[LAU] About Soundcloud

Leigh Dyer lsd at wootangent.net
Wed Oct 31 22:39:15 UTC 2012


On 01/11/12 08:37, Peter Crighton wrote:
> Only two comments to that for now:
>
> 1. The default Soundcloud widget is HTML5 since the beginning of the year.

It's worth noting that Soundcloud HTML5 player only actually uses HTML5 
when the browser supports MP3, which is notably not the case in Firefox 
or Chromium (though Google's official Chrome builds do include it). If 
you open a Soundcloud stream on one of those browsers, it'll still use 
Flash.

At Bandcamp we have the same problem, and we currently solve it in the 
same way -- by using HTML5 on browsers that support it, and using Flash 
elsewhere. Switching to open codecs (eg: Vorbis) that are supported in 
Firefox is not a practical solution, since Apple and MS have so far 
refused to support them.

Personally, I'm really hoping the new Opus codec sees wide adoption 
among browser makers. I wouldn't normally be optimistic about an open 
codec gaining support from the likes of Apple or MS, but it's currently 
a mandatory part of the WebRTC spec, so there's some slim hope that we 
may in future be able to use one streaming format for all HTML5 browsers.

Thanks
Leigh


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