For most business and professional websites, background music is best avoided.
If you are not selling music or music services then it is best if you do not include background music when building your new website.
There are a number of reasons why and these are:
- Your music most likely will not be to the taste of your visitors. There is nothing more annoying, apart from popups, than to have to turn down the sound when browsing because the music that is playing is not to your taste. Often visitors will have their own music or television on in the background as I do now, why would I want to listen to someone else’s music. It is possible but most unlikely.
- Streaming music from your website impacts performance thereby slowing down your website often dramatically unless your visitors have a very fast connection.
- How many tracks of music would you play. If one, then you would probably repeat it which is annoying or if a different track each time then your page load speed will be even worse.
- It could be embarrassing if your visitor was at work. Nothing surer that that would most likely be one lost visitor.
- Do you have legal permission to use the music, have you paid royalties?
- Some browsers just don’t like some of the many different music files out there and wont play the music properly.
If your website is not a personal website or one related to music, then my suggestion is don’t use background music on your website.
– Peter
