but with other Sites/Blogs, when it suprises you with music, its usually not a good thing.

In general I totally agree with you. I don’t remember a single web site I’ve seen with video/music starting right away that is not annoying and I do include youtube on this category.

Sometimes surfing through youtube I open several tabs with videos and it totally annoys me that they start all at the same time (this doesn’t make one lose IQ points, does it? lol)

But ultimately, the user should be in control of their browser and the site should respond to that. I’d like the flash plugin not to start a video by itself unless, maybe, that the tab or window is focused….

….and you know what, maybe there is such a choice, maybe I should check that before I say something silly.

With that kind of option, designers could put any annoying music their clients want with the same restrictions we have to Javascript/Images/CSS, which is fair, once the user is in control and the arguments not to do it so would be on the same line of those not to generate content with Js and so forth.

Ha ha, good point!

However, if someone sends me a link to a YouTube video, I might want to go in there, to watch it later or maybe just read comments and information about before I watch it.

I don’t believe that for a second, why would you want to lose IQ points by reading the comments on youtube

Aaron,

It is an interesting perspective. I guess that if it’s such a well-known web site and everyone expects it to, for instance, play video, it’s more ok. But still, with YouTube, I’d find it fair if I had to click a play button to start the video.

However, if someone sends me a link to a YouTube video, I might want to go in there, to watch it later or maybe just read comments and information about before I watch it.

Unfortunately, my wedding photographer’s site has music that plays. I feel obligated to tell him that it nearly made me choose someone else, and it’s completely repulsive. They’re were very classy and did a very, very good job. It’s too bad their site turns people away with auto-play music.

The Problem are our customers. You can tell them that automatic background music is annoying. You can tell them why it is annoying. But if they insist — than we need the money and we do the job.

Only last week I managed to talk a client out of the idea: so that’s one site less with audio pollution

web sites who insist on start playing music (or video) as soon as you load a page.

With the video example I do think it is perfectly valid to have it autoplay under certain circumstances. For example if we look at the biggest player in that field youtube when I click through to a video page its starts to play without any further action.
In my mind this is the right action. It is a video site, I know the purpose of this site is to play me videos. I have already clicked a link to go to one of the video pages (could be a thumbnail in youtube’s search or wherever) this should be enough confirmation that I do indeed want to watch a video.
I should not then have to click play on the video when I get to the page itself.

And yes, can we please advise all our clients to never, fooking, ever put anything on autostart on their websites … I might not actually be looking at the site while it’s loading, so I might also miss that important message in the autostarting flash video, quicktime, whatever … or I might not be paying attention to the music, that the person is trying to get my attention to.

The amount of times I’ve gotten the fright of my life with music auto-starting or worse yet, some awful speaking voice ranting about a product (agreeing with Steven here).

Shudder.

Like one of those pitifully disgusting avatars in your own likeness - I wont’ link to the site in protest - to read out your homepage or FAQ sheet! Businesses who buy that crap amaze me.

I’m with you on this one brother Robert. Damn heathens. The absolute worst is speech!!! Some american twang telling me I need a marketing something… grrr. (I have had a bad day lol)

“Wait a minute … I am totally inconsiderate to my readers, perhaps I should not have that midi version of Sexy Back playing on my page”

Or perhaps:
“My livelihood depends on advertising dollars, and ad creators know that people are drawn to flashing images, shifting words, colors, and yes music.”

And so on. My point is that the web is an unruly jungle cat. Don’t expect a puddy-cat to emerge. Just get adblock, flashblock and tame the beast. I for one love the anarchy of the really bad (other side of the tracks) parts of the web. See 99.99% of myspace for points of reference. Thanks for reading my comment.

…Sexy Back starts playing in the background… (embed music in comments, that would be sweet)