Adding Music to Your Myspace Profile

Here's how to make a song play when people visit your Myspace profile. First, login to your Myspace profile. Now look for the Music link near the top of the screen, between Videos and Classifieds. Click on the Music link and you'll go to the MySpace Music. Here you can browse around for cool new bands, or search for one of your favorites. The Search feature lets you search by band name, band members, musical influences, or "sounds like" criteria. You can optionally limit your search to a specific musical genre, or look for bands in a geographical area.

Once you find the group you're looking for, click into their page and you'll see a list of songs that you can listen to, rate, or check out the lyrics. To add a song to your Myspace profile, click on the Add button next to song you like. Myspace will ask if you REALLY want to add this song to your profile. If so, click Add Song To Profile.

That's it! Now visit your Myspace profile, and you'll hear the selected song playing as background music. You'll also see a nifty graphic on your profile, which allows you to stop, start or learn more about the song. You can click on Delete to remove the song from your Myspace profile, or click on View to visit the artist's Myspace page. See my profile on Myspace (http://www.myspace.com/bobrankin) to see an example of this in action.

Adding a Sound Clip to Your Myspace Profile

You can also add a sound clip to your Myspace profile that plays automatically. First, visit http://www.webplaces.com/html/sounds.htm and find a sound clip you like. There are thousands of sound clips linked to this site -- everything from classical music to animal sounds to bathroom noises and more. Save the sound clip to your hard drive, then upload it to your own personal web space. (If you can't do that, please get permission from the owner of the sound clip website to access the file directly from that server.) Once you have the web address of the sound clip, insert it in this template, replacing http://www.example.com/sample.wav with your sound clip address.

 <embed allowScriptAccess="never"  src="http://www.example.com/sample.wav"
height="60"
width="145"
autostart="true"
loop="false"
width="0"
height="0">
<noembed>
<bgsound src="http://www.example.com/sample.wav" loop="false">
</noembed>
 </embed>
 

Now edit the I'd Like to Meet section of your profile and paste the above code there. Visit your Myspace profile, and you'll hear the selected sound clip play. You'll also see a new music player graphic on your profile. You can click on the controls to replay the sound clip or pause it. Visit my profile on Myspace (http://www.myspace.com/bobrankin) to see an example of the sound clip player in action. If you want to remove the sound clip from your Myspace profile, edit the profile and remove the code that was added to the I'd Like to Meet section.

For more articles on Myspace safety, layouts and user tips, see http://www.askbobrankin.com/social_networking

BOB RANKIN... is a tech writer and computer programmer who enjoys exploring the Internet and sharing the fruit of his experience with others. His work has appeared in ComputerWorld, NetGuide, and NY Newsday. Bob is publisher of the Internet TOURBUS newsletter, author of several computer books, and creator of the http://LowfatLinux.com website. Visit Bob Rankin's website for more helpful articles and free tech support.