HTML5 Audio

HTML5 provides a standard for playing audio.

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Audio on the Web

Until now, there has never been a standard for playing audio on a web page.
Today, most audio are played through a plugin (like flash). However, not all browsers have the same plugins.
HTML5 specifies a standard way to include audio, with the audio element.
The audio element can play sound files, or an audio stream.

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Audio Formats

Currently, there are 3 main formats for the audio element:

Format	IE 9	Firefox 3.5	Opera 10.5	Chrome 3.0	Safari 3.0
Ogg Vorbis	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
MP3	Yes	No	No	Yes	Yes
Wav	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

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How It Works

To play an audio file in HTML5, this is all you need:

<audio src="song.ogg" controls="controls"> </audio>

The control attribute is for adding play, pause, and volume controls.
Insert content between the <audio> and </audio> tags for browsers that do not support the audio element:

Example

<audio src="song.ogg" controls="controls">
Your browser does not support the audio element.
</audio>
The example above uses an Ogg file, and will work in Firefox, Opera and Chrome.
To make the audio work in Internet Explorer and Safari, add an audio file of the type MP3.
The audio element allows multiple source elements. Source elements can link to different audio files. The browser will use the first recognized format:

Example

<audio controls="controls">
  <source src="song.ogg" type="audio/ogg" />
  <source src="song.mp3" type="audio/mpeg" />
Your browser does not support the audio element.
</audio>

All <audio> Attributes

Attribute	Value	Description
autoplay	autoplay	Specifies that the audio will start playing as soon as it is ready.
controls	controls	Specifies that controls will be displayed, such as a play button.
loop	loop	Specifies that the audio will start playing again (looping) when it reaches the end
preload	preload	Specifies that the audio will be loaded at page load, and ready to run. Ignored if autoplay is present.
src	url	Specifies the URL of the audio to play