Music or not on website?

I have been not a fan of music on photo websites but after viewing a few very good ones lately with music I added it to mine.

pros cons?

Check out the websites of the most successful photographers that are your competition in YOUR market.

If you want your potential customers to think of you and your work as being in that group - you need to have a web presence that is similar to what those photographers have on the web.

The top photographers in our market have music on their flash sites - so we have music on our flash site. We also have an HTML site for people with slower connections and for those who browse the web while they are at work.

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http://www.almariphoto.net

almari wrote:
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almari said:

The top photographers in our market have music on their flash sites - so we have music on our flash site. We also have an HTML site for people with slower connections and for those who browse the web while they are at work.

Click to expand...

I just clicked on the link from your main page at http://www.almariphoto.net labeled "HTML Web Site" and it took me to a page using Flash, virtually locking up my browser entire while strips of thumbnails were appearing on the page very slowly -- all flash based). It was definitely Flash (since I could "right click" and see the About Flash Player 10 screen)).

I finally managed to get the page closed after several minutes (and I'm on a high speed cable connection) without crashing my browser (although it had me wondering for a while, as the entire browser became totally unresponsive while it was trying to transfer the images from elsewhere).

I tried it again with the same symptoms, running under Firefox 3.5.6. Your HTML Web Site choice is taking me to a page using Adobe Flash content.

Your Flash based choices are "speed demons" compared to the flash content you've currently got loading when you go to the page marked HTML Web site. I'd hate to try clicking on it from a slow connection.

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JimC
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http://www.pbase.com/jcockfield

You must have a very slow connection or a older computer.

The site loads fine on this computer (my home computer) as well as the six or seven other computers of my friends and family that checked the site when we added the flash components to the HTML site.

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http://www.almariphoto.net

If you want music while you work - put a music CD in the drive
--
Zone8

The photograph isolates and perpetuates a moment of time: an important and revealing moment, or an unimportant and meaningless one, depending upon the photographer's understanding of his subject and mastery of his process. -Edward Weston
http://www.photosnowdonia.co.uk/ZPS

I agree- As a customer, I find music on websites annoying, and dare I say it, cheesy! I know this is only my opinion, but you may want to think whether having music on your site is going to put potential customers off...

When I hit a Web site that automatically plays music, I leave immediately.

-=-Joe
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http://portfolio.streetnine.com/index.html
daily photo at http://joesnyc.com/index.html
(I am NOT the terrific nature photographer Joseph Holmes at josephholmes.com)

almari said:

You must have a very slow connection or a older computer.

Click to expand...

Core 2 Quad (Q6600) based desktop, Comcast Cable modem service.

Download speed just tested at 13.82 Mbits/Second for download speed (a bit slow this morning, but not that slow). ;-)

Note the 3rd time I tried it was a little faster. But, it's still virtually locking up my browser while the strips of flash based thumbnails are loading. It looks like more of them were loaded that time. My guess is that some of the content is probably being cached (so, subsequent loads may work faster).

It's still extremely slow . Why label a page as HTML Web Site if you've got loads of flash content on it (and it's much slower loading than the pages you've got marked as Flash web sites)? The flash based choices don't lock up my browser either (the HTML Web site choice appears to hog all browser resources while the thumbnails are trying to load).

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JimC
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http://www.pbase.com/jcockfield

Interesting.

Not sure why you are having difficulties.

I just cleaned out my history and cache and tried it again and it loaded very quickly for me.

I will try some revisions this afternoon when I get to the studio and see if I can simplify the home page.

Thanks for your comments!

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http://www.almariphoto.net

I hate it and had clients actually mentioning that they were glad i did not have cheesy elevator music on my website like all the others. If I hear music on a website the first thing I do is look for the button to turn it off. If I can't find it in 5 seconds i close the browser.

I just checked it with my wife's laptop (Dell Inspiron 1720 with a Core 2 Duo) using Firefox 3.5.7 with Adobe Flash player 10.0.42.34 (latest version), and it seemed better with it (more thumbnails loaded quickly). I started it clean (no other tabs loaded). I had lots of other tabs open on my PC.

But, despite loading Firefox without other tabs open, it still took quite a while before I saw "complete" at the bottom of the page (it stayed on "Transferring data from s3.sfdn.com...." for a quite a while), and the browser remained relatively "sluggish" trying to do anything else with it on other pages until your page finished loading (opening another tab and going to a different site while it was completing the page load).

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JimC
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http://www.pbase.com/jcockfield

I tend to browse a lot late at night, and every once in a while, I'll hit a web site with music blaring away through my speakers, and I really irritates me (risking waking up my wife).

I've gotten better about muting or turning down my volume so that I don't get hit with those surprises as often. But, I'd personally prefer it if a page gave me a choice to turn music on or off (with it defaulting to off).

Some music can be really bad, too. I'd keep in mind that not everyone has your same taste in music. ;-)

--
JimC
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http://www.pbase.com/jcockfield

I clicked on the HTML link, and started coujnting slowly.

By the time I got to 15, I could see the bigger row of images across the page.

By the time I'd looked at them quickly, more and more of the smaller images had loaded.

This is on a high speed broadband connection, but for reasons that escape me, it's been running slowly for two days.

