The YouTube of Sound

Question

My current website includes some embedded YouTube (and Facebook) videos and I know there are numerous other video hosting websites.

Is there a free hosting service specifically for audio files, for easy embedded playback through a flash/html5 interface?

(I'm not worried about social features, e.g. commenting)

Answer 1

Is there a free hosting service specifically for audio files, for easy embedded playback through a flash/html5 interface?

yes, there are plenty. What type of playback is embedded on your site will take a little extra snooping, but not much.

Answer 2

Don't forget there is nothing stopping you using YouTube - your "video" can consist of a still image and then the audio. You could even use the video part to convey information about the audio as it is played. And you can customise the look of the player via the API, if that is a concern.

Answer 3

I found a similar question at webapps.stackexchange.com.

Here are my favorite answers:

• Youtube - Works just fine for audio. You can have a static image as a background or get creative and make a slideshow or something. Drawback: length limit
• SoundCloud - This would be my favorite if not for a limit on minutes of audio per account (120 minutes I think) Its got a really nice and easy embedded player too
• Archive.org - If you don't already know about this site, go now.

Others I haven't had the chance to scope out yet:

• http://tindeck.com/
• http://www.hark.com/
• http://www.freesound.org/index.php
• http://www.prx.org/help/posting-audio
• http://fizy.com/en
• http://grooveshark.com/
• http://www.tunesbag.com/
• http://hypem.com/
• http://www.houndbite.com/

Answer 4

I host mp3/audio files without worrying about bandwidth by moving them onto Amazon S3. I get good performance, and minimal charges (I host under a gigabyte of various content (high resolution images, mp3 files) and pay under $2/month. This is for maybe a dozen mp3 files as well as for a podcast.

Now, the social aspects of YouTube, commenting, sharing, feeds, etc., I can't speak to.

Answer 5

For hosting the audio files yourself there are a number of pre-made flash objects you can use.

The one at http://flash-mp3-player.net/ is F/OSS and fairly flexible - I've used it to host a few mp3 files before now and found it to work perfectly well.

Whether it is suitable for your needs or not depends on how much traffic you expect and how much bandwidth you can spare for the audio streams.

Answer 6

Just FYI, we (hark.com) offer this service with lots of different player formats.