Aside: I think it’s fucking great that the New Times is sharing local music on its blog. But it is fucking LAME that they choose a dodgy format that tells me I need to “download additional plugins” instead of just clicking to play or download like every respectable website on the internet. THIS IS WHY PRINT JOURNALISM IS DYING YOU ASSHOLES. Update: Just to be clear, I’m pissed at Village Voice Media for — apparently — not having a standard way for their bloggers to share mp3’s, not at Arielle for making a poor choice. Here is the file, for anyone interested.
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Ain’t no blogging like a drunk blogging. Whatever. So, I got a nice response from Arielle last night and Rick linked here this morning so. Sorry for being snippy. Here’s what I said to Arielle:
… I run a one-man shop here for about an hour a day, and when I did my Lou Reed post, I figured out how to embed those flash players the same morning that the post went up, no big deal. YOU on the other hand have a 12+ publication media group behind you, so it seems a little disingenuous to claim you can’t figure it out. I actually suspected you were using whatever weird proprietary format that is because of some sort of deal with whatever company’s behind it…
And if you really can’t figure out a flash player, why not just upload the mp3 to your server and link to it? …
Now, WRT the “print journalism is dying” comment, careful readers will remember that I spent years railing about newspapers not playing nice with the internet.
Hey Alesh,
We have that flash player capability but I wanted folks to be able to download the music rather than just stream it. I’ve just been using Zshare so far because it’s easy and fast and that’s what I was using to share personal media stuff anyways, so there it is. Thanks for reading.
“Easier”?
I don’t know. When I clicked on the link on your blog, the zdpage (never heard of it before) lets me “Click here to download a plugin” or “Download this file.”
When I click the latter, I get taken to a page that asks me to “Take this Idiot Test!!” When I close that window, I realize there’s a blank page with a tiny “skip this ad” link at the top. When I click it, it takes me to a page that says “your download will begin shortly,” and is counting down 60 seconds (?!). When I tried it again this morning, it crashed Firefox. When I tried it a THIRD time, I realized I still had to click one MORE time, and FINALLY it actually worked.
The song is nice. But how is this easier then just uploading the file and giving us a link to it like this — I did this in about 60 seconds … ?
Anyway, I take it from your response that Village Voice Media does not have a standard accepted way to share mp3 files across its dozen+ websites, and just lets every single blogger figure it out for themselves. Sorry I jumped to that conclusion.