Implementing Windows Media Streaming Audio on Your Webpage

Adding Windows Media Streaming Audio content to your website is really quite easy and does not require a special hosting arrangement.




Akmal Khan Sapay

.2003.07.19.

You have certainly been to a lot of music sites, Listened to their music and probably wished you also had a site with your own music. Well, this wish is very close to coming true with this tutorial on streaming media.

What is streaming media?

In very simple words, streaming media means "always-available music at a click". You click a song link and it plays instantly without taking more than seconds. You can have live music on your site using streaming media, which means your visitors can listen to your music constantly without waiting long.

You can stream your media with three different players: windowsmedia player, realplayer and quicktime player. Almost all professional music sites on the net use one of the three formats to stream their media. I will in this article describe streaming media with windowsmedia player, which is built in to all the new versions of Windows.

There are 3 steps to follow:

• Converting your music files to wma formats using windows media encoder.
• Making a metafile for each music file. What is a metafile? I will describe it later.
• Upload the wma and metafiles to where your site is located and put a link to them in your html file.
   

First of all you have to download windows media encoder. Go to this Microsoft page and download windows media encoder 7.1 and install it.


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Go On To:

What Is Streaming Media | Encoding Your Media | Making Meta Files