(Nutshell: Put audio players when you post songs on a site, instead of just links to download mp3s.)

Let me just get this out of the way: it really irritates me when music sites don't offer embedded audio, when they just put in a link to the mp3 and then figure that you're only going to download it. But I don't want to download songs unless I know I want them in my library, so give me an option to hit a play button, listen once, and decide whether or not I want to add it to my library.

Fortunately, there's lots of easy options to do it. If you're on a Wordpress blog, it's incredibly easy. But if your site isn't on Wordpress, you can still add the option to turn your site into an ineractive listening booth. Or something.

Our option: The Naive Harmonies GroinGrabbingFacePeeler™ Audio Player
Okay, okay...it's not trademarked. And no, we didn't develop it or do anything else besides download it and then shove it in (sideways*). And it doesn't grab your groin unless you get it drunk first. But it's the option we've gone with: a nice, clean, customizable, single-song player.

It begins with this player. The trick is that the actual player itself and the files need to be hosted, but you can take care of the hosting for free with one of these options, and the hosting of the player and the javascript can be done with those as well.

The downfall, if you haven't guessed, is that it requires a little more technical knowledge and patience. We have to copy the code from a shared Google doc every time we embed it. But the upside is that you get a clean and highly recognizable player for your site.

But if you're into easy...

The easier alternative: Yahoo's Music player
I probably should have listed this one first, because it's about the easiest way to have embeddable audio on your site. All you have to do is put in a link to an mp3, and that just triggers the player. Plus, it will allow you to queue them, turning your site into a kind of radio station. Full details and instructions are available on Yahoo's site. It's a piece of cake.

I guess that the only arguments against it would be that it's a little confusing, and from my perspective, it doesn't really call out the mp3 like the inline audio player does. Those are minor concerns, though.

To answer your next question: yeah, I'm not sure why we're not using it here. Limo, let's schedule a meeting. Bring scotch.

The free and legal option: Lala.com
If you don't want to deal with the worries of copyright infringement, Lala.com is a fantastic service. You can embed the vast majority of the content on their site, as songs, entire albums or playlists of your creation, and most of it is the entire song. The catch is that a listener can only listen to the full song once, and then they can only get 30-second sound samples, but if you're embedding a song in a blog, the chances are that people will only need/want to listen to it once anyway.

The downside of this service is that you're going to be limited in what songs you can share. Obviously, you could only embed songs that have already been released, and any live versions or obscure stuff isn't going to be on there. But Lala is as close as we've come to the YouTube of music. It's much easier to use than Imeem (which I hate) and has a very impressive catalog.

I want to write something more on Lala.com, because I think that this site represents the future of internet audio. It's still buggy and getting on its feet, but even for something that's relatively new, it's an impressive site. Highly recommended.

Finally...
If there's another good option that I've missed, let me know what it is in the comments. And I've just given a rundown of the options here, without giving detailed instructions or tips on implementing them, but if you have any questions, ask away in the comments and I'll tap 'em out.

* Pulp reference? Anyone? Anyone? (crickets)