Why will Safari not play MP3s embedded in my iWeb pages when Firefox can?

Try dragging the MP3 in from the Finder rather than iTunes if you have the original.

I think the problem may be associated with the meta data added by iTunes. The question first arose a while back when an iWeb user was loading files from iTunes, hosting them on MobileMe and having a problem with them not loading in Safari 5.

After some testing is shows that adding illustrations to a tune in iTunes the MP3 file does not play (with or without an iWeb page) in Safari.

When using this app to add an illustration to the MP3 file

the illustration is shown in iTunes when you add the tune and it will play in a webpage in the browser (with or without iWeb).

So apparently it's a bug in iTunes when adding the picture.

You can safely use MP3 files in all browsers without any problem.

And speaking about odd.

When I add your original tune to iTunes and then add it to iWeb, the tune will not play.

When I remove the image from your tune (drag the image to the desktop) and then add it to iWeb, it will play.

When I add the image to the tune (drag it from the desktop) in iTunes again and use the tune in iWeb again, it will play in the webpage.

Somewhere in the chain of events your tune was effected when the image was added.

The topic was discussed a while back and its only in certain situations with certain combinations that this happens.

iWeb is no longer supported by Apple but the application will be usuable for quite some time.

Use an HTML5 audio tag to play your music and it will work on most devices and in all browsers except the older versions of Internet Explorer...

http://www.iwebformusicians.com/Website-Music-Players/HTML5-Audio.html

Reading this, I suspect Itunes is the problem indeed. I just posted this:

After a week of mailing with the makers of It's Learning I have found a solution.

The problem occured when opening a mp3 within It's Learning, an Electronic Learning Surrounding. Safari would just 'load' the file, but nothing would actually happen. At the end I discoverd this would happen to 'only' 49 mp3's in a list of songs my first year pupils use for learning excercises. Some 80 other files, from 2nd and 3rd year pupils did not have this issue.

When uploading a new version of the same file, it still did not solve the problem. After ripping the CD and renaming all the files, it seemed to work, so I started to rearrange the files, names, albumtitles etc. And provide them with an illustration of the cover, because this looks nice on my mp3 player. But then the problem reoccured. The file kept on loading... So I unpictured all the files, and uploaded the mp3's again. Now they do open in Safari.

This issue with the 'corrupt' files, did not happen on Firefox for Mac or on PC's with Windows and Internet Explorer.

Although previously the files had no issue's untill about a week ago, this 'suddenly' occured. This is the same with letters in titles like é. Uploading files with this in the title did end with an 'unfindeable file' message.

Best regards,

Jeroen Pouw

Its a long time since this problem appeared and I forget most of the details but it is related to the meta data.

One of my workarounds when trying to find the cause of this was to remove the data and add it with another aplication - Bias Peak.

I don't ever use iTunes to process or store files or QuickTime to play audio anyway. Nowadays its better to use an HTML5 player with flash fallback.

I recommend John Dyer's audio version of the mediaelement player for single songs. See the bottom of this page for an example...

http://www.iwebformusicians.com/Website-Music-Players/HTML5-Audio-In-A-Box.html

You can see from my examples that several can be used in one HTML Snippet sharing the same basic code.

There are a number of good playlist style players around now that use HTML5 with flash fallback like this...

http://www.iwebformusicians.com/Website-Music-Players/music-box.html

... and these...

http://www.ezmacwebdesign.com/Audio-Playlist-Players/audio-playlist.html

The problem is related to dragging files in from iTunes in combination with depending on the QuickTime plugin.

Firefox cannot play MP3 natively. It depends on a plugin and only supports .ogg natively.

To cover all situations, you still need to use an HTML5 audio player with flash fallback.

If the HTML5 player didn't work in Safari and Chrome it would suggest that the problem is with your MP3 file - often caused by iTunes.

The only time I let audio files go anywhere near iTunes is when I have to so that I can import them into iPhoto or Keynote. Otherwise I avoid it like the plague!