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Three Ways our Forum Allows You to Share Your Music

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Our Forum software has great tools we've developed to help you share your music. You can talk all you want about music, but sharing sound files takes it another step! For the purposes of this article we're just going to concentrate on MP3s with a quick tutorial on adding SoundCloud clips.

Upload MP3s to our Forum space

Go into Advanced Posting Mode just like you're making a post, select the Paper Clip icon then select and upload your MP3 from your computer desktop which will result in it being saved directly to the Forum. Not the sexiest end result, but hey, it gets the job done. Just like uploading an image. You wanted to share your MP3, and this does the trick!

wasp.mp3

At this point the MP3 has been uploaded to the Forum and viewers can click and either use software they have configured to listen to MP3s or download it to their own personal computer.

Our Social Groups make wide use of this feature and have uploaded hundreds of MP3s.

Stream your own MP3s

Sure, you can always just upload your own MP3s, but lets take it a step further and make them easier and more fun (you'll need the free Flash software installed--most of you do).

Using our Forums MP3 BB code you simply put the web address of the MP3 clip between the tags like you would for any other codes.

See BB Code for Streaming MP3 Player

[mp3=1]http://www.mandolincafe.net/mp3/steffey-deeprough.mp3[/mp3]

NOTE: this trick requires use of an optional numbering tag so if there is one or more on the page you must specify which one it is... 1 for the first, 2 for the second, etc. The BB Code link above explains this without going into greater detail here.

OK, so see the nice information streaming across the player about the author and the track? That's called Metadata. "ooooohhhhh, goes the crowd, technical." Not technical at all. Just right-click (PC) on the MP3 when it's on your desk, select Properties, then Details. Fill in the Title and Artist information and away you go. Just don't put anything in the Comments field as for this player that will cause it to throw up (a technical term we made up for will cause it to break).

SoundCloud

One of the premier music sharing platforms on the web, SoundCloud has nice visual tools for playing tracks and we've built a custom BB Code (that code used to display things on web pages). Just place the web address of your SoundCloud clip you want to play between the soundcloud BB code tags and you're off and running.

See BB Code Instructions for SoundCloud

Example of output:


That's it. Might be tricky for you the first time but we always welcome you testing out the uploading and sharing of sound files so if you have questions, fire away! Plenty of folks on this Forum willing to help you get started, us included!

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Updated Jun-21-2015 at 5:18pm by Scott Tichenor

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