How to embed SoundCloud in WordPress? WordPress SoundCloud embed is a great way of adding SoundCloud tracks to your website pages and posts. If you want to start a website rich in different tracks, combining WordPress and Soundcloud is a great method.
Simple ways of embedding SoundCloud tracks to WordPress is a procedure that our readers often request from us. This is why we decided to cover this entire topic today.
There are tons of hosting services online. Usually, a person becomes confused because there are tons of website hosting services out there. In this case, the confusion only becomes greater as the publisher has to consider the numbers of different hosting services for the tracks.
If you want to create an audio playlist website, or even if you want to start podcasting, we highly recommend WordPress and SoundCloud. There aren’t many combinations that go this well and embedding SoundCloud tracks to WordPress websites is very easy as well.
In this post, we’re going to talk about a few methods through which you can add SoundCloud to WordPress. So, let’s get started, shall we?
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Why You Should Add SoundCloud WordPress plugin?
If you’re willing to start a website with lots of audio files, you don’t even need to have a dedicated host like SoundCloud. However, we highly recommend getting one. If you don’t add a dedicated host for storing your audio files, there’s a huge chance that the website will be bogged down by the audio files, and the overall load site will reduce drastically.
If the loading times increase, you’ll face a lot of problems. Loading times are very important for maintaining a decent SEO rank of your website. Then again, it’s seen that if the load time of your website exceeds 3 seconds, the visitor might not wait any longer to visit your website at all. If the load time exceeds 2 seconds, the chances of the visitor visiting your website for the second time reduces by many folds.
If you’re a podcast host, SoundCloud is the best hosting service for you. However, unlike many other podcast hosting services, SoundCloud isn’t specialized for podcasting only.
Another amazing thing about SoundCloud is that you’ll get some very well detailed analytics with each track you upload on this. With these helpful insights, you’ll be able to understand why your episodes are performing in the way they are, and you’ll also be able to take steps through which you can improve your content.
Plus, SoundCloud is a very flexible hosting service in terms of pricing. NO matter what your budget is, you’ll be able to get a decent hosting service for yourself. Even with the very basic plan, you’ll be able to embed controls, get the basic statistics, and store the tracks in high-quality.
If you’re willing to go the extra mile, you can get the Pro plan of SoundCloud. With their Pro plan, you’ll be able to add various advanced tools and you’ll also get advanced analytics from them. This is why we highly recommend getting the Pro plan if you’re that serious with your website. However, if you’re doing this completely as a hobby or if you aren’t expecting a major revenue stream from your website, then you’ll do well enough with the basic plan of SoundCloud.
Then again, SoundCloud itself functions as a social media platform. Unlike other popular social media, you get to upload your tracks on SoundCloud. People like to search for you using your unique user ID, and they can subscribe to your account. In this way, they can engage with your posts, react to them, and leave a comment. All of it makes SoundCloud very engaging.
The best thing about SoundCloud is that you can add SoundCloud plugin WordPress in multiple methods, and it’s completely free to do so!
How to Embed Soundcloud In WordPress?
Even though you should use a different hosting service for uploading your audio tracks, you should integrate that into your website. If you do so, it’ll be easier for you to upload, manage, and control your content. This is why we highly recommend integrating SoundCloud embed WordPress.
Want to know how to add SoundCloud to WordPress? Here we’re going to talk about multiple steps!
Step 1: Embed the Track with Code:
One of the most widely popular methods of adding the SoundCloud track to the WordPress website is by embedding the track with the embed code. This step is quite simple in fact. Let’s assume that you already have a SoundCloud account. If so, you’ll have to log into your SoundCloud account at first.
Once you have logged into your SoundCloud account and have some content uploaded on it, you need to access the specific content you want to share. Then, click on the share button right below the track.
After clicking on this button, you’ll get multiple tabs. You’ll get the Share tab, the Embed tab, and the Message tab. You need to get to the Embed tab.
As you can see, there’s a code section, and in that section, you’ll find the code that you’ll have to upload to your WordPress site. Click on the code to select the entirety of it, and then copy it. From this tab, you’ll also get to see how the post will look on your WordPress website.
Now, the next step might be a bit daunting to some, as you’ll have to edit the HTML code of your WordPress website manually. If you’ve done a fair bit of coding before, you’ll face no problem. However, if you’re completely new and inexperienced in coding, we highly recommend you to do exactly what we tell you to.
You’ll need to go to the WordPress page where you’re going to post that specific audio track. Once you go there, access the editor, and browse to the Custom HTML block.
