. If you don't mind a tiny bit of mucking about, you could do something like this:

1. Located and download flash mp3 player to server.
2. Work out code block to embed player in an arbitrary stretch of html.
3a. Code in the URLs for the mp3s manually into instances of that embed block, to be updated by hand periodically, or
3b. Use a bit of php to stock values into the embeds via some crazy scheme.

All of that final code lives in a div or a widget or whatever you prefer in your sidebar.php, et voila!
3. Slap that code block into
posted by cortex at 4:02 PM on September 8, 2006

(and ignore that trailing line)
posted by cortex at 4:02 PM on September 8, 2006

check out myfabrik. You can upload mp3's & select whichever you wish to share using an embedded flash player that can be embedded in your blog.
posted by Pasa la bola chetu at 5:12 PM on September 8, 2006

I'll try that method, cortex. I guess I just got hooked on the idea of how simple it would be to update the playlists using Musicast, and everything seemed to work just fine - the player that is recommended on the Musicast site (Streampad Music Player) showed up in the sidebar and Musicast found the playlist I had selected and I could view the tracks as a podcast in iTunes via the Musicast interface - but there must have been something broken in the interaction between the Musicast software and the player, or just me not doing something right. I'll try a different player and coding it in and see what emerges.
posted by persona non grata at 6:01 PM on September 8, 2006