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I'm already listening to music, so shut the fuck up. thanks.

h314 Jan 2008 –  Comments (81)

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Finally, someone who can be bothered to speak out about this! Great post. Also, may I recommend FlashMute, a system tray app that can mute all flash, and all browser sounds.

[] Sam H ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 4:16 p.m.

right on! this is annoying just as much as the gigantic fast moving ads which I NEVER ever look at.. if I need something, I SEARCH for it. HELLO??? any idiots in the douche-keting department listening??

[] Anonymous ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 4:16 p.m.

Wow, you took the words right out of my mouth. Nice.

You know what I hate more than Flash with music? Those banner ads that talk to you. Ugh. Nothing I hate more than when I trying to do work for http://ww2db.com , click around the web to do some online research, and hear "you may have already won an iPod!"

[] ww2db.com ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 6:41 p.m.

Nice post, particularly because there's no way to tell how loud the end-user's volume is set, nothing worse than accidentally blaring out loud crappy music in the office when you shouldn't be surfing the intertoobs in the first place. I would exempt sites catering to a specific band or style of music though.

[] Anonymous ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 8:47 p.m.

A small number of web users, mostly blind people, navigate the web using software that speaks the contents of web pages. For these users "unrequested sound or video" of all types makes the web sites entirely unusable.

[] bondolo ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 10:06 p.m.

FlashBlock is your friend; one click to enable a particular flash item, two clicks to permanently white-list a site, and zero clicks to disable every stupid talking, singing or merely musical ad out there.

[] cwillu ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 10:37 p.m.

What do you mean finally? I was complaining about this on Usenet in 1997. The only difference is that now the designers of such sites should be even more ashamed with themselves.

[] Anonymous ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 10:41 p.m.

firefox + flashblock

[] Anonymous ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 10:54 p.m.

Love it

[] Anonymous ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 10:55 p.m.

ok, now you got me going.....

how about the useless drum track some macdonald's for brains recording engineer throws over the great keyboard track because he thinks it "improves" the groove

falsh ads, i would happily shoot anybody who tries to steal my attention in such an obnoxious way

greed and ignorance, my god, technology amplifies everything...

most everything produced these days is not at all necessary, and has a huge cost beyond the euros purchase price, and that is time and attention and dumbness, so ubiquitous as to be nearly forced upon us...

try to do better, is all we can do, and think about someone else instead of how to screw people to build your bank account

good luck with that...

[] gregory ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 11:20 p.m.

Welcome to 2001. It shouldn't need to be said anymore.

[] Anonymous ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 11:55 p.m.

If you are using firefox, use flash blocker addon.

[] Nishanth - http://nishpeak.blogspot.com/ ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 12:21 a.m.

If you're running Windows Vista, you can mute just IE (or FireFox). Works like a champ! When you hear sound from a site, double-click on the speaker in the system tray, then mute the browser in the list.

[] paulcam ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 12:44 a.m.

Some of us have a kilowatt of subs connected to our computers, and at 2am when you are nearly sleeping on your keyboard and suddenly some page starts playing 'my humps' at volume 11, yeah i get pissed as would anyone.

[] rat ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 1:09 a.m.

well said!

[] Anonymous ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 1:34 a.m.

Well said!
Now go shout it in their ears & keep on shouting it till they find the off switch!

[] wonderdog ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 1:57 a.m.

Opera lets you turn off sound in web pages and enable them on a site-by-site basis. I do this with flash and java too as I absolutely HATE flash ads. I only enable plugins on sites like youtube.

[] Cappy ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 2:50 a.m.

While I totaly agree on the music rant, some sites live from ads, as a general rule (at least on the site I work for) bigger brings more money, and folks will pay extra for animated banners. As a I kid too hated the comercials in my sunday morning cartoons, but I don't mind getting to watch them for free. Just my 2 cents.

[] Mofy ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 2:54 a.m.

I actually run a second computer through my speakers to play music just for this reason.

[] Nathan R. ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 3:49 a.m.

... and on top of all this if your site plays music whilst I am looking at it at the office then I will close the window and NEVER VISIT YOUR SITE AGAIN! Thanks for making me look like a slacker in the office! - do you think that in effect insulting me in front of all of my work colleagues is somehow going to endear me to you and your site?!?!

[] james.robertson@bcu.ac.uk ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 4:05 a.m.

Use Firefox with Flashblock to avoid the flash ads other crap created with it.

[] cal3b ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 4:34 a.m.

Last not least it is more than boring when you surf at the office.

