jtnt://life/unedited

Insipid, generic electronica.

Some of the coolest sites on the web are developed entirely in Flash. This is great and fine. What bothers me is that a great many of these sites also choose to play music for you, since Flash gives them the ability to do this very easily. I have serious problems with this.

Many of these sites are uber-hip sites that cater to the digitally hip. I'd venture a guess that visitors of these sites - at least their core audience - have picked up an iPod or some digital music player, or use iTunes, or at the very least are playing music while surfing via some device, connected to their computer or not. Hep cats listen to music a lot, we all know that.

So these sites, when I load them and their insipid, generic electronica (it is invariably insipid, generic electronica these sites think is cool), are seriously hurting my viewing experience by forcing their choice of insipid, generic electronica upon me.

What's worse is when I am listening to some song in iTunes, really rocking out with the volume turned up, I am blown out of my chair by their low-fi insipid, generic electronica competing with my personally-chosen musical selection.

Why then do these sites feel it necessary to give us music with their sites? These are not sites for bands, mind you. These are sites for web design shops, high-end hosting, super-cool blog-types, etc. That is, sites that have nothing to do with music or audio of any sort. I've missed the connection, if there is one, as to why music is pertinent to these sites.

So, I say to all Flash developers, resist the urge to throw in that hackneyed yet ubiquitous music player with fake EQ feedback animation into your sites. It's old, impertinent, and most importantly rude to your users. And if you must make me listen to your music while on your site, consider yourself original by not using some insipid, generic electronica as your musical selection.

Thank you. Drive-through.