Compact WP Audio Player

by mra13 / Team Tips and Tricks HQ

Description

Compact WordPress Audio Player plugin is an HTML5 + Flash hybrid based wordpress plugin which can be used to embed an mp3 audio file on your WordPress post or page using a shortcode. The audio player is cute and compact and will play on all major browsers.

This audio player plugin Supports .mp3 and .ogg file formats.

The audio files that you embed using this plugin will work on all devices.

Features

The audio player is compact so it does not take a lot of real estate on your webpage
HTML5 compatible so the audio files embedded with this plugin will play on iOS devices
Works on all major browsers – IE7, IE8, IE9, Safari, Firefox, Chrome
The audio player is responsive.
If you do podcasting then this audio player can be used to embed the audio files on your WordPress posts or pages
If you are selling audio files from your site then you can use this plugin to offer a preview
Add the audio player to any post/page using shortcode
Use autoplay option to play an audio/mp3 file as soon as the page loads
Ability to specify both the mp3 and ogg version of your audio files. The plugin will play the appropriate one based on the device.

More details can be found on the Compact Audio Player Plugin Page

Usage

Use the following shortcode to embed an audio file anywhere on your site

[sc_embed_player fileurl=”URL OF THE MP3 FILE”]

Example shortcode:

[sc_embed_player fileurl=”http://www.example.com/wp-content/uploads/my-music/mysong.mp3″]

Installation

Upload the “sc_audio_player.zip” file via the WordPress’s plugin uploader (Plugins -> Add New -> Upload)
Activate the plugin through the “Plugins” menu in WordPress.
Create a page or post to show the player using shortcode.
Add shortcode anywhere in the post/page like: [sc_embed_player fileurl=”mp3 file url”]

Faq

Will my audio file work in all major browsers?

Yes

Can I loop the audio files embedded using this plugin?

Yes

Will the audio player work on iOS devices?

Yes

Reviews

(Almost) exactly - and I mean exactly - what I was looking for. But...

By alanpaterson997 on April 16, 2025

Really love this plug in! I wanted exactly this - just a single, simple button, alternating between play and pause, allowing people to play or not as they saw fit, linking to an audio file in the back bedroom. And suddenly, there it was! And even I, a floundering newbie, managed to get it into my (Astra) footer without too much stumbling around. Result!

And then we reach the 'but'...

The music, der, cuts out the moment you leave a page. You can restart it when you get to the next page, but that's really not ideal, plus you'll be starting at the very beginning, which isn't a very good place to start again, and again, and again, whatever warbling Julie Andrews says.

Now, if anyone knows how this could be setup to play - or pause - site-wide and stay there site-wide regardless of navigation, or of any plug-in with this one's simplicity & elegance that could, I'd love to hear about it.

Meantime, like I say, love it! Clean, simple, elegant.

Choosing other player images

By guilleta on July 16, 2024

It does what it promises very well. I have replaced the controls images with custom ones. Is it possible to get a code snippet to be able to choose between different "play" images?

The rarest thing, a simple clean, functional plugin

By alexpcox on May 3, 2023

Ridiculously simple. Works well. I customised the play/pause images to fit the design of my website. It plays audio. Job done. Please keep supporting it, it's great!

Simple is good

By Senri Miura (senribb) on August 22, 2022

The play button of this plug-in is pasted on the top page. It is better not to take up extra space with compacts. It's been working fine so far. If it's greedy, I think it would be even better if there were variations in icon design.

Auto-start on page load missing an important option

By nsim2021 on May 6, 2022

It's a cute plugin. It's been around a long time, nice to see the developer sticking with it. I installed it years ago in a draft web site I still am working on. I want a music file to play when someone loads the home page. Therefore, the autoplay option to play an audio/mp3 file as soon as the page loads is great. However, it never stops playing. I have the player in the sidebar so the visitor can see it to shut it off if they want. However, there is no way to tell the little player to ONLY PLAY ONCE. That's all I need it for. When the visitor arrives at the web site. Unfortunately, is plays the music on every single page load. I would kindly suggest that you add a default feature to limit plays to once, on the first page load, regardless of how many different pages are loaded. Thanks for thinking about it.

Doesn't handle multiple audio on page

By perrydc on March 8, 2022

I love the compactness, but it needs to kill all audio playing on the page when I hit the play button. Otherwise, we have multiple audio playing over each other.

Works Great

By smc2935 on April 10, 2021

I'm using it to play a couple different songs on multiple pages. Exactly what I needed. Simple, easy to use and a clean look.

Great but...

By nchopin on February 14, 2021

I like the simplicity. Would be greater with a button in editor menu to print the shortcode format directly in content

It works

By OkorieWare (okorieware) on January 3, 2021

Simple and effective.

Perfect for playing individual audio files

By podcalia on December 2, 2020

If you want to play individual audio files it is perfect. With the configuration you can make that when playing a second audio file, the previous one is stopped.

Changelog

1.9.15

Using the wp_safe_remote_get function instead of wp_remote_get to get the file headers.

1.9.14

Added output escaping to the fileurl shortcode parameter.
Refactored the autoplay JavaScript code so output escaping can be added easily.

1.9.13

Added a settings option and a filter to disable the URL validation for the fileurl parameter.

1.9.12

The fileurl field will also accept the relative URL value (example: /wp-content/uploades/audio.mp3)

1.9.11

Added a fallback for the fileurl verification when the PHP URL validation fail for non-latin characters.

1.9.10

Added a CSS wrapper class for the audio player to make it work better with block themes.
Validate URL for the ‘fileurl’ parameter of the shortcode.

1.9.9

PHP 8.2 compatibility.

1.9.8

Added output escaping to the shortcode parameters. Thanks to WPScan for pointing it out.

1.9.7

Escape attributes in the shortcode.
Added nonce check to the settings menu save operation.
Thanks to WPScan team for pointing these out.
WP 5.8 compatibility.

1.9.6

Updated the audio player for iOS 10 safari.
WordPress 4.6 compatible.

1.9.5

Bugfix – Audio player embedded with the “autoplay” flag (in the default template) wasn’t changing the pause button icon to a play button icon after the audio file finished playing.

1.9.4

WordPress 4.4 compatibility.

1.9.3

Corrected a typo in the play button image file name.
changed the uniqid() function to use the “more_entropy” parameter so the value is more unique.
Fixed a minor bug with internet explorer.

1.9.2

Fixed a minor bug (new player template1) with the “loops” parameter.

1.9.1

Fixed a minor bug in the new player template1 with the “autoplay” parameter.

1.9 – Added a new shortcode for a different audio player with seek bar and volume control in the player. The documentation has usage details of this new shortcode.

1.8 – Added the option to specify both an .mp3 and .ogg version of the audio file in the shortocode.

1.7 – WordPress 3.8 compatibility

1.6 – Added an option to disable simultaneous playback. It will automatically stop the audio file that is currently playing when a user plays a new file.

1.5 – added a auto loop parameter option in the shortcode to automatically loop the audio file

1.4 – added a volume parameter option in the shortcode so you can specify the volume of the audio

1.3 – Added the autoplay option in the shortcode.

1.2 – added the ability to spcify a container class via the shortcode (helpful for CSS customization)

1.1 – minor javascript bug fix