[] Anonymous ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 4:50 a.m.

finally, blah blah, shut it

[] Anonymous ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 4:52 a.m.

Yes please. Its like having someone playing obnoxious music in the street outside your home - you may want to listen to that crap but I don't - that's why we have disturbing the peace. We need disturbing the peace policies for web designers that get them locked up in a room for 24 hours with Helmut Lotti playing at full volume

[] Anonymous ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 5:18 a.m.
[] stigma ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 5:52 a.m.

Damn straight, infact, best thing I have ever read on this here internet thingie...

In fact I go one step further, and plead with any self respecting web browser company (obviously everyone except M$) to PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE ADD A MUTE BUTTON ON THE BROWSER ITSELF, that way those of us here can browse without these annoying interruptions.

[] Jamwad ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 6:26 a.m.

gigantic fast moving ads? Thing of the past with firefox and adblock plus.

[] Anonymous ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 6:50 a.m.

Here Here!

This has been a pet peeve of mine for years, auto-starting sound is rude and downright horrible.

Kudos for using Django.

[] mang90 ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 7:05 a.m.

I use the flashblock FF plugin - disables ALL flash. completely.

And its got this nice little play button that you need to press to start any particular flash movie.

[] Anonymous ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 7:16 a.m.

I agree absolutely.

I wish someone would tell MySpace about it. Obviously, if I'm visiting a band's site I probably want to hear their music, but I'd still like to choose when to switch it on. I almost never visit MySpace for that reason.

That said, I browse with NoScript, which you can set so that all flash is play-on-demand.

[] Chris ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 7:30 a.m.

Hey! It's 2008, this was a problem like 5 years ago, i can't remember when i last visited a website with backgroundmusic last time. That, of course, doesn't mean that you should put music on your page but i don't see the point of blogging about the "problem" today.

[] Anonymous ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 7:31 a.m.

You're an angry man. Watch your blood pressure! :D

[] Anonymous ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 7:42 a.m.

I never really have to deal with this anymore via Firefox and it's extension FlashBlock https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/433 which is great for avoiding annoying flash and saving mad system resources.

[] Anonymous ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 7:57 a.m.

absolutely! and for other bothersome truths about web design: http://kenray.org/theanswers.html

[] Kenray ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 8:28 a.m.

Totally agree. Myspace player is my special object of hate.

[] giovanni ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 8:32 a.m.

Hey. I work for one of the worldwide giants of web development and some of the sites we make for marketing purposes use sound. Personally, I hate this for all the reasons you mention. But I'd like to elucidate everyone on why companies do it:

  1. For those people who don't hate sound, they're more likely to engage with the site due to sound (which begs the question: how many people do we lose who DO hate auto sound?)

  2. Audio creates a more immersive experience (e.g. try watching TV on mute)

  3. We can charge out our sound development services (so it's another revenue stream)

  4. It differentiates it from our competitors.

  5. Marketing people (and CEOs) who are our main clients love sound because it makes their brand cool (and consequently discount the user annoyance factor).

So unfortunately auto-sound sites are the SUVs of web development. They're hideous in practice but appeal to a certain demographic.

[] Anonymous in London ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 8:41 a.m.

argh, the ones that materialise right in front of the content that you're about to read! then they have the cheek to only be closeable if you can see the microscopic "x" in the top right hand corner.

last page impression i'll be putting there.

think it was a "new mini" advert.

[] flashlover ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 8:52 a.m.

Right on the money! Cain't wait to have more people on the same page. Funny thing, I'm reading this at about the same time I got an email from a customer asking to add music on their front page "that would be cool"...

[] MisterK ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 8:57 a.m.

Right-on

[] Sammy G ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 8:58 a.m.

While this is true, often it's the marketing department (or the client) who mandates the music, not the designers. The designers (probably) find it just as abhorrent as you do.

[] Brian D. ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 8:59 a.m.

Truth! I also detest when annoying Flash ads start emitting all matter of annoying, repetitive sound. I have seen some fun Flash auditory experiences, but in hindsight, they could've done a better job warning me there was going to be NOISE in advance.

[] Torley ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 9:03 a.m.

Great post. the same happens with the autostart youtube movies

[] Anonymous ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 9:23 a.m.

Sorry if it took a while to moderate the comments.. my site was overloaded by the all requests.. obviously I'm not the only one that is irritated by this !

btw Anonymous in london I love your comparison with SUV ahah.

[] h3 ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 10:02 a.m.

