Back in May, frustrated and obsessed, I slogged through a day or two’s worth of research chasing down the answer to the question: “How can I get a music player embedded on WordPress?” Well, I figured it out, and oddly enough, my step-by-step how-to has become one of the most popular entries in Funny Ha Ha‘s brief but fertile history. I’m not sure I’m willing to acknowledge what that says about the function (or lack thereof) of music criticism and journalism, but I’m happy for the hits either way. Also, I recently discovered that the blogger who’d convinced me embedding a Lala player was possible in the first place, Andrew Watson of Changing Way, typed up some words on my article, here.

Expect new additions to this site’s Lala player soon.

UPDATE: Sorry to say, friends, it appears that the below instructions have been outmoded. It was a good run while it lasted, but we all know how quickly all things technological evolve. Weirdly, however, WordPress still hasn’t made it easier for mopes like us to embed the Lala player, or something comparable. So it goes. I hope to troubleshoot this all over again, but not sure when I’ll be able to do so. If you’re interested, subscribe via email or RSS to this blog, and stay tuned.

I’m happy to report cLm.wordpress now has streaming audio. You’ll find the Lala Music Forecast Lala Playlist widget to the right, and it’s easy enough to use. Hit the gray play button to listen to the songs beginning to end.

For five days following your initial play, you’ll be able to listen to each song once for free. On the sixth day, you’ll have register (also gratis) with Lala to continue using the player. There’s no credit card required or any of that. It’s still one play per song, but I’ll attempt to keep the songs fresh, so you’ll always have music to listen to. Should you want to purchase an unlimited stream or MP3 of a song, Lala offers those options as well. Click here to read Pitchfork‘s explanation.

WordPress bloggers: Getting the  Lala Forecast* widget functioning isn’t easy and I imagine I’m not alone in trying to figure it out. Here’s how I did it.

1. In Lala, pull down “My Lala” and click on “Profile”
2. Click “Embed this” above the Forecast box and copy the HTML
3. Start a free Clearspring account, and click “Use the In-Widget API”
4. Enter a name for your widget and click “Save”
5. On the next page, click “Edit Your Widget,” then “Content Template”
6. Paste your Lala HTML code into the “Widget Content” box
7. Set width to 150, height to 345, and click “Save”
8. Click the “Publish” tab along the top, then “API Info”
9. On the next page, copy the WID string [ex: 5a141h4be8f4f322]
10. In your WordPress dashboard, create a “Text” widget
11. Name the widget, and in the box enter the following in brackets: clearspring_widget title=”YOUR WIDGET NAME” wid=”YOUR WID STRING” width=”150″ height=”345″ domain=”widgets.clearspring.com”
12. Did it work?

*You can embed a Lala Playlist widget by grabbing the HTML code from the “Share” option within the playlist view, then adjust width and height (in the places mentioned above and in the HTML) to fit your sidebar.