Moving Your CAR-eer Into The Future!

Websites for a band today are just about as mandatory as are the instruments they play on stage and in the recording studio. Not having a website today puts any band into the Milli Vanilli category of not being for real.

We’ve written about this subject before, and so have countless others; but, it seems that we (and they) can’t write it, say it or promote it enough. The subject is how to build your website if you are a band. But I suppose it could also apply to anyone who thinks that I, you, or any of us out here in the cyber-world want to hear your favorite song as soon as we land on your web page.

It’s old school web-building and it has been old-school since 1999 turned into 2000 or another way to say it, “Last Century” thinking.

If website building were under the auspices of the automotive designers, the photo (left) would be WHAT YOU THINK YOU HAVE when you put the auto-play function into the enabled mode for any audio or video players on your website. I’m sure that those who are guilty of auto-play abuse are really proud and excited about what they have accomplished but what they really have when they do that is represented by the PHOTO BELOW.

Here at Prescription Bluegrass we discover hundreds of band websites, bluegrass business websites, bluegrass association websites and yes, even those who have sponsored numerous workshops on this very subject, to be guilty of this cyber-sin.

The reasons that you may think auto-play music and video on your website is a good idea have long-ago been debunked, and many more researchers and authorities on website building have even found that auto-play features are not just annoying but can be detrimental to everything you’re trying to accomplish with your website.

Yes, you can still find articles and “how-to” tips plastered all over the internet, some as recently as just a few months back, that advise you on how to ENABLE auto-play functions for videos and mp3 players. But remember, there are no INTERNET POLICE. There are no CONTENT CENSORS for the Internet. Everything you see on the World-Wide-Web is not TRUE, VALID or BONAFIDE. Some of the so-called experts giving out this free advice may not know even as much as you know about what to do or not to do. Our free advice to you is to be careful what you take for “free advice". Best to get more than one opinion and even to go seeking an opposite opinion once you think what you’ve read sounds good. Maybe the opposite will make even more sense once you find it.

Think of your website as an actual brick and mortar store where you want customers to come in and buy from your shelves. How would those customers react if as soon as they walked through the front door, they were bombarded with thousands of little music note confetti pieces unexpectedly falling on their head, in their bags and on their clothing from somewhere overhead? Annoyed? Surprised? Accepted? Unaccepted? To some it would be a joyful surprise, but to others it would be 180 degrees opposite. The problem is that you don’t know which reaction it will be until it’s too late to take the confetti back.

With your brick and mortar store you would at least have a chance to apologize and/or to explain your intentions while you attempt to salvage this potential customer and all of their possible purchases in future visits. With your website, however, you never know who’s coming through your cyber-door and whether or not you’ve annoyed or offended or overwhelmed them. And, you may never know who, how many, or how much business loss your auto-play feature has cost you. The problem here is you can never “Take it Back.” Once a new visitor lands on your page and receives your well-intentioned albeit misguided attempt to introduce your music, it’s well beyond “Too Late to Take it Back.” You’ve already crossed the line and most likely the visitor has already clicked off your site.

Should you be one of those who have stumbled into the on-line version of your newsletter, the same is true. Auto Play music can ruin everything else you’ve created that may never get read.

Let’s hope that everyone of us who has a website takes a little time to rejuvenate our knowledge of website administration and our desires for improved content. Take a course at a local community college, enroll in free classes at a senior center, invest a little time in upgrading your personal knowledge, or hire a competent advisor and web manager. If you wouldn’t do your own brain surgery because you don’t know enough about what you’d be doing, why do you want to kill your business – and possibly your career – with amateur web doctoring?

For those who are not current offenders of the Auto-Play violation, thanks for reading but you can still help by sharing this or any other piece of good instruction on the subject with any offenders you come across.

OK, if you haven’t peeked already, here’s what you really have if your website still has auto-play enabled: