May 20 2005
Music Site Pet Peeve #1
Here’s a simple one for all you musicians, labels, and media outlets out there –
It is very bad form to start music playing as soon as someone lands on your website.
It is even worse form not to give clear, obvious, and concise controls to allow them to stop and start the music.
Keep in mind a few things. First of all, a majority of people that come to your site during the day are surfing from work. Quite often on the sly – suddenly having music blaring from their computer can be a one way ticket to their supervisor’s office. Second, the types of people that are surfing around to music related sites are also the types that probably have music already playing on their computer. I utterly despise when I am rocking out to some P-Funk and I hit a website that either (a) starts playing their own music or (b) starts playing an atrocious MIDI file. Fortunately the days of (b) are mostly gone, but it still happens sometimes.
The lesson – don’t interfere in a man’s P-Funk! No wait, the lesson is that music on a website is essential if you are in the business of selling music, but forcing someone to listen to it without them initiating it is horrible netiquette and is greatly frowned upon.
