Many musicians make a portion of their living creating original compositions and arrangements. Today those scores can be viewed online using the Scorch Plugin by Sibelius. Visitors can see the music, hear a MIDI rendition of the piece, transpose the work, and change the tempo. The author of the work can control whether the visitor can print and save the work. Many publishers use this technology to sell sheet music online today. See the following sheet music vendors for examples of how this plugin technology is used.
One of the most frequent uses of audio on the Internet is to sell CDs. Amazon.com is a classic example. For many of the CDs they sell, small clips can be downloaded in RealOne or Windows Media format. Customers can try the CD before they buy it. Brick and mortar CD stores usually can't offer that type of service to help shoppers choose among a large library of CDs. This is one great example of using the medium of the Internet to achieve something that is not practical in any other way. Follow the link below to look at a sample page from Amazon.com. You will find audio samples at the bottom of the page in both RealOne and Windows Media formats.
Amazon.com — Beethoven Collection: Symphonies Nos. 1-9
An even more innovative site for selling CDs and downloadable music tracks was DiscLogic's Download portal. They are no longer in business but their online catalog used Flash to stream audio at different rates for different download speeds.
Another cute Flash-based site to sell music belongs to the band called "Bare Naked Ladies." This site has a nifty animated grammophone to play selected audio clips. There is also a selection of videos that can be viewed in another small window and a scrolling window with text deliverying the latest news.
A very successful use of the Web to sell downloadable music tracks is found in the iTunes application. Macintosh and Windows users can download the iTunes application from Apple Computer's Web site. Of course the iTunes site itself has no embedded audio but links to specific songs found there will launch the iTunes application to allow buyers to preview and purchase each song.
Of course, any performer or ensemble can easily set up a Web site with sample audio clips to download. Musicians often use this technique to promote independent CD sales and encourage performance bookings. One example is The Philadelphia Classical Guitar Trio. The client for this site decided to embed short audio clips to promote CD sales and concert bookings. Dr. Estrella used QuickTime poster movies to create the embedded content.
Another popular use of audio is to help promote movie ticket sales. Trailers for new movies are usually found in QuickTime format.
Acura provides an interactive showroom with audio and spoken narrative to enhance the sales pitch for the Acura TL.
The movie DrumLine was a lot of fun and inspired the frustrated drummer in all of us. The link below will take you to a Web site that features an audio sequencer for drum patterns. 20th Century Fox used this site to promote the movie.
Shel Silverstein uses the Web to sell children's books such as the popular book The Giving Tree. The Web site uses Flash to introduce each book with background audio and user interface audio for rollover buttons. The site is appealing to children and adults. If you have pop-up blockers enabled when you visit the site, you will have to click the button that says "Click here to relaunch the site."
For more examples see:
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