I have a friend who is able to play music on the forum he belongs to. He posts a picture, say of Santa Claus, and imbedded in it is a "play" and "stop" button. On pressing play he has a full length version of Bing singing White Xmas.
I get the impression that it is very difficult to do this and am wondering if this is so.
I would love to be able to do something like that. If you can do that sort of thing on a forum; can it be done on emails and other things??
I'd appreciate any details on this in very simple terms. I'm not too hot on the technical stuff. Many thanks, Ralph

Most forums will not allow embedded versions of anything. It's best to give a link.

Jaynee, I don't understand how it is done but you can listen to music "real time" and in this case it is on a forum....He suggested a site that I could play music on my web site. Could this be done and from there download to a forum or something else.. Sorry, I'm a real novice at this but really keen to learn how things are done. Best wishes for Xmas and forward, Ralph

Do you mean that you want to play music on your own forum? Or your own website?

Ralph, if it is your web site & it is HTML based then it is rather easy.
Somewhere on the site you would need to have the audio files, then on the page where you want the sound you add tags similar to these:

8.4. How do I get an audio file to play automatically when someone visits my site?
Most browsers support the EMBED element for this, provided that the user has a suitable plug-in for the sound file. You can reach a slightly wider audience if you use BGSOUND as well. To avoid problems with browsers that support both, place the BGSOUND in a NOEMBED container:

<EMBED SRC="your_sound_file" HIDDEN=true AUTOSTART=true>
<NOEMBED><BGSOUND SRC="your_sound_file"></NOEMBED>

For more on the EMBED element, see <URL:http://developer.netscape.com/docs/manuals/htmlguid/tags14.htm#1286379>. For more on the BGSOUND element, see <URL:http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/author/dhtml/reference/objects/bgsound.asp>. Note that these elements are proprietary and not in any HTML standard. (The HTML standard way of doing this is not well supported.)

Be aware that some users find it annoying for music to automatically start playing. They may not have the volume set properly on their speakers, or they may be listening to something else. As a courtesy to your users, you may prefer to offer the sound file as a link:

<A HREF="your_sound_file">Listen to my sound! (5 kB MIDI)</A>

This from this HTML Help link:

http://www.htmlhelp.com/faq/html/

Beyond this is Java which is beyond me

Jaynee/jephree. Thanks.. It's not on a web site. It's on his forum. He did say something to do with Java and it took years to learn. I thought he was kidding. He has a little control just like a media player start/stop and you can press play then wait for the music to load and it will play. That's what I'd like to be able to do.
I think "Beyond this is Java which is beyond me" hits the nail on the head Jephree.
thanks to both. Regards, Ralph