For instance, it took a couple of seconds for the DPReviewreply box to open up, instead of it just jumping onto my screen as it normally does.

AS FOR MUSIC:

If there's no music, no one will turn off the site because they do not like the music that isn't there.

If there is music, the challenge is to pick music that fits with the images.

I'm watching a Visions of GErmany, Bavaria travel show as I type, and it's got German light classical music that fits beautifully with the pictures, plus it has a little bit of commentary, and, all in all, it's great. Do you have some stories to tell?

So, goodbye. My coffee has heated and I'm back to watching tv.

BAK

Thanks for your input.

I changed the slideshow on the home page of the HTML site to just one large show.

It should load much faster now.
--
http://www.almariphoto.net

almari said:

You must have a very slow connection or a older computer.

Click to expand...

Those would be the very people who select the HTML choice.

It doesn't lock up my computer, but it does load very slowly. The flash sites also load slowly, and most significant--it's the streaming music that forces the images to load even more slowly than necessary.

What are you selling, music or photography? If you're going to have music on the site (which I also do not advise, at least design it so that the music does not begin until after the images have loaded.

Better yet, don't have music. A great many people searching for a service or a product will run a search and then open a number of choices in tabs simultaneously. It's extremely annoying to have a barrage of music coming out of various tabs--the initial urge at that moment is to find the offending tab and hit the X.

--
RDKirk
'TANSTAAFL: The only unbreakable rule in photography.'

Member said:

Some music can be really bad, too. I'd keep in mind that not everyone has your same taste in music.

Click to expand...

Moreover, people may love your taste in photography and hate your taste in music. People tend to be extremely particular about their musical tastes, and they tend to take personal offense to anyone else's music suddenly invading their space. How do you like it if a passenger in your car suddenly leans over and switches your radio station?

As someone else has already said, nobody is going to leave your site because there was no music. There will be people who leave your site because they are offended by the music. Now, this does not include music that is part of a slideshow that the viewer can opt to view...music works very well in that particular context.

What are you selling? Photography or music?
--
RDKirk
'TANSTAAFL: The only unbreakable rule in photography.'

Music on photo websites is in 99.9% of all cases wrong and annoying. besides the fact that most people steal music to put it on the website, or don't consider buying the rights for the music, it's just annoying, since every visitor has a different taste.

IF you really want to do something with music on your site, go make a youtube video/slideshow and embed it on your blog.

otherwise, just don't do it, as bak said, there is less harm in not having music.

after looking at both of almari's flash sites and his html site, the music on both flash sites was horrendous, and can serve as a good example of what not to do in this discussion.

--
Joergen Geerds
http://luminous-newyork.com
http://joergengeerds.com
http://newyorkpanorama.com

For the most part, we don't use music on any of our websites. I tend to find most website music either boring or cheesy anyway...neither of which do I want to be seen as...

I'm also one of those people that will open several windows/tabs at the same time. A half-dozen sites all playing "Casio's Greatest Hits" puts me off, especially if I can't find any way to shut it down quickly. For "real" music I will often question whether or not a license has been obtained... If for some reason I think not then I have to ask, "Would I really do business with somebody that steals..?" And just "using" a song on a website is no different than somebody just "using" one of my images without consent.

The only place that we use music is on the "band" pages...and generally of the bands in the photos. The only other music is of my own creation. (I've played guitar alone for more than 30 years...and I also play dums, keyboards, etc.) Even then, I DO make sure that my license is up to date...so that if ANYONE else has claims to the music those bands are playing and has a problem with it they can pretty much leave me out of it.

Besides, I generally have the speakers cranked up in my office and/or studio sound system on and the last thing I want is some insipid elevator dirge competing with what I WANT to hear.

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO.

IF you feel the need for it. Have it start off, and allow the user to turn it on.

You will NEVER find music that appeals to everyone. At best, 1/2 will enjoy it. The other half will close the window, be annoyed and not look at your work.

My opinion, as this differs for everyone I suppose.

I can not stand music on sites.
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[email protected]
http://www.courtlevephoto.com

That's much Better...unless I leave flash disabled. Then, I get a nice plugin missing error on the screen. ;-)

I'll sometimes use browser addons like Noscript and Prefbar to prevent flash content from playing on untrusted web sites because of the high number of security vulnerabilities that have been reported with it in the past with it (allowing an attacker to insert code to try and take control of your PC).

Here's the most recent update to fix that kind of vulnerability (and there have been many more like it in the past):

http://www.adobe.com/support/security/bulletins/apsb09-19.html

So, personally, I prefer sites that don't use flash content (especially if that content is slow to load and hogs browser resources).

I personally think that many "flashy" web sites (pun intended) distract viewers from the images being displayed, too. Not all flash sites are that way, but many are.

IOW, I'd prefer looking at a gallery that takes a simple approach to displaying the images, as in your HTML only album pages (as long as you don't click on "Slide Show", which is Flash and steals most of my browser resources with it's very slow load times). My wife's Core 2 Duo based laptop seems a little better for some reason. But, it's still hogging browser resources when I click on something like your slide shows.

--
JimC
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http://www.pbase.com/jcockfield