Listen up all current and potential future owners of Bed & Breakfast Inns:
If you absolutely insist on having music playing on your website, you need to have a mute button. It needs to be clear and readily evident to even slow-thinking internet users. Furthermore, the darned thing needs to actually work when a user clicks it. Not work for two seconds and then start playing again. Not work only as long as the mouse pointer is hovering over the mute button. If I click mute, the music should stop and stop for good until I say otherwise.
If you don't have tech staff capable of figuring out how to code such a thing--I certainly don't know how to do it but, and this is important, I know it can be done--then please don't put music on the website. Please
I may not like the song you've chosen. I may be at work. I may be using the computer at 1:30 in the morning and don't want to wake up my significant other who I'm trying to surprise with a visit to your inn. I may be listening to other music I actually like and don't want the interference.
The only good reason to have music on a website is when the website belongs to a musician, band, or music producer. Just because you can do it on Myspace doesn't mean it's a good idea generally. All of you who had blaring music I couldn't figure out how to turn off? I just navigated away from your website and won't bother researching whether to stay at your inn or not. You're off the list. I doubt anybody is going to choose your inn on the basis of the music on the website, but you can certainly turn customers off if they can't turn the music off.
Sheesh.
4 comments:
As a fanatical music fanatic, I think it's even too much for musical artists to have auto-playing music that starts instantly as soon as you visit their site. Even if it's really great music. A lot of the time I'm well-acquainted with the artists whose site I'm visiting, and may even be listening to them at the time through some other channel.
On a few occasions I've actually stopped keeping up with bands I really like otherwise because their websites are so invasive and/or broken when music scripts are blocked (Yonder Mountain String Band is the first example that comes to my mind. I stopped keeping track of their touring schedule and suddenly they were off my mental tour map). At least decent myspace pages are relatively easy to deal with...
due to the large number of sites that do have annoying music. I usually navigate with my computer muted and then turn it back on when there is something that I want to hear.
Like Rick, I surf with the speakers muted. And as a geek, I can attest that it is EASY to allow a user to click a button and keep the stinkin' sound muted. And, of course, proper 'netiquette dictates that one NOT have any sounds play automatically. That's just an indicator of a website newbie - someone who figures that because they CAN play sounds, that they SHOULD play sounds. *barf*
See, I don't think we should have to surf sans sound. I have a great deal of music on my hard drive that lives only on my hard drive. If I want to listen to it, I have to listen to it on the computer--and if I'm sitting down to research B&Bs for half an hour or an hour, I don't care to do it in silence. I just don't think there's any valid reason anyone should be expected to surf muted, unless they're planning to surf porn in Starbucks, for example. Then, yeah, mute away.
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