Many of our products allow for the upload of music files. Depending on the product, there may be many different ways to add music to your slideshow/website, but here are the key facts you need to know about uploading music.
Filetype, Download speeds, and Bitrates
Filetype
Since all of our applications opt for simplicity, we only support MP3. Note that any music you purchase from iTunes will not be in this format, it will be in the AAC format, which is not natively compatible with the many browsers.
Download speeds, and Bitrates
Most, if not all of the music on your computer that you use to listen to (using iTunes, etc) is almost always encoded in a high-quality bitrate. The bitrate of the audio file essentially makes the file bigger or smaller by leaving in more detail about the audio. It's very likely your music is encoded at a constant or variable bitrate (CBR/VBR) that is set as "archival" (meaning virtually no discernible quality loss from the original) of 256, or even 320 kbps. These can be very large files. A 4 minute song can easily be over 8 mb.
Because your products are on the internet, and you want your users to have a positive, snappy experience, bitrates of anything over 128 kbps is not only overkill, it will choke download speeds, consume more memory, and is just a bad idea in general.
Our recommendation is 64 kbps. The quality will be on par with internet radio stations, and music streaming services. If quality of the music is of the utmost importance, we still recommend going no higher than 128 kbps. We consider this to be the bitrate ceiling for the web.
Server Restrictions
Not all servers are created equally. Many servers put a cap on upload filesizes, and many put this number, sadly, at 2mb. Unfortunately, there is not much we can do about this limitation. If you are finding that you can't upload files that are bigger than 2mb, you should contact your hosting provider, and see if they can't increase that for you. For any product purchased after March 2010, you can find out your upload limit by going here:
Login > Dashboard > System Info > Maximum Upload Size
If this number is 2mb -- or any number not up to your standards -- your first best option is to contact your host provider, as they hold the keys to the kingdom. Below is a sample email that should tell them what you are are after. This email is worded for a request for 64 mb, but feel free to change that. Also, be sure to include your domain name, or id or whatever so they know who you are!
Hosting Technical Support:
I've recently installed software on my web server that allows me
to upload images and audio to create slideshow presentations. As
it stands, the server's maximum upload size is limiting my
ability to upload larger media files. The software is already
trying to override php's settings via an .htaccess file, but that
approach is not working.
Is it possible for you to increase my upload limit? I know some
servers allow custom php.ini files, and some allow you to change
this setting in my control panel, but I have yet to find the
option. If it's something I can do on my end, can you please
direct me to the instructions on how to do so?
I'd like the maximum upload size to be set to 64mb.
Sincerely,
<YOUR NAME HERE>
<YOUR DOMAIN HERE>
Of course, we recommend Hostgator -- they keep their upload maximum to 64mb by default.
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