SoundCloud wouldn’t be that popular if the player didn’t show the waveform image. The HTML5 audio element makes it possible to realize such a player without Flash. As browser support varies at the moment (Firefox seems to lack the JavaScript interface to access how much of the file is already seekable; also most browsers either support OGG Vorbis or MP3) this demo only works only on Apple Safari 4 or Google Chrome 3 (or later). Hopefully these problems will get sorted out in the future. Actually it works best with Safari 4.

Click here for the HTML5 Audio Player Demo

Add XSPF support and maybe a little AJAX magic for comments and you have a very nice audio player in your browser without any Flash, using the audio and canvas element.

Waveform images are generated by waveformgen, music is performed by my laptop band Benoît and the Mandelbrots.