Easily embed audio onto WordPress

There are 2 ways that any podcaster or site owner can add audio to their site — with an mp3 file link or through SoundCloud. The difference between the 2 has a lot to do with the size of the file. But also if you’re going to embed audio onto WordPress a lot versus once or twice.

Embed an audio file

If you have a single audio file to share with your audience, you can more than likely upload it to your Media Library without too much trouble. (But make sure you hide the file from Google searches.)

But if it’s a really long file (aka big in file size), or you are adding lots of audio content to your site, you’re better off uploading them somewhere else. Then you can grab the link + embed the audio onto WordPress.

Why? Because big files slow your site down. Especially if multiple people are listening to the same file at the same time.

Dropbox isn’t the answer

Before you start thinking Dropbox is your audio storage solution, think again. They prevent audio + video playback on their servers. So you’ll need to use something else, like Amazon S3.

Once you’ve uploaded your file, grab the link directly to that file. Then head to your post or page that needs the audio embedded to paste the URL in place. (No need to toggle from visual editor to text editor or vice-versa, WordPress is smarter than that.)

Save your changes + check out your content in a new tab. You’ll be able to see that WordPress has automatically converted the simple URL into an audio player.

embed audio onto WordPress for any podcast // tiny blue orange

Yes, it really is that easy to embed audio onto WordPress. The hardest part is deciding where to store the audio file.

SoundCloud

If you’re already using SoundCloud for your audio files, it’s easy to add them into any WordPress page or post.

Head to your SoundCloud profile using the menu in the upper right corner of their site. You’ll get a list of all of your files so you can pick which one to embed.

Click the “Share” button for the specific audio you want to add. The popup window will give you a few options starting with Share. With this option, you get a link that you can simply paste into any part of your site + the SoundCloud player will show up.

Customize your embedded SoundCloud player

The next option, Embed, gives you a little control over how the player looks. When you click More options at the bottom of the popup, you’ll see a few options you can test out. This tab also has a checkbox for WordPress code specifically. This generates a shortcode for you to use in the visual editor of any part of your site.

Decide which route you want to go + grab the link or code from SoundCloud. Then locate your page or post to edit within your WordPress dashboard, paste in whatever you copied + save your changes.

That’s it, audio embedded!

on your keyboard hit enter to search or esc to close