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"How should I embed my podfic?"
So there are 3 main ways to embed audio on AO3:
- The
<audio>tag - Various audio hosting websites'
<iframe>options - The Dewplayer
As a default you should use the <audio> tag.
If you prefer a website's embedding option for whatever reason, then use that—those are also good. For example, if you have a multi-chapter fic, then you might want to embed from Archive.org and have a playlist. Or you might want to use SoundCloud simply because like the way it looks.
Dewplayer is the predecessor of <audio> (see here or here to read more about that). You should not use the Dewplayer these days. I'm including it here just to be thorough, and document it as part of AO3's history with audio.
Sizing
All embedding options except <audio> are weird about height. If no height is specified, they can't automatically handle their own height properly.
You can size each individual audio-player with the width= and height= attributes, but I personally don't like having to do that for every single podfic I post.
Lately I've gone on a CSS kick and learned all about selectors. With selectors, you can tell things about the audio from its link, and then write specific rules based on that. So I created this skin. The idea of this skin is that you can use it and then audio elments will automatically be sized properly.
File-embedding vs website-embedding
With <audio> and the Dewplayer, the link to use is the download link. To get that, go to wherever you're hosting the audio, right-click on the download button, and select "copy link address."
To embed audio from a website with an <iframe>, you go to the page your audio is hosted on and click the share/embed button. It's the one that looks like this:
Click it and this little "share/embed" thing pops up, containing some HTML for you to copy-paste.
File links are not subject to the AO3 whitelist. Websites' <iframe> are.
The Whitelist
When you embed from a website, the little player thingy is provided by that website. This is why they look different from each other.
Most audio-related websites have an embedding option—it's a very common way for people want to use audio—but not all of them can be used on AO3. For example, while Clyp.it offers embedding, it cannot be used on AO3.
The HTML Sanitizer we use runs a very tight whitelist on sites we allow to provide media code (this is necessary in order to ensure we don't let malevolent code slip by). If it's not posted to one of these listed sites, the Sanitizer will delete the embed code entirely.
Let's go through the list. 8tracks, Spotify, and Ning are commercially-oriented sites. Dailymotion, Metacafe, Vidders.net, VidderTube, Vimeo, and YouTube are all video-based sites. While audio could theoretically be hosted there as well, that is not what most podficcers prefer.
I suppose YouTube is video-based, but audio is a large component of what's comfortable there. Whereas in many ways, all of the things that we're using—AO3, LJ, Tumblr, whatever—are text-based, and we're forcing an audio product onto it. […] I guess I can see how it's a natural fit for podfic, but I think this is a question of fandom spaces verses spaces for a certain kind of media, because—as I sit here and think about it—YouTube makes a lot of sense for podfic as a media type.
podfic.com does not really exist. If you go there you get the message "Content coming eventually." I'm not entirely sure what google.com means on this list—many people host podfic on their Google Drives, but I've yet to see someone successfully embed audio from there. I don't know any podficcers who use Critical Commons, but the OTW has a post about it here if you want to learn more.
As far as I know, the only websites podficcers on AO3 use are SoundCloud and archive.org.