Totally agree! I have experienced the two following scenarios: 1) I was listening to a low-volume track with headphones, so the main volume of the laptop was at the top; then I stopped it, and forgot about it. Later on, I came across a damned website with auto-starting music at a high volume! ouch! 2) The same, but without headphones, in the library.. You know, I got all that furious glances.

[] LuisM ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 11:43 a.m.

Amen, brother.

[] Anonymous ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 12:13 p.m.

I'm with you man. I also hate web-music

http://www.juzamdjinn.blogspot.com

[] Anonymous ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 1:14 p.m.

I also hate the black background / white foreground websites ;-) It is cool, but the rest of the internet (plus all your portfolio) is in the opposite way, and the sudden change make me feel pain in the eyes!

[] topper_harlie ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 1:27 p.m.

I hate sites that automatically play music. For some reason, I always seem to stumble upon them late at night when my volume happens to be turned up, and thus waking up someone, or while I'm at work and not supposed to be surfing the web.

[] Elias ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 1:33 p.m.

let go for my page. Do you understand?

[] daril ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 1:34 p.m.

Myspace and facebook and similar blog sites are the worst. I can understand where it comes from though. The people who do this sort of thing have very little experience on the net. I remember way back in the day my signature file used to be huge. As I matured on the net my sig file got simpler and simpler. Now it's just my name and a url. Something similar happened with my website. The Internet still suffers from the endless spring of '96 during which a flood of newbies arrived far faster than they could be indoctrinated and destroyed the Internet culture.

[] Anonymous ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 3:16 p.m.

Amen brother. I would go so far as to ask for no audio of any kind thank you. Give us the option of turning the musak on if we want to hear it. There's a button that will never be clicked.

[] Anonymous ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 5:27 p.m.

rite on, rite on, rite on this is precisely the point. no freakin autostart!! thank you.

[] Robay ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 10:49 p.m.

Absolutely correct. As for the post stating that marketing and CEO types love it, they need to understand that it only works in their own minds. It annoys people, it makes people so angry they leave the site and don't come back. People who make the decision to include auto-start musak have not done their research. I will not run add-ons to my browser - I will not come back to the offending site and I will certainly never buy a product or service from a company who has invaded my privacy.

[] DJ ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 2 a.m.

Not only the music, but that annoying nasal woman who blurts out in a very loud voice "Congratulations you have been selected" for some scam or other. SHUT UP

[] Anonymous ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 3:06 a.m.

Amen!

[] Ben ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 4:26 a.m.

Along the same lines I wish to kill anybody involved in the creation of talking ads...I dont need some lady giving me a heart-attack just to tell me Ive won a free i-phone.

[] Mike P ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 11:06 a.m.

Couldn't agree more - look at this ranting lady talking about SMS text integation - scared the bejesus outta me! http://www.txtlocal.co.uk/sms-api.php

[] JamesM ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 11:50 a.m.

Man, with you all the way on that one. I've just stopped going to sites that have crap flash. Now if only they used flash like google's analytics?

[] XSeria ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 6:42 p.m.

I agree with the points presented. Thank you!

Do you know what else is annoying? If you write a rant to the world, at least check your spelling, grammar, and sentence structure.

[] mjt ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 8:31 p.m.

I guess you're right mjt. My English is far from perfect, mostly because it's not my birth language. I'm really sorry if it caused you some kind of discomfort or something .. I work hard on this issue.

Actually this is one of the reasons why I chose to write in English. To improve. The other reason is because I don't like to talk about technical or computer related topics in French, let's face it French technical words sucks. I don't see myself using the word "arobas" to designate @.

So I hope that you somewhat enjoyed your visit and got my point despite my grammatical glitches.

Oh, and final note. I did not expect this post to be a hype at all..

[] h3 ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 9:23 p.m.

Thank you so much for that one.. =)

[] .W. ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 6:29 p.m.

From an end-user POV, I couldn't agree with you more. From a web, and sometime Flash developer POV, you're off the mark targeting "Flash developers" -- we make sites for clients, and are paid to do what they want, despite our regular insistence to the contrary.

Of the four Flash clients I've had in the past year (most of my clients go for CSS/HTML based on my rec), only one thought having music as an option was a good idea... everyone else has remarked "Well, if you only leave it on as an option, then chances are people will never know to look for it."

So lay off us developers -- I didn't pick my clients' taste in music, and certainly not their taste in color schemes :D My music is awesome, and never dates, bitches!

[] jlafferty ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 11:19 a.m.

One of the Ten Commandments of the web.
I have walked away from flash projects over this very topic. I usually tell them to rip off someone with talent next time.

[] Larry T ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 2:30 p.m.

