audio

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audio is a sound recording indieweb post that is spoken or otherwise created by the author of a site.

Why

Audio posts, especially spoken word like podcasts, can be very personal and emotionally compelling. In many ways a high quality audio post has a very different impact on the listener than the equivalent as a text note.

How

Use an h-entry as always, and then an HTML5 <audio> element with class name u-audio and src attribute of the URL of the audio file, e.g.

<audio class="u-audio" src="http://ben.example.com/talking.wav" controls="controls">
alternate text content - like a transcript
</audio>

An album cover could be marked up as featured.

IndieWeb Examples

Ben Werdmuller

Ben Werdmüller uses Known to post audio to his site werd.io since 2014-06-27. Example:

http://werd.io/2014/a-little-indieweb-audio-while-i-wait-for-my-flight

Ben Roberts

Ben Roberts posts audio to his site ben.thatmustbe.me since 2015-01-09. Example:

Aaron Parecki

Aaron Parecki posts audio to his site using p3k since 2015-01-18. Publishing:

https://aaronparecki.com/2015/01/18/13/
- The audio file is rendered in an <audio> tag with a class of "u-audio", so that the browser shows an audio player.
https://aaronparecki.com/2017/02/17/9/day59
- The audio is paired with a video and thus rendered in <video><source src="" class="u-video">..., but also provided in a fallback link inside with u-audio so the post can still be used to create an audio podcast feed

Consuming: p3k also consumes the u-audio property (since at least 2017-02-18) for example when posting a repost of another audio post.

Marty McGuire

Marty McGuire posts audio to his site martymcgui.re since 2017-02-19. Example:

https://martymcgui.re/2017/02/18/151503/

Temporal media fragments are supported, using Aaron Parecki's javascript implementation. Example:

https://martymcgui.re/2017/02/18/151503/#t=54

Marty also runs an IndieWeb-enabled site for his comedy podcast We Have to Ask which has been posting an h-feed of h-entrys with u-audio since ~August 2016. Example:

https://wehavetoask.com/episodes/2017-01-31/ (example episode)
More: http://wehavetoask.com/

Silo Examples

SoundCloud

SoundCloud is a silo for audio posts; as well as the audio media file itself, it also expects a poster image to go with it, both for on-site presentation and for creating previews on other silos like facebook. For example this mix has an image that is exported in facebook, twitter, oembed and schema markup to cat as a preview.

Brainstorming

How to cite and webmention

Citing and sending a Webmention for/to an entire audio post is no different than citing any other post in general.

However there are some interesting cases:

A repost of an audio post, e.g. https://aaronparecki.com/2017/02/18/10/
- has an h-cite with u-url of the original and and embedded u-audio of the full audio media file
- webmentions work normally for this like any other repost.
A podcast using part of an audio post, e.g. https://martymcgui.re/2017/02/18/151503/
- links to several audio posts on aaronparecki.com, and for each, the martymcgui.re podcast post:
- SHOULD link to a media fragment indicating the time start and end offsets (as specified in the temporal dimension) for the (presumably continuous) portion of the original audio post used in the podcast.
- SHOULD send a Webmention with:
  - "source" URL of the podcast post with a media fragment indicating the offset into the podcast where the audio post was used / incorporated
  - "target" URL of the audio post with aforementioned time start and end offsets

Support media fragments

Main article: media fragment

An audio post permalink should support temporal media fragments on the end of its permalink to a specific time offset by cueing up the playback of audio to that specific time (and auto-playing if the audio post would auto-play from the start normally).

Why

How