Sourcing Audio

Important All media you use on your sites should be your own or in “fair public use,” usually under Creative Commons (CC) public licence. You should always credit the author when asked to do so.

Important Test your pages on multiple computers and browsers to make sure the embedded media works.

Common Downloadable Audio Sources

How-To:

The Audio Archive, for example, is a great source of royalty-free and creative commons audio works, usually offered in MP3 format. Here’s an example from the Apollo 11 landing using Chrome:



One of the potential issues of using the <audio> element in particular is that it allows end-users to easily download the audio file. For example, in Safari, this can be done by right-clicking the audio player and selecting “Download Audio.” Chrome actually provides a download button with the audio player.

audio file with download option selected in Safari

audio file with download button selected in Chrome

This ability is something to weigh when considering content protection, discussed at the end of this section.