For any musician trying to get their voice heard or a music lover looking to share their favorite tunes with the world, having a good music player on their site is essential. Even if you run a non-music business, you still need a music player if you want to enrich your content with some fascinating melodies in the background.
The ideal solution would be to install a premium music WordPress theme that comes with features tailored for everyone in the music industry. This way, you can not only share tracks with your crowd, but also view information about upcoming shows, create album showcases, and more.
However, if you’re looking for a good music player plugin to add to your site, you’ve come to the right place. We will tell you about the 5 best WordPress music player plugins on the market:
But before we delve further into this topic, let’s see if WordPress can play audio files on its own.
Default WordPress Audio Player
WordPress comes with a built-in audio player. can only play MP3 files. You can place it anywhere you want, including posts, pages, and widget areas.
Click on it to add it to your pages. Add media page editor (or Sound Block on Gutenberg) and load the desired audio file from your media library. If you want to embed the playlist in your widget area, you should go to: Appearance > Widgets. Next, find Sound select the widget, move it to the widget area you want and add the sound file to it.
Using the built-in WordPress audio player requires little effort on your part, but customization options not available. If you want to use a more feature-rich WordPress music player, consider installing one of the plugins below.
MP3 Music Player by Sonaar it is a freemium plugin that can help you Add MP3 files to your WordPress site without any hassle.
After installing the plugin, the Sonaar Music AudioPlayer icon will appear in the page editor toolbar.
Simply click this icon to load your playlist. There’s also a Sonaar widget made for Elementor, but again, Gutenberg doesn’t have a specific block for it. If you want to feature your playlist on your site but don’t want to give up on Gutenberg, there is a workaround: first Classical Block your page to get Classic Editor options and then click on Sonaar AudioPlayer icon.
If you choose the free version of this plugin, you will be able to: add as many tracks, albums and playlists as you wantand also select the store where people can buy tracks (Spotify, Bandcamp, iTunes, Google Play, etc.). For each playlist you have the following option: create categories and slugs, choose fonts, colors, add soundwave bar and much more.
Sonaar Music Player Pro allows you to change the volume, enable track mixing, get statistics reports, etc. allows.
The benefits of using this WordPress music player plugin are:
Sound Igniter It’s an awesome, beautifully designed plugin that can be downloaded for free at www. WordPress plugin directory. There are also several premium plans to choose from, with prices ranging from $34.30 to $174.30.
You can use to create unlimited playlists and upload as many tracks as you want. It’s also great for streaming radio shows. Even the free version of the plugin offers a wide variety of options and allows you to: select player type, set initial volume, set playlist height and max player width. Also, show part numbers, show part covers, show parts in reverse order and much more.
To add the player to your site, simply copy the shortcode (you will see it at the bottom of the page where you created your playlist) and paste it wherever you want on posts, pages or custom post types. to highlight the playlist.
The premium version, on the other hand, allows you to customize the colors of the player, change the playback speed, skip tracks and much more.
The benefits of using this WordPress music player plugin are:
If you want to start an online store, no plugin comes close to WooCommerce. It includes numerous powerful features to help you run a successful e-commerce business. To get the most out of it, take a look at the comprehensive WooCommerce guide that will help you manage your store with ease. You can now integrate a music player into your product pages to make them more engaging for users. For this you will need Music Player for WooCommerce Addition. Supports MP3, WAV, WMA and OGA formats. integration with dokan multi-vendor sites are also an option. Both free and premium version (30€) are available.
This plugin includes a shortcode and a widget. This allows you add music not only to pages and posts but also to your widget areas. there is something specific WooCommerce Music Player Playlist A widget for the Elementor plugin and the block you should use to add a playlist to Gutenberg.
As for the Classic Editor, [wcmp-playlist] short code. You can also add a number of different features to it, for example, if you want to include all the tracks in the playlist, you should:
[wcmp-playlist products_ids="*"]
On the plugin’s page, you can find more available features in WordPress’ plugin library.
Music Player for WooCommerce also allows you to effortlessly create and customize playlists. You can add track IDs, customize a playlist layout and style of the play button, etc. you can choose.
The premium version of the plugin allows you to view your audio files in safe mode, protect them from illegal downloads, and specify the size of the file you want to play in safe mode.
The benefits of using this WordPress music player plugin are:
HTML5 Audio Player one Freemium plugin that plays MP3, WAV and OGG files. Four premium plans are available, with prices ranging from $15 to $99.
When you activate the plugin, the new HTML5 Audio Player option will appear in your WordPress dashboard menu. To create a player and start adding audio files to your site, go to: HTML5 Audio Player > Add New Player and adjust all the settings to your liking.
Even the free version of the plugin comes with many practical options. You can do set your file to be played repeatedly (once or multiple times), mute the sound, enable the autoplay option and also choose the player width. This is particularly useful as you choose the size that best fits your design.
When you’re done creating your audio player, save the changes and then select a page, post or widget area where you want to add your music.
Premium versions The plugin allows you to change the player color, show/hide the fast forward and rewind button, show/hide the mute button and much more.
The only thing you cannot do with this plugin is to create a playlist.. If you want to add several songs to your site, you have to upload each one separately.
The benefits of using this WordPress music player plugin are:
Compact WP Audio Player It is a free and simple plugin that combines HTML5 and Flash Supporting MP3 and OGG files. To embed the music, all you have to do is add this shortcode to a page or post of your choice:
[sc_embed_player fileurl=”URL_of_your_music_file”]
For testing purposes, we used an MP3 file. File Examples library. After adding the link the shortcode looks like this:
[sc_embed_player fileurl=”https://file-examples.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/file_example_MP3_1MG.mp3”]
To add the shortcode in Gutenberg you should use: Custom HTML box, whereas in the Classic Editor you can paste the link into the visual editor area.
After saving your changes, a simple Play button will appear on your page. As the name of the plugin suggests, this player is really compact as it doesn’t take up too much space on your site.
If you want to loop an audio file or play it automatically as soon as the page loads, add the following bits to your shortcode:
loop=true autoplay=true
For example we want to enable autoplay option so now our link looks like this:
[sc_embed_player fileurl=”https://file-examples.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/file_example_MP3_1MG.mp3” autoplay=true]
There is also the possibility to set a specific value for the volume. To do this, add the volume value to your shortcode, e.g. volume=40.
The benefits of using this WordPress music player plugin are:
The downside to using this plugin is that unfortunately there is still no option to upload playlists.. If you were to share an album with your users, you would have to embed each file separately, which would result in multiple play buttons appearing on your page.
Which WordPress Audio Player Should You Go For?
We tested a large number of WordPress audio plugins to find out which was the best, and limited the selection to the five plugins in this summary. Some of these players come with more features and customization options than others, but at the end of the day, as always, you have to choose the one that fits your needs and budget.
