Streaming Audio Made Easy

MP3 Sound Stream - Sound Bytes
by Quentin Brown
December 16, 2003

Internet streaming audio is the most prevalent form of multimedia on the Internet today according to Creative, one of the leading companies in the sound hardware field. Over the last few years, streaming audio has moved from being a curiosity to a business strategy that is adopted by many media organizations.

There are over 100,000 sites that provide streaming audio content and there is a diverse set of available content ranging from music, news, business presentations, sports, talk shows, educational material, religious sermons and company earnings call.

Streaming Audio has always been available to the big corporate sites and techies. Now every one can use simple software to produce their own streaming audio from a web site.

Marketers and business people have always known that a well-placed audio stream can increase sales and signups to their products and services. The problem has always been that the average person could not afford the high cost of special servers or programmers to be able to use this technology.

There have been a number of products around that provide streaming audio however as they have grown and developed so have their plugins required for listening to the streaming files.

With the new software available today anyone can add audio to their sites without the need for large plugins and complicated software. Simply add your audio file and choose a component to activate the stream and click go. These programs output all the necessary files, which you can then use to embed in your web pages with a quick copy and paste.

These new software programs use Macromedia Flash technology and the LAME compression and resource bits to produce very high quality output from MP3 or WAV files. The web visitor can simply click and listen, even over a standard 56K modem.

So now that you're considering adding the sweet sound of your voice to your site, where might you want to use it?

Depending on your website's content and theme, there are a variety of ways to incorporate your voice into it. For example:

You might place a welcome message on your front page, summarizing your site's highlights, informing visitors of what they'll find, and thanking them for stopping by.

If you have an "about us" page on your site, you might want to record a brief message to accompany your background info. This will help people feel as if they're actually meeting you.

Since testimonials are a great enhancement to any site imagine if you actually added them in your customer's own voice. If you use one of the phone recording services you could give them the number and they could easily record how they feel about your products/services.

If your site has been featured in an online interview or radio show, imagine including this audio in your site. Just think of it as your very own live press room.

One thing to consider is the quality of your voice. If it's not all that pleasant to listen to, you may want to employ the help of a friend, or you could hire a "professional" voice-over service. Do a search at Google and you'll find plenty of options.

There are many features that these new programs provide the user.

Produce as many files as you like. No need for expensive programmers Host them on your own server - you're in control. Greatly reduce the size of your audio file. Streams over most modem connections Easy to use interface Added components for more variety.

MP3 Sound Stream is one of these products that enables anybody to add streaming audio content to their website.

MP3 Sound Stream 1.25 (mp3ss) makes high quality 56K streaming audio from MP3 or WAV files. Select a file and it will create a web page and Flash animations that stream the audio. It uses LAME compression to produce very high quality output. The program is written in C++ and runs on the following platforms: Win95, Win98, WinME and WinXP.

Rather than trying to sell you on this product simply visit MP3 Sound Stream (http://www.mp3soundstream.com and experience it for your self. You can download a full featured demo of the product and see how simple it is to add audio to your site today.