More than a year ago, I wrote an piece on Playing mp3 with an embedded Flash player. Things change quickly in this area, so it’s time for an update.

These are all tools to play either individual MP3 files or playlists (e.g. podcast RSS feeds) in a web page. Most of them are based on Macromedia/Adobe Flash. Where possible, I’ll use my Smoothpod Mashups as an example feed.

Hosted Service (insert HTML code)

Pupuplayer Free
License: no details – I presume it’s free to use
Format: expects a podcast feed as input
pupuplayer
Pickle Player
License: no details – I presume it’s free to use
Format: expects a podcast feed as input – or can work with individual MP3 files
pickle player
FeedPlayer
License: no details – I presume it’s free to use
Format: expects a podcast feed as input
feedplayer
Webjay (now Yahoo!)
free
can work with feeds or MP3 files, can also generate a playlist from an HTML page
webjay
Webjay Wizard
This tool of mine can also be used to create the HTML code for Windows Mediaplayer, RealPlayer or Quicktime embedded players

Software to install (on your server)

This means that at the very least you need FTP access to drop files on specific places on your server (not possible with Blogspot, e.g.).

MusicPlayer
License: This is an open-source (SourceForge) project by Fabricio Zuardi. It is free for non-commercial use.
Method: you reference a Flash file and give it the URL of the playlist. The Flash file is embedded with the usual [object] and tags.
Format: it uses the standard XSPF (XML Shareable Playlist Format). Webjay can convert any HTML file/feed to XSPF! Check the Webjay wizard to generate the right HTML code for your page!
musicplayer
SoundBlox
License: This is an Apache-style open source project by Laszlo Systems, based on the Laszlo open-source RAD framework. It is free for non-commercial use.
Method: you reference a Javascript file in your HTML headers, and then call a Javascript function with the URL of the playlist. (This is a problem for some sites. Blogger e.g. does not allow <script> tags in its posts, only in the template.)
Format: it uses a proprietary XML format. Files in XSPF format can be converted to the SoundBlox format through XSLT
Flash MP3 Player
License: Creative commons, free for non-commercial use
Format: RSS files, XSPF files
flashmp3
GurusNetwork
License: not explicitly stated. I presume it’s free to use.
Method: you reference a Flash file, which contains the playlist of the MP3 files to play. You can’t specify a self-made playlist
Sonify
License: not explicitly stated. I presume it’s free to use.
Method: you reference a Flash file, which contains the playlist of the MP3 files to play. You can’t specify a self-made playlist
RadioBlogClub
License: free to use.
Method: you host the player with all graphics and a config.xml file, that points to a playlist.
Format: A PHP script creates an XML playlist for all MP3 present in a local(!) folder.