THANK YOU!!! I work for an internet company designing websites for customers, and I get so tired of having to explain why they shouldn't put music on their site. Just because they can, certainly does not mean that they should!

[] SilverStreak ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 11:55 p.m.

amen

[] G_P ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 1:38 a.m.

We all have little things that annoy us... Personally I am annoyed with people who write stuff like "listen music" instead of "listen to music". But that's just me :)

[] Pedantic ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 4:22 a.m.

I'm angry and I'm blogging

[] Name ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 8:10 a.m.

I develop flash sites, and the worst I had was a client who insisted on having his specifically-composed-for-the-site music blasting out. It was the most frustrating thing. I hate music on web. Sound effects annoy me often, too. I love flash mute, but this should be a part of flash player's right click menu. Adobe should have fixed that by now. The main issue with music, and particularly with flash-based sites is that people often open a few sites in tabs while waiting for them to load. Not only do you have to find the annoying stop button, you have to find the site in question.

[] Jethro ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 10:41 a.m.

I used to do an audio loop on my own website, back in the day when it was cool. I was young, stupid and didn't know any better. Auto-start audio on websites are now soooo yesterday, yet I still find those pages somehow, especially on MySpace, which seems to encourage it.

[] Jay V. ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 12:03 p.m.

THANK YOU! sheesh, I've been saying this for years...

[] Dee Ann ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 12:21 p.m.

Great post, exactly how I feel about it!

[] abadtooth ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 12:58 p.m.

The instant a site does that, I just click on Stumble! to get away from that crap. Far, far away from the d-bag that put music on his/her site. Thank you for saying it, and thanks to whoever put this on StumbleUpon. It should be required reading for web developers.

[] rprebel ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 9:06 a.m.

Stop your whining!!!

it'd be like knocking on someones door to ask them a question and throwin a mental cos the music they're playing is mixing in with your ipod... or gettin pissed at cars with phat mufflers for doing the same (actually that does piss me off)... or being in a library and someone is reading out loud and you gettin all narked at them (errm hang on I've gone full circle here)... Fkit yeh you're right!

...and another thing those Mosquito ads! what the fks up with those!

[] meme ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 8:19 p.m.

I Dunno I know you are all saying it's so bad but i really don't mind the music, sometimes it is even entertaining, like the other day I got one playing the theme from space odyssey. It's OK by me

[] Waveracer ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 9:55 p.m.

Right on brother, let's kick those music auto playing flash dill weeds in the ass and bash them with something light and not too damage causing. man I want to punch the mailbox when that happens, except it's outside and right not it's cold. How about Winona Rider Playing Spocks mother in the new Star Trek. What a slap in the face to spok hu? jayexeter@jelia.us thanks for letting me rant, and great site

[] Jay Exeter ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 12:09 a.m.

You so right. That "find the tab before you find the stop button" is a killer.

http://www.6000.co.za

[] 6000 ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 4:48 a.m.

I have to admit, there are few things I hate more than music that starts on it's own on webpages.

[] Ravenhawk ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 5:12 p.m.

Stay away from the fat man

[] frank ~ 2 years, 1 month ago at 6:16 p.m.

Personally I think you are a very rude person, who are you to say whether somebody cannot put music on a blog or web page. From http://thewhizzer.blogspot.com/ I will not remain anonymous why should I

[] Anonymous ~ 1 year, 11 months ago at 4:28 a.m.

@Anonymous

Who am I ? Well, just a rude person who occasionally use his blog to vent his frustration.

I don't impose to anyone to abstain to put music on their site, like I don't impose to anyone to read my blog. I just tried to give some real good reasons to not do it. Actually you can do it in a respectful way, without imposing it to your visitors, because that is rude sir.

Maybe my headline was rude, maybe I am.. I don't know.

Anyway, the web is based on the REST principle. While I'm not here to educate you about how the REST architecture is supposed to work, the general idea is that you request something and the server gives it to you.

When I request a site to gather some information and music start playing, did I really requested this music ?

I think it's has desirable has unrequested pop-up windows, but that's my very own opinion.

You can have yours and share them, that's why allow comments.

Cheers.

Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead: therefore we must learn both arts.

Thomas Carlyle

[] h3 ~ 1 year, 11 months ago at 5:50 p.m.

Nice post,

I agree i hate the auto start music sites, not only do they slow down the loading of the site but its annoying when you already have music playing,

Thanks for sharing,

Keep up the good work

[] software developer ~ 4 months, 1 week ago at 6:26 a.m.

Copyrighted stuff .. u know.