Here, you’ll find a box, and you need to add the code you just copied into this box. Save changes once you’ve pasted the code, and then you must click on the preview button to see how the post will look on your website.
As you can see, this is a fairly easy thing to do, so you shouldn’t worry about it at all.
Step 2: How to Add SoundCloud To WordPress with Official SoundPress Plugin?
If you’re looking forward to integrating the entire SoundCloud plugin into your website, then you can do so by installing their official plugin known as the SoundPress plugin. If you’re using the latest version of WordPress, then there’s no need to install this plugin. However, if you’re still running the older version of WordPress, we highly recommend installing this plugin.
We have a lot of readers who use the older versions of WordPress, and they reported that they got better performance out of the SoundPress plugin than any other method. This is why we highly recommend knowing how to add SoundCloud to WordPress if you’re on an older version of WordPress.
You need to access the admin panel of your WordPress platform. From there, go to the plugins tab, and click on the add new button from there. Then, you need to browse the window that’ll drop down, and you need to click on the search bar there. From there, search for the SoundPress plugin. Once you get the plugin, you need to install it. In this way, you can add it to your WordPress website, and it’s the easiest way of adding SoundPress to your WordPress website.
Now, it’s time to see how you can add SoundCloud content to your WordPress website’s posts. From the WordPress dashboard, you need to go to the Posts tab. From there, you’ll see that the interface has a new option labeled ‘Add SoundCloud’ right under the title and beside the ‘Add Media’ button.
Once you click on this, you’ll see a window pop-up. This window will consist of some boxes and options.
You can adjust the height of your post, or you can set it to auto. Then again, you can also set options for whether the post will show your username or not, and you can add or hide the album art as well. We highly recommend showing your username. In this way, people will have an easier time finding your SoundCloud account, so you’ll get more engagement at your official SoundCloud account.
There’s also an AutoPlay option here. We highly recommend unchecking this option, as it’ll only increase the bounce-back rate of your website.
There’s a box labeled SoundCloud URL, and you need to add the URL of the content you want to post on your WordPress website. Once you’re done tweaking the systems and have added the URL, you need to click on the ‘Done’ button below.
Once you click on the ‘Done’ button, you’ll see a preview of the post. Once you see the post, you need to finalize it to have it published on your website.
Customizing the Shortcode of Your SoundCloud Posts:
You can also customize the shortcode of your SoundCloud posts. You can change the following parameters with the codes we’re going to talk about below:
1- Width and height:
With the shortcode width/height = (px/%), you can determine the dimension of the audio track player. You can determine this either by pixels, or you can also customize it in a relative percentage of the audio track player to the container, which is your website page.
2- Color:
You can change the color of the play button as per your will, but you won’t be able to edit the album art of the audio track in this way. You can also change the color of the waveform displayed on your website. You need to use the code color = (color ‘hex code’) for painting these buttons to the color you want to. You need to replace the ‘hex code’ with the hex code of the color you’re willing to paint the buttons with.
3- Visual:
With this shortcode, you can enable or disable the modern audio track player of the audio track that you added from SoundCloud. If you want to display the colorful waveform that you can customize with the color code, you need to set this to disable. However, if you want your website to display the latest visual audio track player, you’ll need to enable this option. You can control this parameter with either visual = (true) or (false).
4- Auto Play:
You can determine whether you want the track to start playing automatically or not easily with the SoundPress plugin. However, if you’re not using the SoundPress plugin, even then there’s a way of dealing with this.
You need to type in the code auto_play = (true) or (false). Here, if you want your website to start playing the track automatically, you need to type in true. On the other hand, if you want the opposite, type in false.
We highly recommend setting this to false, as setting it to true will increase the bounce-back rate of your website by a great deal, and you don’t want that.
See also:
1- Change Background Color in WordPress
2- WordPress Video Background
3- WordPress Featured Image Size
Conclusion:
Now that you know how to add SoundCloud to your WordPress website, hopefully, you’ll be able to publish some great content on your WordPress website very easily. As you can see, there are two ways of doing this, and a lot of people ask us about the easier way of doing this.
If you’re looking for the easiest way of adding SoundCloud content to your WordPress website, we highly recommend installing the SoundPress plugin. This plugin eliminates the necessity of manually copy-pasting strands of code. You don’t need any coding knowledge to customize the audio player on your website.
This is why we recommend using the SoundPress plugin if you’re willing to customize the audio track player.
