Imagine this situation: you're browsing people's shops on NeoPets, looking to see if you can find something for cheap, while you're listening to your favorite CD on your computer. All of a sudden, you enter somebody's shop and "Toxic" by Britney Spears starts blasting out of your speakers. By this time you are probably a) surprised, since out of nowhere loud music started to play for you, and b) pissed off, because the shop owner decided to put it there in the first place and assumed you actually wanted to hear it, even though you are perfectly capable of listening to the music you want to. Music with words is not what you would call background music, which I consider the only type of music that should be on web pages. Don't get me wrong, MP3 files are wonderful.... for listening to in your spare time. Normally people don't browse random pages on the internet to listen to music. So no, MIDI files don't contain the real song, but if you really want to listen to the real song, you can download a file sharing program and get your own MP3's. Sure, it's illegal to download the files but most people don't seem to care. But seriously, do you think that people who go to your NeoPets shop are going there just to listen to music when they can easily download/buy the song they want and listen to it whenever they want? You don't want to scare your visitors into leaving by causing them heart attacks, annoyance, etc, from the sounds; you want them to enjoy themselves and possibly return to your page. Most likely, somebody who disagrees with me would argue that a MIDI file can be equally annoying and loud. In some cases, you're right about the loudness part, but I have to say that they aren't nearly as annoying as the music with words.

Right off the bat, most people would just say that if it's too slow, either get a new computer or cable internet. I agree. Cancel your subscription to AOL and sign up for real internet to make it go faster. Unfortunately, this option isn't available to most people (realize that since you're even reading this, then you are in the upper few percent of the world who can actually afford and get access to the internet) and it won't happen. If you have a large music file on your page, the average AOLer will probably not be able to get to it; if he or she does have the patience to let the page load all the way, you have wasted some of that person's time by having them wait for it. Yeah, it sounds lame, but it all boils down to the fact that most people are impatient and don't like to wait for any amount of time, especially on the internet, of all things. This isn't just my opinion either; if you put a large file on your page you are limiting potential visitors because people will slow connections will not be able to load your page or will not want to wait for it load, and that's a fact. If you say you have a file with words that is small, about 50k in size (which is improbable, but it might be able to happen) then it is either bad sounding, since when you make a file smaller you are sacrificing quality, or it is still loud and annoying. MIDI files (at least the ones I provide on here) are all 50k or less as far as I know, which is pretty small. You'll probably notice that they load fairly quickly as well.

If you're planning to put music on your page on, say, neopets.com, then you have to abide by their terms a conditions which do not allow you to put songs that have offensive content in it. Pretend for a moment that your favorite song contains vivid descriptions "hot chicks", drugs, or something like that. It's unfortunate that you will get frozen if you put the actual song in your page since NeoPets doesn't allow things like that. So what should you do? The answer is to put a MIDI file instead. Since they don't contain words, they can't be inappropriate. So if you think a song has questionable lyrics that might end up in your account being iced, it's better to just put a MIDI file to be safe. I've noticed that most popular songs in this age seem to have something in them that neopets would consider "inappropriate".

Ever heard of Napster? Napster gave away music for free for a while and people could get as many MP3's as they wanted. What about Kazaa? Limewire? Morpheus? Yep, all of these file sharing industries had lawsuits filed against them because you can download music (the actual files ripped from the CD's, a.k.a. MP3/WAV) for free off of them. Some of the users of these programs were also targeted and have gotten sued. Of course, music on your page is very different from this, but nonetheless, it's still piracy and you can't claim ignorance to this. 99.9% of the songs you would want on your page are copyrighted, and we all know what happens when you mess with something that's copyrighted. MP3 files themselves are not illegal; Obtaining a copyrighted MP3 file without paying for it IS. It may not be so bad if you copy the code from somebody else's site and put it on your page, but if you redistribute these files, you could be in some trouble. You may not know this but every time you visit a web page, EVERYTHING on that page is automatically saved to your computer mostly in a folder called Temporary Internet Files. So by viewing this page, you downloaded the .html files for this main page, the right frame, the left frame, and you also downloaded all the little images on the side menu. Want to take a guess at what happens when you visit a page with music in it? That's right, you download the file and there's no way to stop this. Sneaky, huh? I know for a fact that it's illegal to have a copyrighted, unpaid for MP3 on your computer for more than 24 hours. It's very unlikely that you will get caught for something in your temporary files folder, but if you're one of those people who obeys laws just for the principle of the thing, this might be something to consider. If you want to be very cautious about this, simply clear your temporary internet files after you view a page with "music with words" in it. Still not convinced? Read this next part. I came across the web site of the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) the other day. These guys are the ones getting the people in trouble who download copyrighted MP3 files - the head honchos of the music industry. I found the following quote under a section which stated the four different kinds of piracy:

"Online piracy is the unauthorized uploading of a copyrighted sound recording and making it available to the public, or downloading a sound recording from an Internet site, even if the recording isn't resold. Online piracy may now also include certain uses of "streaming" technologies from the Internet."

Bad news for all you with sites that use copyrighted MP3s. Seems as if you have to be "authorized" to even upload one onto the internet. If you are providing a site with copy paste codes then you are "making it available to the public". It doesn't say anything about having a disclaimer on your site, so it looks like even if you did, it would not matter. It also says something about "streaming technologies" which most people would associate with RealAudio. On a web page, an MP3 file playing is about equal to a streaming file. But if you read it closely, you will notice that since they say it "may now also include" that laws about music on the internet are not all for sure yet. Even if there is some kind of little detail somewhere that states a way that you could say this is legal in any way, I'd just stay away from it anyway because of what it says in that above quote. Read the whole article to see for yourself. Though the laws concerning music on the internet differ from country to country, it's better to just play it safe and stay away from it. As far as I know, every MIDI on this site is in the public domain, as it states in the disclaimer on the site I get them from, so there's nothing to worry about.

The one thing that's more annoying than an MP3 on a web page is having a 30-second clip of a song on a page. The new trend seems to be taking the 30-second sample MP3s off Walmart.com and using them in web pages. Seriously... who wants to hear 30 seconds of a song repeating over and over? Another thing that I noticed is that people are making web pages and redistributing these codes from Walmart and then putting their link in the code. Why exactly? They didn't even upload them to their own web space or create the files so why are these people getting credit for anything? Because they coded it? Ooooh.... so if I set up a stand for someone to sell their original work on, do I get credit whenever somebody buys something just because I put up the arrangement to make it accesible to people? If the URL of the song starts with a Walmart address you don't need to credit these people but if they uploaded it onto their own web space then you do. If somebody creates their own original graphics or takes the time and money to host a file then that requires a link but if someone just takes files from somewhere else and redistributes them without having the decency to upload them somewhere else, I really don't think that should deserve credit. Anyway, 30-second song clips are annoying. Let's rebel. :)

To sum it all up, MP3 files are great for listening to on your own time, but they really have no place in a web page. Unless, of course, you want to annoy your visitors, blast out their ear drums with loud noises, or have them wait longer than they should have to for your page to load, you should put a MIDI file on your page if you really want music. It's really your choice, but definitely I know which option I would choose.